Rico F. - 1954 3600 Long bed S10/LS conversion

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This truck is a '54 long bed, it's been in Rico's family since his earliest memories as a kid. Goals for this truck are LS based 5.3/4L60E drivetrain, Wide Whites/Artillery wheels, Custom interior, Vintage Air, and of course keeping the beautiful Patina intact. The donor S10 is a 94 extended cab, si we can keep the long bed. Here's what I started with.

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I started the project by disassembling the S10 beforehand. Saving the pieces needed for the swap. Next I cleaned the frame rails with Muriatic acid to kill the factory wax coating, built my cab stands, and tacked them in place.

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Next I disassembled the 54, and trial fit the cab. Once I was confident in the cab placement, I went ahead and burned the mounts in.

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Then the cab/frame were power washed to prep for the engine install. A complete take out driveline was purchased for this project. 2002 drive by wire 5.3L, 4L60E, stock harness, PCM, TAC module, and electronic throttle pedal.

The driveline was split, and adaptor plates were made to adapt the 5.3 to the 71 Camaro motor mounts. The engine was also deep cleaned, and prepped for paint.

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Then the hooker cast headers were mocked up, and the driveline placement settled on. This engine needed to be mounted rather high, to clear the low mount factory Denso Compressor that came with the engine.

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Once the driveline was mocked up, templates were made for the motor mount pedistals, and then cut from 3/16 steel and tacked into place. The cab was then removed to allow easy access to the transmission tailshaft area. The factory crossmember was cut/narrowed and re-welded to accommodate the new driveline position. Once everything was in place and tacked, the driveline was removed to seam weld the motor mounts and transmission mount.

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Once the driveline was set, the water pump was removed and tapped to 1/8" pipe thread. This is our return point for the steam tubes.

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At this point I called my buddy Aaron in from Colorado to start working on the cab rust issues while I re-worked the wiring harness. I like my LS harnesses to have a nice clean under hood look. I also mount the PCM and TAC module in the cab, behind the dash. I start by completely diss-assembling the harness, and marking every pin/plug for position and what accessory it plugs into. Then I flip the intake, and window the "meat" between the runners. Then I run my complete harness under the intake to hid all the wiring. When finished it looks really clean!

Here are some pics of how I do the engine wiring.

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The first 2 pics are the finished and completely wired engine. 3rd is the leftovers after I'm finished cleaning up the harness.

The owner wanted his interior 2 tone, Metallic Silver and Metallic Charcoal... Materials were chosen first for the interior, then the paint matched to the materials. What you are looking at is "Brushed Aluminum" and "Dark Charcoal". The seats will be Charcoal with Brushed aluminum inserts. Door panels will be brushed aluminum over charcoal, and dash will be Silver over Charcoal.

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The first area to be addressed was the cab corners. Both inner and outers were pretty rough. Inners were fabricated out of the leftover steel from the outers, to keep costs down for my customer. there was lots of un-expected adjacent rust behind them as well.

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Here's the rest of the drivers side cab corner repair. The filler neck hole was also patched, as well as about a million firewall holes.

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While Aaron was working on cab corners, I finished up the stand alone harness.

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Next on the list was floor and cowl repair, starting with the drivers side.

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I also installed the Lokar 23" nostalgia shifter, and made the center section of the floor.

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The passenger side floor was full of pinholes. Toe board, floor board, kick panel, etc. Luckily the floor support wasn't rusty. All panels were made in house with the exception of the lower kick panel patch.

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While Aaron was working the passenger floor, I started modifications on the core support and inner fenders.

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Mocking up the front end, to check for core support clearance, and fender/hood placement.

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Also found a rusted bracket on one of the running boards. A repair panel was fabricated, and welded into place. The 3rd pic is the lower portions of my running board brackets. They are made from 1.5" 11ga. square tube. The last two are the drivers side lower outer cowl and the repair.

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I also found some rust on the passenger side of the firewall and fender lip of the outer cowl. here's my repairs.

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The door gaps needed some work as well. Cut, and re-welded the lower portion to get it to line up a little better. The Long bed was about 2.5" too long for the S10 extended cab wheelbase. The solution was to remove 1.25" from the splash gaurds, and flip the rear springs around. Worked great to get the rear wheels centered in the wheelwells!

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Next I mocked up the running boards, template the upper portions of the brackets, and tack welded them in place. Once that was finished I removed the body, and seam welded the running board brackets.

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Here's a bit on the Bear Claws. These are Large claws, they will be actuated by the stock inner and outer handles, and have power locks to secure the truck. I had to cut away a large section of the door jamb to figure out how to make the latch work with the push-button.

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This is the actuator lever I designed to turn the push button to a downward movement to open the door latch. I had about 5 tries in posterboard template before I came up with my finished product in 1/8" steel. The last pic is the in-progress door jamb side.

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Here's the last few pics of the Bear Claw initial fitment.

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The first picture is the finished door jamb, the following 3 are the rust found behind the door weatherstrip, and the repair.