85 C10 - Street Trucks Freshman Build

[blillie11]

If any of you are fans of Street Trucks magazine, you may remember the '85 C10 build dubbed "The Freshman" or "Redemption C10". Well, now that it's finally nearing completion, I thought I'd start posting some pics and give a little background on the build.

The truck that inspired me to build my C10 was Red Rocker. The truck belonged to Travis Noack and the build was featured in Truckin' magazine. Travis and I happen to be talking about that truck at lunch one day (we had both left Truckin'/Primedia and were working for Street Trucks at the time) and I mentioned I'd always wanted to build something similar. Travis told me about a C10 that he'd seen a few days prior in the parking lot at our office. It had a for sale sign but he didn't grab the number and hadn't seen it since. I kept looking for that truck for about 2 weeks when it finally showed up again at our office. I called the number and picked up the truck the next day. It was straight, clean, and drove great once it was warmed up. It had an inline 6 and the carb was tired.

Travis and I started planning the build. It wasn't supposed to be anything crazy. The truck was straight and had a nice fresh paint job. The plan was to throw in some suspension and a rebuilt 350 small block. But things quickly got out of control.

Here's the truck when I bought it.

More to follow.....

[blillie11]

Suspension. Porterbuilt. Flashback to 2005 (?).

I think the year was 2005. It may have been 2006. Travis and I had traveled out to AZ to shoot some projects and features for Street Trucks. We were introduced to Dino and soon found ourselves at his house checking out his collection of cars and builds. At the time, I knew about Porterbuilt and had seen some of the suspension and trucks at shows, but Dino was the first person to introduce me to Nate. We checked out the Porterbuilt shop and I knew then and there that one day I'd have a C10 and lay it out with Nate's kit.

Flash forward to 2010. I had found my truck and Porterbuilt was the first call I made. I didn't care what it took, my truck was going to lay out on a Porterbuilt Dropmember. Thankfully Nate agreed to let us travel out and shoot an install for Street Trucks in the near future.

Now that the suspension was lined up, it was time to tear the thing apart.

Here the truck sits at Hardkore Performance. Front clip is off and the engine is coming out. Special thanks to Marcel @ Hardkore for everything during the build. Without him, none of this would have been possible. More on that later.

[blillie11]

So Marcel and I loaded the truck up and traveled out to AZ to get the Dropmember installed.

Here are some shots of the install. I feel fortunate to have had Nate actually install the kit. He probably could have had the thing done in a day, but I kept getting in the way (as seen below) and we were slowing up the process with pictures for the story.

And yes, this install did appear in Street Trucks.

Here are some shots of the front.

[blillie11]

Front continued...

[blillie11]

Front continued....

[blillie11]

And now for the rear...

[blillie11]

Rear Continued...

[blillie11]

Rear continued...

[blillie11]

Freshly installed.... front and rear by Nate himself.

[blillie11]

On our way home from AZ we had to stop at the Cabazon Dinosaurs off oh Interstate 10 and snap a pic.

[79azc10]

Nice pic, I was there at the dinosaurs not that long ago

[carboncrew]

nice to bad @ss in 5 posts. Very cool

[blillie11]

Originally Posted by carboncrew

nice to bad @ss in 5 posts. Very cool

Thanks!

[blillie11]

When we got back to CA it was time to address the tired Inline 6. I ordered an ATK Small Block 350 crate engine. Again, the original plan was to keep this thing simple, so I wanted to stick with a carburator. I decided to go with the Vintage Air Front Runner set-up. I picked up an Edelbrock Manifold and Carb with the Endurashine finish. I also stuck a Phoenix Transmission 700R tranny behind the engine.

Here are some pics of the engine assembly and install. Don't laugh at the lame story intro set-up picture. The UPS guy actually works for UPS and has a bad ass drag car. He lives right up the street from the Hardkore garage.

[blillie11]

Engine Assembly continued....

[blillie11]

More engine assembly....

[blillie11]

Engine assembly...

[blillie11]

Here it is laid out back at the Hardkore Garage.

[aggie91]

Welcome to the Forum!

Did this same truck end up being Silver with a candy red chassis?

[blillie11]

The first show I took it to was Relaxin' in SoCal. I've never displayed at a show before, so I was pretty damn stoked. This is my first full build and I'm pretty damn proud. But it's worth saying, without my friends none of this would have been possible. I can't tell you the number of late nights and weekends that went into this thing already and the bodywork hasn't even started yet.

[blillie11]

And then this happened.....

This rendering appeared in Truckin' magazine. Yes, Truckin'. In case you guys haven't picked up on it, this build has been covered in Street Trucks. So when I saw this, I was more than awe struck. But it was cool as hell!

The top is a photo posted on Sporttruck.com. The bottom is the rendering from Truckin'. Same truck? I think so.

[blillie11]

Originally Posted by aggie91

Welcome to the Forum!

Did this same truck end up being Silver with a candy red chassis?

It sure did Aggie91. I'll post the frame pics up soon.

[67cheby]

Awesome !

[blillie11]

Well, at this point, I was more than happy with my truck. Honestly, I would have been cool with the build if we had bolted the front-end back on and buttoned it up. But, that wasn't what happened. Not even close. I guess I can thank the Relaxin' in SoCal Show for what happened next. We had more than a few people stop by and kind of us give us **** for wanting to stop here. One thing led to another...

We started shaving everything. Gas door, door handles, cab seam, tailgate handle... you get the drift. But that also meant we had to repaint the thing. Originally I wanted the truck to be candy apple red. I had seen a 67-72 candy apple red suburban and it looked bad ass. I believe it was at the Cruisin' For a Cure show down in Orange County. After pricing out paint, candy apple red wasn't going to happen. So I headed over to Coast Airbrush and spent a day with Tom McWeeney from Kustoms Inc. He came up with the color scheme: House of Kolor Orion Silver with a candy apple red frame. Done and done! He had me sold. You'd think finding someone to powder coat candy apple red would be easy. Well, it actually wasn't. Thank goodness Kris out at Ludikrs Kustomz was down to powdercoat it. I'm so thankful for the job he did. It was flawless! Here are some frame pictures.

[blillie11]

More of the frame... That PB looks good in red.