C10CJ: A Pro-touring '71 Stepside on a No Limit Pro-C10 Chassis

[1971_c10]

Forgot to tell you guys ... I got invited to participate in a charity photo shoot (well, C10CJ in reality). The photographer is putting together a calendar of classic cars and models to sell and raise proceeds for charity. I took some shots with my iPhone, but since it is an iPhone the photos aren't the best due to where the sun was positioned. We're told we get copies of the photos from the photographer so I'm looking forward to some of his pics. In the meantime, here ya go, and I hope C10CJ gets selected for the calendar (there were more cars than months).

C10CJ and flatirons




A few of the other cars part of the shoot


A behind the scenes shot of C10CJ in the spot


A finale pic with all the models who participated in the shoot (squeezed in right before the sun went behind the flatirons)

[1971_c10]

oh man, what a busy week it's been. Started off with a trip to SD to help a life long family friend (he's family) with his 700R4 that wasn't shifting into OD. We pulled the 2-4 servo and cleaned that up (since he had every other gear and no slipping I was suspect he had a stuck 4th apply piston). We got it all cleaned up and it shifted into OD on the first try of the test drive, but then never again. I also found his TV cable wasn't quite right. So he's got some parts on order. We'll fix the TV cable but I'm wondering if he's going to need a replacement "super servo" 4th apply piston as his was kinda "stuck" in the cover when we pulled it.

Then it was back home to install the power steering cooler. And trans cooler. Yep. I got them both done. I deviated a little from my plans on the trans cooler. I wound up mounting it right behind the front bumper since I could easily route plumbing here w/o having to move my trans temp sensor (which feeds the ECU which controls the cooler fans). So I came up with some simple brackets for both the PS cooler and the trans cooler. Let's get into it.

If you follow me on FB/IG, you may have seen these pics but not much description.

So a bunch of parts showed up right before I headed to SD so I was ready to get installing when I got back home on Labor Day.


As I mentioned, I got the Earl's Temp-O-Cure for the PS cooler as I wanted to compare the build quality to the Derale unit. Here's a shot of the Earl's on top of the Derale. Both are nice build quality.


For the PS cooler, I built a bulkhead that I used to then hook in to the power steering low pressure circuit. I just used some 1/8" plate I had left over from the shifter housing build. These are -6 AN bulkhead fittings since the existing lines were -6 and I was using 3/8" hardline to the cooler. I then wound up adding some triangular gussets which you can see in the next pic. I did space the bulkhead fittings so I could get wenches on them.


Here's all the brackets for the PS cooler setup. The small one is the bulkhead and the 2 large ones mount the cooler. I built the cooler mounts to give me a 1" space behind the cooler to the radiator support. No fans on this cooler and mounted off to the side of the radiator as I really only need the cooler when I'm running around the AutoX course.


Here's the brackets mocked up on the cooler.

[1971_c10]

Here's a mock up shot showing where I was planning to put the cooler. The front of the truck is kinda up and slightly to the right in the pic and you're looking down between the radiator support and grill, just to the left (driver side) of the radiator.


All the brackets painted up pretty


Time to get things mounted and assembled. Two days out from Goodguys CO and I tear the front of the truck apart. The pic isn't the best, but the PS cooler is mounted in it's spot (just to the left of the driver side headlight in this pic). Blends right into the radiator support.


That white Earl's box in the part shot in the previous post was the 3/8" steel coated hardline. Comes in a 25' coil. I then have a home built "straightener" to get the lines mostly straight. I then custom bent the lines to fit between the bottom of the radiator support and the frame and then tie in to the bulkhead that I mounted on the frame in the proximity of the power steering pump.


Here's the resultant lines. I have the 37 deg flare setup for my awesome flare tool so I go straight from the hard lines to -6 AN. You can see the tube nuts in the pic.

[1971_c10]

On to the trans cooler. I thought I took more pics than I did, but apparently I didn't. So we'll start off with a shot of the trans cooler already mounted. This Derale unit is nice and compact. The built in fan shroud actually has the cooler mounting holes in it, so all I had to do was come up with a way to mount it. After thinking about it for a day while I got the PS cooler installed, pondering various bracket ideas, I had a moment of clarity. I could just use some 1" box bar and bolt that to the frame and radiator support and then mount the cooler to those. Gave a good standoff distance and the cooler is actually flowing "backwards"! Yep, the fans are pullers, but since it is directly behind the bumper, I figured this would work out ok. It's also completely out of the path of the radiator (sans the fluid lines) which was the main goal.



A shot of the lines I bent for this cooler. A little more complicated than the PS cooler.


And finally, a shot of both coolers installed and plumbed up but before I put the grill back in place. The PS cooler sits right at the bottom row of the grill. I did that on purpose so the fluid didn't have to climb too high.


All back together the night before Goodguys and quick test drive to ensure no leaks and get all the air bleed out of the steering. This photo was taken the morning of the show as I squeezed in a wash before I drove it up to Loveland.

[1971_c10]

Goodguys time! Time to race! and find out how those two brand new coolers worked. First thing was to get tech'd. Woohoo! Got my sticker!



So I did things kinda backwards between Friday and Saturday. Not by design, but more driven by fun. Friday I spent the day getting the feel of how things worked since this was my first Goodguys Autocross and also getting a feel for the truck on a longer course compared to the C10 Nats. I started off my first run with a 44.444 sec run. Right away I was in 3rd. I then just drove on Friday and didn't change anything. Practiced driving. Got down to a 42.134. Then I went home and decided, I'm going to make some changes. I had the camber set about -1 deg and caster around 6 deg and toe in (I'm not 100% sure on the amount, somewhere between 1/16 and 1/8").

So what'd I change? Bumped the camber to -2 deg Friday night. Make a difference? You bet. Shaved 1 second off my times. First run Sat morning was a 41.03. Yeah! Made a few runs here, ping ponging between 2nd and 3rd. Then, decided to make a Rob change. I went one turn out on the tie rods. Yep, I did. Just keep count of the turns. My best guess is 1 turn got me close to 0 toe. BAM! 1 more second off my time, down in to the 40.somethings. Ran a 40.198 as my quickest.

I then really started playing with suspension and having a blast chasing the guy in first place. I wound up testing -2.2 and -2.5 deg camber. Then talked to one of the pro racers. He said I really needed -3 deg camber. He's got a lot more experience than I do, so I tried it. He also said run some toe out. So I went another turn on the tie rods, so 2 turns out total. I definitely had toe out now. The turn in became very aggressive. Maybe a little too aggressive for my skill as the truck was much less forgiving on entrance speed but would run the hairpins on rails if I got the speed right. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the setup to work well for me. But I had a ton of fun going through all the trials. And Rob's stuff is so easy to adjust at the track. I did not play with caster though as I need to get the weight off the wheels to do that and I didn't have a jack, but 6 is a good number so I stuck with it. All in all, I had a blast, and met some awesome racers in the process.




Then on Sunday, the All American Sunday, I chose to just hang out in the show and shine area. Found some other C10s to hang out with for the day. Good times!




Now, you're probably going, well, what about the coolers? How'd they work? So they both worked very well. The power steering cooler kept the fluid cool and when I checked the fluid there was no foaming or evidence of fluid being pushed out of the reservoir like at the C10 Nats, and this course had way more steering with 5 hairpins, mini slalom, and a chicane. The Derale trans cooler worked very well. I had no issues during the runs and the trans temps (hot line coming out of the trans is where I measure) stayed below 200 F for the racing. In some stop and go traffic it would creep up to 210-220 F but I just force the converter to lock in 2nd and that pulls the fluid temps down. That's purely a function of the super high stall speeds I'm running. Running down the highway the cooler was keeping the temp around 190 F and that was with no fans as I found a bug in the ECU SW (Holley is aware and working a fix) causing my custom input temps to be wrong in the ECU so it wasn't turning the trans fan on at 190 like I thought it was. So I'd say in the short term that's a success. I'm still contemplating putting the trans cooler in the areas I mentioned earlier, like under the cab or bed floor, but tucked behind the front bumper may be the spot for a while.

[crakarjax]

Sounds like a blast, can't wait until I actually get to do some racing with mine!

Are you running the trans cooler lines through the radiator as well, or just the derale cooler?

[1971_c10]

Originally Posted by crakarjax

Sounds like a blast, can't wait until I actually get to do some racing with mine!

Are you running the trans cooler lines through the radiator as well, or just the derale cooler?

Just the derale cooler. I wanted the trans fluid out of the radiator. The trans and engine were fighting as I suspected. The trans wants to run 180-190 and the engine wants to run 195-210. So the engine would heat up the trans fluid and then combined with the high stall, once the fluid gets hot it keeps getting hot. So I'd routinely see trans temps over 220 and then that would heat the engine coolant up. So far, this little Derale has not had any major issues keeping up and I put at least 75 miles per day on it over the three days driving back and forth to Loveland for the show, one of those days stuck in horrible traffic. I have yet to take it to the mountains and torture test it though. So far I'm liking the setup.

[Advanced Design]

Nice work on those lines! And that had to be some fun changing the suspension settings and evaluating the results...so many variables.

[1971_c10]

Originally Posted by Advanced Design

Nice work on those lines! And that had to be some fun changing the suspension settings and evaluating the results...so many variables.

Thanks Doug! It was a blast. I got super pumped when I would make a change and shave a second off. I was about 6 seconds behind the pro 'pack' (there was one pro just shredding the course so he's not lumped in the 'pack'). I can tell you I'm pretty sure 5 of my 6 seconds were in the hairpins. My lack of experience on those tight of turns was worth a second per turn I'm sure. The rest was probably just in start line traction and hitting the apexes just right. I'm pretty sure if I had handed the keys to one of the pros the truck would have been right there in the fast group of the day (34-36 seconds).

Oh, and I forgot to mention, I did officially place 2nd in the truck class for the event.

[1971_c10]

Hey guys, I'm starting a new video series to help those out running Holley EFI. Over the course of several videos I'll show you guys how I did the setup for the cooling fans and A/C integration along with some other custom options. The first one shows how to use the data overlay feature in the Holley EFI software which greatly helps when tuning, either on the street or on the dyno.

C10CJ Holley EFI Tips: Datalog Overlay - YouTube

[1971_c10]

If you are following me over on social media, than this may be old news, but wanted to let you guys know I tested the 'touring' part of pro-touring. I put around 800 miles on C10CJ this past weekend. Truck drove very well. Cruises down the highway at 75 mph with ease and got around 17 mpg overall across the 800 miles. The only issues I had were interior related and the interior is still something I need to tackle. The issues were basically too much wind noise due to leaking windows. I really need to replace the vent window seals and all the other window seals. I did the door seals earlier and that just showed me where the next problem was (which I expected). So here's a little photo journal of the trip.

The trip was to my Dad's place in the black hills. The route was 380 miles each way, straight up I-25 from Denver then cutting across Wyoming on US 18/20 to US 85, then on US 18 again into SD over to SD Hwy 79 up to Hermosa then towards Keystone no SD Hwy 40. Fairly easy drive with elevation reaching as high as 6100 ft then down to ~3500 ft at Dad's place.

Shot on the drive up, somewhere on I-25


Parked in my Dad's buddy's shop. That dark grey C10 got some updates I installed over the weekend.


The upgrades were installing a new throttle/TV cable setup. He's been having trouble getting his truck to shift in to OD and one thing I found was the TV cable wasn't quite right.


So I fab'd a bracket to bolt to the non-standard throttle on that giant Holley Ultra XP carb (950 cfm feeding a 555 cu in BBC built by Pat Musi)


The final setup.

[1971_c10]

Spent a chunk of Saturday at the drag strip in Sturgis watching a friend run his alcohol burning beast of a '34 drag car. He hasn't had this thing running long so he was doing some test and tune. As I helped him do a couple jet changes he made sure to jab me some on carb vs EFI (all in fun of course). But after spending a bunch of time on his knees working in a cramped engine bay, he did admit EFI wasn't sounding so bad as he could just be making a tweak on a laptop and done in 5 min vs the 30 mins to do a 4 corner jet swap on his 1050 dominator (setup for alcohol). Good times.



Interior shot of the '34


Heading back home. Had some very heavy winds, sometimes a cross wind, then a head wind in Wy. If you zoom in to the vehicle in front of me, that's a motor home with a little lean to the right not due to bad shocks, but due to the wind blowing that hard. He wasn't going very fast due to that.


Wound up doing some night driving.


Truck got really dirty on this trip.

[1971_c10]

That dirty water is the rinse bucket from a 2 bucket was setup. If you aren't familiar with a 2 bucket wash, the intent is to always keep one bucket with clean soapy water. The other is used to rinse/scrub the crud out of the wash mitt. Each bucket has a grit guard in the bottom. This helps to prevent dragging dirt all over the car. Works pretty well.



Just after the wash, looks good. Still have a ton of work to get the chassis back cleaned up.


And dang! 1878 miles on this build! Time for some maintenance.


So up on jack stands C10CJ went.

[aggie91]

Great to see you driving this one. That '34 looks bad a$$.

What kind of floor is that in your shop?

[1971_c10]

Originally Posted by aggie91

Great to see you driving this one. That '34 looks bad a$$.

What kind of floor is that in your shop?

Hey Karl, thanks! I built this thing to drive and have the rock chips to prove it!

The '34 is definitely a bad a$$ beast. He got into the high 5's in the 1/8 mile and engine was still rich so there was more power to be had. This is all naturally aspirated. No nitrous, no turbos, no blower. Good stuff!

The coating on the floor is from Epoxy Coat (http://www.epoxy-coat.com). They allow you to choose the colors you want. I have the "premium" package which includes a clear epoxy to put over the colored epoxy and acts as a clear coat. It is more expensive, but much thicker. I have abused my floor pretty hard and do have a few spots where the coating has chipped, but that may be due to a poor bond to the concrete usually a product of bad prep. I used the chemical method vs a diamond sander since my floor was new, but I'd probably do the sanding thing next time to ensure there is a good profile on the surface for good adhesion.

[Advanced Design]

Looks like you had a great trip! Appreciate you sharing it with us.

The night picture shows a decent headlamp spread...was the lighting good?

[1971_c10]

Originally Posted by Advanced Design

Looks like you had a great trip! Appreciate you sharing it with us.

The night picture shows a decent headlamp spread...was the lighting good?

Hey Doug, Trip was awesome. Glad to get some good highway driving and even a little inclement weather driving. I was actually impressed with the lighting during the night driving. What I did with this build is simply got the headlights off the headlight switch and on relays. Those lights are just some ~10 yr old Sylvania's (halogens) from one of the local autoparts store. So just changing to the relays they are way brighter than they were before. I do have some tweaking to do to the aiming. They are a little short for rolling down the highway at 75-80 if there weren't any other cars (just slightly overdriving the lights). I haven't set them yet after the stance changes. I do worry they don't have the beam focus though (once I do adjust them) since when I bought them 75 mph speed limits weren't the norm like they are today, and 80 mph in WY.

For those curious on the headlight relays, what I did was use the existing feed from the headlight switch to drive two relays, one low beam and one high beam. Since the headlight switch puts out 12v, I just wired them straight to a resistor style relay (to make sure the current pulled through the headlight switch was minimal now). The relays are in those littelfuse blocks I added on the radiator support. So the headlights have a much more direct path to the battery and can pull the current they need. The headlight switch in our trucks winds up acting like a resistor so it restricts current to a degree, resulting in the sub-par light performance. One reason why those super bright headlight upgrades all include relays.

[1971_c10]

Hey guys, tossed together another video showing how I setup my cooling fans using the Holley software since I'm running a Holley ECU. I've got the ECU controlling the fans and it is setup to turn the fans off above 50 mph. Posted over on youtube ...

C10CJ Holley EFI Tips: Dual Fan Config - YouTube

[HellaciousA]

I was curious which rear brake setup do you have from no limit? I have the floater rear end and the wilwood caliper no limit gave me is a single piston unit with an integrated parking brake. I have 6 piston calipers up front and I'm worried about brake bias issues given the large difference is piston sizes.

[1971_c10]

Originally Posted by HellaciousA

I was curious which rear brake setup do you have from no limit? I have the floater rear end and the wilwood caliper no limit gave me is a single piston unit with an integrated parking brake. I have 6 piston calipers up front and I'm worried about brake bias issues given the large difference is piston sizes.

Hey man, I've got the 12.88" rotors and 4 piston calipers. Most likely your rear brake setup is just fine. Don't get too hung up on the 4 piston rears vs a single piston rear. Couple things ... the front still does most of the braking and the difference in piston area from the 4 piston to the singe piston probably isn't as big as it sounds. The 4 pistons in the back are pretty small. I went that route as for the non-floater rear end, it was either an 11" rotor/single piston or a 12.88" (or 14") rotor with the 4 piston caliper. The 11" setup was probably enough, but I wanted the rotor to fill the wheel a little more with my 18s so I went with the 12.88" for aesthetics.

And since I haven't been around in a while, here's a recent shot from my instagram account @c10cj

[hotrod1]

Hey Chris - So a lot of time has gone by and I was wondering if you have any suggestions, regrets, or whatever with your truck.

Thanks

[1971_c10]

Originally Posted by hotrod1

Hey Chris - So a lot of time has gone by and I was wondering if you have any suggestions, regrets, or whatever with your truck.

Thanks

Hey man, I got no excuses for the lack of reply ... So far so good on the build. Everything runs quite well. My main things are not replacing the 90's glass and I still have to sort out the bed floor. Otherwise, I haven't come across anything the annoys me or drives me nuts.

I do have some updates I need to add to the build thread. After a great season in 2019 I qualified for the Goodguys Duel in the Desert final autocross in Scottsdale, AZ and made a few changes for that event since I would be racing the pros. I did change tires from the Nitto 555 G2s to BFG Rival S 1.5 which made a huge difference on the autocross track but I actually like the Nitto better on the street.

Main things I changed other than tires was moved the battery and trans cooler to the bed and changed the front springs to a stiffer spring rate. The stiffer spring rate (from 450 lb/in to 550 lb/in) was great for autocross but definitely makes the bumps in road driving a bit worse. So the usual tradeoff for a stiffer spring. Now after 1.5 years of no racing due to you know, time to get back at it next weekend with GG Colorado.

[hotrod1]

That's great. Any pics would be great also.

[lunatic1968]

Nice Build ! I just found it. My next one will be a no limit, how do you like everything? Do you drive it much?

[1971_c10]

Originally Posted by lunatic1968

Nice Build ! I just found it. My next one will be a no limit, how do you like everything? Do you drive it much?

Thanks! So far so good. I love firing that thing up and listening to the Don Hardy Racing stroked LS rumble at idle ... As far as driving it, I was driving it a ton up through 2019. Then the truck sat (other than firing it up and moving it out/back into the garage and a few trips around town) most of 2020 b/c, well, all the shows I had planned were cancelled and everything in CO was closed for much of the year. So we went camping instead. Things slowly started back up this year but I was too busy with work in the spring, then we were super busy in the summer, so finally started getting back to shows and stuff in August with Hot August Nights in Reno, NV and now Goodguys in Loveland, CO next weekend. Heading to cars and coffee in Lafayette, CO (a fairly large one, usually a few hundred cars) tomorrow. The it's into the shop to check the alignment and get ready to race at GG.

Hopefully I get some time this weekend to get the handful of build updates posted.