Project "You thought yours was bad!" '78 C10 Stepside

[Nick_R_23]

Starting off with a little background, one of my neighbors gave me this truck when I was about 12 years old. I messed around with it to the best of my abilities back then, but ultimately I ended up working on other projects and letting this one sit for the last 13 years! I'm 25 now and hopefully will be getting this poor truck in better shape and back on the road where it belongs.

It's a 1978 Chevy Cheyenne C10 2WD Stepside with a 350/350 originally. As you can see, it came optioned with plenty of rust and more than a few part deletes. My dad tried to convince me back then to convert it to 4WD, which I didn't really want, and the furthest I got was swapping the rear axle and removing the front crossmember and staging the front axle and springs pulled out of a scrapped Suburban. Luckily enough I saved everything (smart kid, right?! LOL), all the nuts and bolts were even still hanging out in the old Corvette valve cover I stashed them in over a decade ago!

The ultimate goal for this panty dropper is to just make it a fun, driveable, and enjoyable truck again. Fun factor and low budget rule here (Can we say Alaskan Muscle Truck!) as I have a Pro Touring '67 Camaro project as my main car project. I'm going to try and get the body as nice as possible without spending too much, but I may try and source a cleaner cab, as mine has pretty heavy rust. It's really unfortunate that it has as much rust as it does, as the body is incredibly straight. Engine and transmission are still up in the air, and will likely be whatever I can find for a reasonable cost that puts out decent power. I'm not a huge big block fan, but a BBC/TH400 with 4:10s may end up fitting my bill. It will definitely be lowered. From my research I think I want drop spindles, cut the springs a little, and an axle flip in the rear, which should put me at 4/6 I believe. It will also probably sit on truck rally's. Other than that, we'll see what happens!

Here is where she has waited patiently all this time in my grandparent's fenced in yard. Pretty sad I cleared all the brush around it too, it was barely visible with everything that had grown around it!









I custom built this column for this truck. I think I used the original column, a Corvette column, and a mid-late 80's column too. It fits the 70's body truck, has tilt steering, and is setup for a 700R4. Also, Factory Tach!



This is how far in it sat. We had to move quite a few things to even be able to get to it.



Since the front suspension was removed, I strapped a welding trailer under the front portion of the frame to roll it around. You can spot the tongue sticking out from the front. Unfortunately the truck slid off the block when we were moving it around for a better angle and damaged the front bumper. It wasn't straight to begin with, but I didn't want it any worse!



And here it is loaded up and brought over to my house. Let the real fun begin!