sprint_9's 72 C10 Project

[sprint_9]

Alright, well this might be a little premature but I wanted a place to start posting pictures and ideas about my upcoming project.

A little about the project. The truck started life in my wife's family as her grandpa's construction truck, he bought it new in 72. From what I have gathered he used it for around 10 years as his work truck to build houses, and after he retired it was used primarily as a leisure vehicle until the mid 90's when it was parked. It sat for about 15 years until this past winter when my wife's family decided they weren't going to do anything with it. I asked if I could have it and was told yes with one exception, that it had to stay with me and that I could never let it leave the family. I very happily agreed to this and we set out to get it running so we could move it into a better location.

Fast forward to the present day and despite some minor hiccups the truck is running, but is in storage while I wait to start the rebuild. Since I got the truck last winter I have switched jobs and my original shop I had planed to use was sold. So I am in the process of buying or building a house with a 3 stall garage so I have the room to start the build without making my wife park outside.

I asked her if she would park outside and received a response similar to this... So I will just have to wait to start the build...

Here is the truck.

[sprint_9]

More to come.

[71' Custom]

Looks pretty solid..............

[sprint_9]

Started having some parts trickle in while I find deals or decide to get something now before it goes up in price. Figure in most cases things always go up in price and rarely down.

Here is some of what I have planned for the project which will be a frame off with some modern upgrades.

• 5.3 LS series with 4L60E, aluminum radiator, 1 piece drive shaft.
• Rear end freshen / Posi
• Camaro gas tank, with in-tank pump, relocated under bed. Credit to Ackattack
• LWB to SWB conversion.
• Paint, Blue, not sure on specifics.
• New front grill, chrome bumpers, sport mirrors.
• 4.5/6.5 drop. Might go 5/7.
• Raceline Blast 5 wheels / 20x8.5 and 20x10.
• Front Brakeperformance rotors and Wilwood D52 calipers, probably keep rear drums, new booster and master cylinder.
• 99-06 Silverado seats, rest of interior dark grey or black. Modern radio with components in the kick panels, maybe something behind the seats.
• Tilt steering column, depending on if I can source a stock one. Re-ratio steering box.
• Dakota Digital gauges.
• American Autowire classic update wiring harness.
• Vintage Air?
• Other misc. items.

Thought I would post some pics of what I have so far. I always like seeing everyone else's pictures, and I am really chomping at the bit to get going with mine.

[sprint_9]

Wow where did the time go, 3 years gone by and Im no where close to being where I want to be with the truck. The good thing is though that progress is actually happening on the truck, I have attained a new house with a 3 stall garage, and my parents purchased a house with a 24x36 shop.

Ive been working mainly on house upgrades and maintenance over the last 2 years, and on the truck for the last 9 or so months so Im going to do some catching up on here over a few days. I debated on even continuing on with my thread but thought someday down the road it will be fun to look back on it, and maybe someone will even enjoy it as much as Ive enjoyed looking at others work on here.

So Ill start back up kind of where I left off after my last post, best I can remember anyhow. I had just started working on a van tilt I had gotten from a local salvage yard. Well upon getting it and not paying close enough attention to it I later discovered that the shift collar was damaged. I only had like $50 in it so I decided to keep it and try and fix it. Turns out the shifter pin hole was egg shaped and the gear indicator housing was completely broken out. What I did to fix was JB weld aluminum into the pin hole to make it tight again, and JB weld part of a pop can to the housing to build the box back up for the gear indicator. The end result looks good, Im just not sure how it will hold up in the long haul. So after this was painted it got thrown on a shelf and it still sits there. Ive got a nice non tilt column that came out of the truck I may run instead, one of 5000 decisions to make in the coming months.

Few pics of my fix.

[68bowtie]

nice looking truck. i'd be happy to drive it just like it is.

not all build threads are fast. i know mine is not...

[sprint_9]

Continuing on the next thing we did was start disassembling the truck. I say next thing but it was about 2 years after my tilt column adventure.

For some reason now I cant upload pictures, keeps saying security token not valid. I guess I just use my photobucket for now, finally get going on this updating and already hit a wall.

[sprint_9]

Originally Posted by 68bowtie

nice looking truck. i'd be happy to drive it just like it is.

not all build threads are fast. i know mine is not...

Thanks, yea it was a nice truck, just getting tired. I actually drove it as a daily driver for about 3 months while I worked on my real daily driver doing some body work to it. One main problem was the fuel filter in the carb, it would plug every 100 miles from the rust in the tank. I ended up on the side of the road once, always carried a spare filter or 5, lol

During the tear down I was finally able to get my hands on a 5.3 and 4l60. My dad has some friends that came through big for us, the engine is basically new, 0 miles. Trans is rebuilt with quite a few upgrades.

[sprint_9]

During the tear down I wanted to work on door fitment. Im fairly certain the last time anyone messed with the door fitment was the factory, and they were horrible. I had worked on them a little when I was driving it as a daily and got them to at least quit rattling but I wanted the door edge to line up better with the cab. I messed with them for about a half a day, they got better but still not really that good. Once I get to the body work Im really not looking forward to the doors.

Continuing on. I really thought I took more pictures than I did, must have gotten too busy working. Here is a pic of the worst of the rust I have found so far, well I guess the inside of the rockers isnt great either, they just aren't rusted through yet. For being an Iowa truck it really is surprising it isn't worse.

[mooseknuckles]

nice, clean, rust free truck!

[sprint_9]

Next up was converting my frame into a SWB. Thankfully I have skilled family in my dad and cousin to help with conversions like this, having someone that can weld good is great when you cant weld for crap. We ended up using the pieces we cut out as reinforcement around the butt weld. Cut off the bottom part of the c-channel, and put the plate right against the top of the channel on the top of the frame

[sprint_9]

Once we had the frame shorted we started mocking up my Eng/Trans. I wanted to get all of the frame work, or all that we could think of done before paint. I decided to use engine mounts out of the 73-87 trucks, C20 specifically, they proved much harder to find than I thought they would. It was worth it though they fit great and were only $30. Using an aftermarket Trans cross member, not sure on the brand (ECE I think), bought it used a few years back. Headers were from Speed Engineering, I must say for the price I am very impressed with them.

After we had the power train installed we set the cab on to check clearances, and everything looked good. Never got a pic of that though.

[sprint_9]

Next up was changing the trailing arm cross member and adding some c-notches. Oh and I cant forget about removing my favorite little thing, rivets. Man I hate rivets, seemed like it took forever to get all of them out and when they did come out, look out. Using an air chisel made them shoot like a bullet half the time.

I made sure to keep one rivet, Im going to wrap it up in a box and give it to my dad for Christmas, he'll probably throw it at me when he opens it, but it will be classic. He smashed his hand up pretty good battling with a rivet so he isn't fond of them either.

At this point I'm getting pretty close to being caught up to present day. The frame is pretty much ready for blasting in this pic. Had my cousin weld the top seam on the c-notchs, mainly to keep crap out of in between them and the frame, also stitched the trailing arms.

[sprint_9]

Originally Posted by mooseknuckles

nice, clean, rust free truck!

I couldn't have asked for a better foundation.

That gets me pretty close to being caught up. One of the things I missed was the mock up of my Boyd fuel tank, never got pics for some reason. Boyd makes one heck of a nice piece with those tanks, I was really impressed with the quality and customer service him and his staff have.

The original plan was to have the frame blasted and then I was going to paint it with SPI black epoxy. Ive since swayed away from me trying to do every little bracket and nook and cranny on the frame and am going to have it powder coated instead. It was supposed to go in last week to be done but the guy that was going to do it has had some equipment issues and wont have them fixed for a few more weeks. So moving on to plan C, I found another coater that actually does better work as far as I can tell. Ive actually seen some of his work first hand vs. hear say, so I feel a lot better about that. Only issue is he is over an hour drive away, but if I can do a little driving for a better product it will be worth it. Hopefully next week I can round up a trailer and get it to the coater.

Couple of other things I have been working on is getting everything gathered for a DOD delete on my 5.3. Everything should be here tomorrow for that, so Ill make sure to take some pictures of that. We may actually do that this weekend if things go to plan. Ive had first hand experiences with DOD lifter failures so that was a high priority to get that removed, and while doing it add a little bonus with an aftermarket cam from Texas Speed.

The other thing I've been working on is trying to figure out what to do with my hardware (nuts/bolts), while not in terrible shape it would be nice to do something with it. I don't really want to fork over a fortune for new so Ive been thinking about getting everything re-plated. It still isn't cheap but it seems to be about the next best thing. So I have a lot of cataloging to do to keep things straight if I send them off.

[Orange67]

Nice truck, cool build.

[sprint_9]

Quick update, Seems like progress has slowed to a crawl lately, need to get some momentum back. Everything Im working on now I wanted to have done 2 weeks ago and Im still working on it.

Frame is off to the powder coater, its taking longer than I had hoped due to the weather. Cant control the weather so it is what it is.

Ive sorted all my bolts, and documented each set by location or item. Currently working on getting them cleaned up a little before I send them off to avoid additional charges at the plater, should hopefully have that wrapped up this weekend and get them shipped Monday.

Started working on my LS DOD delete, new cam is in but we stopped there for now, Im going to paint the block while its torn down. Plan to work on that this weekend if my paint comes in, if not I have plenty to do otherwise, need to change the valve springs yet, and upgrade the rocker arm trunion bearings.

[Jason7121]

Nice work our builds are similar your moving right along now.

[sprint_9]

Picked everything up from powder coating yesterday. It looks absolutely great, I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. The only thing that will be an issue is where the steel bushing screws into the a-arms, they didnt mask the threads, so that will be a royal pain to clean up.

Also got my engine painted, new valve covers painted to match as well. New valve springs installed, rockers upgraded. Ran into a problem with the harmonic balancer, need to either rent or buy a tool to get it pressed back onto the crank. Need to double check push rod length before I bolt everything together one last time but hopefully that is good and I can get the engine buttoned up.

[GR8-68]

Wow !! That frame looks beautiful, Looks like a great build to follow

[Hart_Rod]

Nice build!

[sprint_9]

Thanks.

Didnt get much done on the truck over the weekend. Tinkered a little with cleaning some threads and installed the engine mounts. Worked a little on my intake. I started shaving it last summer then it kind of got put on the back burner, kind of want to get it done now that Im working on the engine. I would have liked to have bought a Fast LSXRT, but couldn't see spending the money, maybe if this turns out like crap Ill upgrade.

[slowcpe]

Wow! Nice progress!

[sprint_9]

Originally Posted by slowcpe

Wow! Nice progress!

Thanks.

Earlier this week I painted some of my Moog suspension stuff getting it ready to install, hopefully they dont rust.

Today we worked on my engine, its pretty much back together after paint and dod delete. Im swapping to a Camaro water pump so I need to get one of those. Also got my alternator and ps pump bracket, I got it from Holley, they came out with a low mount bracket that kind of mimics the ls1 Camaro.

I had really hoped to run some kind of a low mount ac compressor bracket, similar to the stock location. After installing my engine mounts I just dont know if Im going to have room. I may end up changing my motor mounts a little if possible in order to get a low mount compressor to work. Sucks everything is powder coated now to be redesigning, but I think it would look so much better to have the compressor down out of the way.

Im really happy how this has turned out, a little paint goes a long way.

[Jason7121]

Looks great I like those valve covers. I used low mount compressor bracket bracket similar to stock. It's from old air products and fit nice. I had trimmed the rh frame rail during mock up with the stock compressor and bracket and when old air came in it mounted in same location.

[sprint_9]

Thanks, the valve covers are one of my favorite parts so far.

Only had a few hours to work on the truck this weekend, installed the Camaro water pump. Using it to hopefully have a cleaner hose install with stock radiator inlet and outlet location. Also bolted on the alt/ps bracket, waiting on my ps pump to come in but we tried the alternator and it didn't fit between the frame rails. I wanted to run the lager 140 amp vs 105 amp alternator but it doesn't quite fit. The case is a little bit bigger on the higher amp one, so I am probably going to try the 105 and see how it looks. If it doesn't fit Ill have to cut the frame and will then most likely go with the larger one anyhow. I really dont want to do any cutting on my nicely coated frame, but I might not have a choice, its too bad this bracket wouldn't have been out 6 months ago.

Set the motor and transmission in the frame and looked at my AC compressor location and it looks like that will fit without too many problems. Probably going with Dirty Dingo for that bracket, it only uses two of the three bottom holes on the block, my third hole is blocked so it will hopefully fit a little easier.

Have some time off this next week, hope to have my intake done, and my belt drive close to being done. Will probably order my rear end stuff and maybe work on that next weekend. Waiting on my bolts to get back from being replated before I can start on about anything else, should be back within about a week.