Son's First C10 - Red Rover

[aggie91]

Hey guys, I joined a few weeks ago and just now putting up a build thread of my father/son project I am doing with my oldest boy, Korbin. He turned 16 last month and we are trying to finish up his first vehicle. He actually bought this truck from an old friend of mine a few years ago. We started on it right away, but as many projects go, life got in the way of completing it by his 16th birthday. We are on a fast track now to get it completed enought to take to a car show at the end of this month. We should have the cab back from the painter Friday of this week. While he is painting the bed and fenders, we will be putting it all together.

Anyway, here is what he bought for $250 of his own money the summer he turned 13.:


and he got this one as part of the package:


We started on the blue one and gave it a wash before brining it home for a full inspection. We decided to take it completly apart and redo everything. From a distance it did not look to bad.


Did not run so we pulled the motor out to find out what was wrong. We found a broken flex plate, damaged harmonic balancer and a locked up bottom end. It was a 305 so off to the scrapper it went.


Fast forward about a year and we had this:

by this time we had modified the frame for the rear notch and raised the front crossmember up in the frame 1.5" to get the lower arms up off the ground. We added dropped spindles and 13" corvette brakes to the front and did a flip kit in the rear. The cab had a ton of rust in it and we decided to use 2008 Silverado seats, so I built a custom floor to get the seats how we wanted and to clear the 4L60e trans. The engine is a 5.3 out of a 2000 GMC 1500 and we set it back as far as we could to help with handling. Korbin wants it to handle and stop well so that we can Autocross it from time to time. Up to this point we have done all the work ourselves either in the yard/garage at home, or is a shop I had rented for another venture that did not work out. While at the shop we did most of the metal work on the cab and got the Rack & Pinion steering set up in the frame and put the frame back together.