Project: Blood, Sweat, and Years

[PanteraRazorback]

Hey everyone, just a quick intro here.. My name is Devon and I'm 20 years old.

About 5 years ago I decided my first vehicle had to be a 67-72 chevy truck. After spending almost an entire year, looking at over a dozen longbox trucks trying to find a good rust-free candidate, I found the one.
A '71 C-10 SWB that was located only 3 hours away. After finding out first hand how quick a clean 67-72 will sell for, I had to phone in "sick" to work that day..

The fun then began.



Fast forward 4 years, I've learned a lot working on this truck and have over 800 photos of it.
A huge thank you to every single person on this board for sharing some very useful information about these trucks. I'm looking forward to sharing my build thread with you guys.




Cheers.

[PanteraRazorback]

When I first purchased the truck, I had no clue how to repair anything on the truck. With the help of my dad and a good friend we managed to replace the rear center section with an Eaton posi and 3.73 gears.
Don't mind the 2x4's, this was the first vehicle we had ever worked on...

[PanteraRazorback]

The christmas themed interior, although nice, had to go..
I did my whole interior with red scotch brite, cans of brake clean, and spray bomb and it looked not too bad!
I also had to whire wheel almost the entire floor to get rid of some surface rust

[PanteraRazorback]

Found a set of 2010 40/20/40 seats and my wheels showed up!!

[PanteraRazorback]

Some ridetech boxes showed up and I found a good deal on a brand new set of 3" drop spindles for the front. I ended up taking an afternoon welding course and made a little bracket for the air management stuff.

[Ghostryder79]

I dig it!

[PanteraRazorback]

Originally Posted by Ghostryder79

I dig it!

Thanks dude!!

Ok here's where it gets pretty cool. Me and a friend decided we would try doing our first paint job. We decided throughout the paint job that we would weld some stuff up on the truck and see how it turns out!

First off though I grabbed a cowl hood




Shaved mirrors


Started shaving the firewall

[PanteraRazorback]

Paint job turned LS swap!! This was a lot to take on at one time.
The motor is a 2008 LY6, it comes factory with the L92/LS3 heads. It had 30,000km on it when I bought it and I was able to get the wiring harness and all the other goodies with it.

Threw a bit of paint on it!

This looks like a disaster but I knew what I was getting myself into after spending countless amounts of hours in the ls swap section of this board as well as www.lt1swap.com

[PanteraRazorback]

Ok it was time to rip the motor out in order to finish up the fire wall and really get started on the ls swap. Here's some pics

I didn't know this was gonna happen


I was on a bit of a budget at the time so I stuck with the original TH400, just cleaned it up a little bit.

[PanteraRazorback]

A few days was spent on the firewall getting it all welded up, and cleaned up for paint.



Also these showed up so I made a trip to the border and picked them up!

A bit of mud and a bit of primer

[PanteraRazorback]

Ok I guess it's a little funny now that I look back and see that we painted the hood right on the floor where it sat.. Live and learn.





What a relief this was.

This is where I was saying uh-oh.. It got extremely difficult to do anything in this garage without tripping over something

[PanteraRazorback]

We ended up working about 30 hours straight prepping the box, doors, and cowl. The pictures of it with some color on it were taken after the first coat of clear. Also after the first coat of clear, we were so burnt out we waited too long to put the second coat on and must have mixed it wrong, but anyways it all had to be redone.

[PanteraRazorback]

Some PB goodies, the cab got a color treatment, and I ordered in some trailer fenders to stick up front!!

[PanteraRazorback]

Threw some color on the rad support as well as the doors and box for a second time



Also I thought this was funny..

[PanteraRazorback]

Splashed some paint on the front fenders!







The maiden voyage, no windshield, no hood, no exhaust, but i had to.

[PanteraRazorback]

Here's some pics of before the build really gets good. I have a video of a smokey burnout I did after the motor swap if anyone knows an easy way of posting it

[litew8]

The easiest way to post a video - open a Youtube account (free). Upload the video, then copy/paste the URL link here.

[Classic-Steele]

Wow! truck looks awesome! it's a coincidence to find your build on here. I seen your truck at the drag strip in the Hat a couple years ago and snapped a pic, which made its way to my desktop. Good job man nice to see some local guys doing ls swaps into these trucks too

[PanteraRazorback]

Originally Posted by Classic-Steele

Wow! truck looks awesome! it's a coincidence to find your build on here. I seen your truck at the drag strip in the Hat a couple years ago and snapped a pic, which made its way to my desktop. Good job man nice to see some local guys doing ls swaps into these trucks too

Thank you very much! The truck has come a LONG way since it was on the road last, it's still a ways from being completed but it is turning out exactly how I wanted it to. Thanks for the interest, I will try to update my build thread to where I am soon.

[PanteraRazorback]

I ended up building a custom dash for the truck.

[PanteraRazorback]

Shot some paint on the interior after installing the new dash, I wanted it red, but not anymore. I'm going to be looking at a color similar to a brushed aluminum. The truck is going to be completely rewired once the body is finished, I didn't want to shorten any wires until I had the truck running and driving, and I ended up with a spaghetti factory under the dash.

[PanteraRazorback]

Just wanted to share a couple photos of the '72 Mercedes Benz that I picked up on the cheap. The car was prepped for paint in my garage in 3 weeks, including a couple of patch panels. Always wanted to try painting lace, overall turned out pretty nice.

[PanteraRazorback]

A couple pics of shaving the gate and tail-lights.

[PanteraRazorback]

Couple pics of some work done to the inside of the box. A lot of work, but it turned out very nice.

[PanteraRazorback]