1965 C10 Fleet Project - unfinished business

[jmarkha1]

After lots of lurking, reading other peoples build threads I finally bought a C10 - what could go wrong?
Buy a nice clean truck and just use it - right?
Hmm - that was the plan but as usual I just couldn't leave it alone and started tinkering on the poor little truck.

I looked for "the right truck" for some time - initially looking at 67 onwards trucks then briefly F100s (sorry) and finally settled on a 64-66.
OilCityNC in Hayling Island UK had a lovely looking solid truck that they had bought from the original owner in California and it looked like a goodun so after a look over it I decided to go for it.
couple of pics of the old girl still in US:



My prior project cars have always been air cooled Volkswagens - very different from US pickups but they all appeal to me.


I have always hankered after a pickup and have built a LandRover Defender - which was really nice but tiny.


When the truck arrived on the back of a flatbed truck the sheer size of the thing dawned on me! - well the length of the bed more than anything. I love the proportion of the long bed but ultimately realised pretty early on that I wanted to shorten it - but didn't know how.



After fiddling about with the truck a bit in preparation for its first MOT test I found there were a few bits that would need sorting:
it had 2 inch thick wheel spacers all round to allow fitment of 5 stud chrome wheels to the 6 stud drums - these had to go :-)
I got a set of wheel vintique steels - 8 and 6 inch wide with 255 and 235 tyres - this was a great improvement in my book.

The original 283ci motor had been swapped out for a 350 at some point and was a good runner with a dual plane intake, quadrajet and HEI dizzy bolted up to the original 2 speed glide with column change. I was pretty happy with the motor and trans but after a few longer trips I started reading articles about how overdrive boxes and LS motors worked well for these trucks - more of that to follow.

Other than the wheels and tyres the other addition to the truck was an original 60's camper shell which was made in cali originally - a great addition to protect the bed from the UK weather - which tends to be a bit WET.



more to follow - at this point the truck is mostly in boxes :-0