Hey, I'm the new kid on the block. My name is Matt Ochoa and I'm a friend of clill's from Woodland.
I don't have the money to play with most of you guys, but what I do have is desire. I may not be the most skilled guy on the team, but I want it the most.
Anyway, this is my '85 Silverado which will hopefully be getting a major overhaul in the chassis department later this year. Plans call for a custom made front crossmember, control arms, QA1 coilovers, and sway bars, and best of all, a 6.2L, 405hp motor with 6L80E tranny from a 2007 Escalade. I might add a custom Vortec supercharger, but that's a long way off. My goal right now is to get the drivetrain under wraps, and completely smog-able here in California.
Here's the truck and the story behind it. This was written a while back one night when I couldn't sleep. I hope you like it, and I hope to learn alot from you guys.
130dB Understatement
The 73-87 Chevy truck, if you haven't noticed, is fast becoming a cornerstone of the custom truck hobby. This truck in particular has been in the owner's family since it rolled off the dealer lot back in 1985. Matt Ochoa, the current owner bought it from his uncle Dennis in top condition a couple years ago hoping simply to keep it as a daily driver while he worked on another project. Only two days after buying the truck, he fell asleep at the wheel of his Toyota project and collided with a guard rail. Now he says it was destiny that he bought this truck.
After talking with his dad for a couple of weeks about the truck, the two cracked open a Truckin' magazine and opened up directly to the feature of Cory Scott's orange and low '85 Silverado. It was love at first sight, and Matt knew from that day on that his truck was going to be something special.
Matt and his dad started by adjusting the stance of the truck. Wanting something very subtle, almost factory, they installed a 2/4 lowering kit from Belltech. The 15x10 polished mag wheels were reattached to the new hubs and tires were replaced with 255/60/15's up front and 275/60/15 BFG Radial T/A's in the rear.
Now that the all important stance was taken care of, some small refinishing work needed to be done to the exterior. Even though the truck was in amazing shape when he received it, Matt wanted nothing less than perfection. Every panel on the truck was resprayed by their good friends at Woodland Autobody. Jimmy Moore, the head painter did an amazing job matching the factory white paint and replaced the pinstripe and body moldings while he was at it.
Matt never forgot that it is still a truck and should occasionally act like one too, so a black spray on bedliner added, but not before tie-down hooks were welded in each corner of the bed for securing cargo.
With the exterior restored to beyond its original shine, Matt needed the motor modifications to be just as subtle as the exterior ones. He dropped in a K&N filter and a Hypertech chip in the truck's computer to free up a few ponies. Exhaling duties are aided by a custom cat-back exhaust system amde form 2.5" piping with a Flowmaster Super44 muffler. The system is almost invisible and dumps just behind the rocker panel of the bed in the stock location. The idle and throttle tone is like a tiger at rest. Just enough.
The only thing that Matt and his dad hadn't touched on the truck was the interior. A chance meeting with the CEO and owner of Arc Audio soon changed that. The top dog at Arc Audio liked what he saw and offered to use the truck in his booth at the Sacramento Autorama, but unlike the rest of the truck, this new stereo system was anything but subtle. It all starts with a Pioneer DEH-P800PRS headunit which feeds a super clean signal to an Arc Audio XEQ mounted in a custom, "seat hugger" center console. The EQ sends the modified signal to a pair of Arc Audio amplifiers located under the bench seat. The Arc Audio KS300.4 feeds power to three sets of ARC6000 components which are mounted in the kick panels and custom lower door panels. Behind the seat you'll find four ARC10D2's in a custom box which are being fed by an Arc Audio KS1000.1 amp. This system sounds amazing at any volume, including the 130+dB that the truck was measured to hit. All that audio draws some serious power, so Matt added a Power Master 140amp alternator and three Kinetik power cells to keep the amps well fed.
Looking back, Matt says that his appearance with Arc Audio at the Sacramento Autorama that year was one of the most rewarding experiences he's had because his uncle Dennis was able to see the truck in a show before he passed away from cancer. Matt wants to thank the crew at Auto Radio Stereo in Sacramento who handled the install and "put up with him," the team at Arc Audio, his girlfriend Mayra, his uncle Dennis, and most of all his dad. The two of them have built a completely custom truck that makes you sit back and say, "So, what did you even do to it...?"
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New guy, old truck, big stereo
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