Speedy's 1978 C10 Squarebody Drag Truck

So I wasn't going to post this on TW, or anywhere really (other forums and Facebook both suck ass), but a couple others asked for it and I figured I'd oblige.

This is the 1978 Chevy C10 Heavy-Half that I picked up with clean title for $1200 as seen not running....



Land Cruiser putting in some work hauling the old broad up on the trailer (hand winch wasn't cutting it with a seized brake).


Got her all brought up to the shop, well behind the shop at least, had some things to prep before it was allowed in haha.




Now that I could start to really pick it apart I could see that it is very straight, has super minor rust (none in the sills or floor pan yay!), and the engine in it was swapped. It isn't a 350 Diesel anymore, someone had taken that awful mill out of it and put in a GM crate 5.0 for an IROC Camaro.... which is still trash to me as well as the transmission which is a Turbo 350 (not trash necessarily but useless to me).

So getting right to work I did what any smart person might do and didn't look under the hood of the truck at all for about three weeks.... and instead purchased the engine I'd rather work on as well as a transmission I thought would be more suitable...

This is a great start to a cheap power build, a Gen V Chevy big block out of a 90s heavy duty pickup/SUV/van. It's a 454CID; low compression, iron block/head, TBI dinosaur... people just pass right over it so you can pick em up for peanuts (Chevy guys will get that joke).



Let's get some of that junk off of there...



Heads are overrated anyway, lets lose those too...


So who doesn't love buying the fun stuff first for a build that doesn't even run.... isn't even close to having an engine worth running haha... so wheels were thing





It was at this point in the teardown of the donor engine that I decided to pay attention to the truck again and get it prepped a bit to have drivetrain in it. So that meant first bringing it inside so we could laugh at how gross the engine bay is....









Then it got rolled out again for a good engine bay pressure washing and degreasing, oh and some engine mounts too.



This build is ongoing, I have a lot more done but I have to import some pics and write some more details, so I'll be posting more soon.

 

@Kwikvette @CS_AR @0xDEADBEEF

tag others i forget usernames too easily

 

Oooooh fuck yes

I forgot about those wheels too

You keeping the factory subframe or swapping it out and getting some nice discs up front?

 

Nice. My first truck was a '79 Scottsdale, 3 on the tree.
I've been looking for a solid 73-79 SWB stepside K10. Prefer a 4 speed, but am not going to be picky if I find a decent one at a good price.

Grew up watching shows like CHiPs and The Fall Guy and love the square bodies. I want one just like the blue '78 (I think) SWB in Red Dawn.

 

Damn nice!

 

@Das it mang @eon_blue @Wulf @treyus30 @Blue92 @Empty_Lord @se7enine @Sperrunner @JKO1998

 

We had one of those 454s in a suburban. It was torquey, but that was about all it had going for it

When do you think it might run?

 

Going to stagger the rear wheels? Looks like it has room for 315's.

 

Great photos and writing, awesome progress. Keep us posted.

 

So basically the Lunch Table 2

 

Ya but this one has a purpose. We're all here for the BBC.

 

Funny you should mention that... So I was thinking the same thing and after taking the heads off my donor 454 I pretty much yarded the rest of that engine out. Originally that 454 was going to get re-ringed and tossed back to the wolves. But I opened up pan up and was greeted with this...

If I was a prospector this would be a more welcome sight...


So pretty quickly that engine became a table for garbage around the shop since I thought it would be more fun to go whole hog...


Things escalated quickly at this point since I was pretty much going to send it with nitrous and a large turbo with the mostly stock but re-gapped bottom end. Bearings in poor shape suggested I do something smarter, can anyone say high comp pistons and .030 over? She's a 460 now and with my heads that works out with these pistons to 9.32:1 compression ratio, perfect! Even got some fresh rods and ARP rod bolts to really help her out.




Speaking of heads, well this engine has everyone's favorite Big Block heads. Peanut ports! Big block guys know there are two common intake port shapes oval and square, well these are small oval (otherwise known as peanut ports). So we had to do something about that, I'm on a budget and I know I can make these heads work for me with my plans of forced induction. So first things first, lets match port profiles...

Stock peanut head...


A teeny bit of blending...


And voila, now the air and fuel mixture won't hit a wall at the transition to the head from the intake manifold (which is what i took my measurement off of for these nice new blended sections).


So now we need to get some valves back in these... and some fresh new Comp cams double springs with new retainers and keepers.

My bad, I only have a before pic of my valves, I promise I meticulously cleaned the carbon off these valves and lapped them back into the seats before we got to the spring installation. But here is a pic of the dirty ass valves...


Alright here we go, new valve springs, retainers, keepers, ARP rocker studs, PRW roller tip lifters, and poly locks.

 

I have some 285s for it right now since I couldn't order a 10" wide wheel just yet (they're held up in port somewheres)

 

The plan is once it is running to buy the full Detroit speed front tubular arm kit with the larger diameter sway bar. This removes the adjustments made by shims and converts to turnbuckle style adjustments and uses heims and Delrin bushings instead of the clumsier rubber bushings. Then I can notch the rear and drop it, gonna be a 4/6" drop.

 

Oh yeah @04Pre_Runner

 

So somewhere in all this mess parts were acquired, other parts were sand blasted and painted, some parts were discarded entirely, and tons of new ARP hardware was purchased.

I started pretty ambitious with purchasing, I should state that I plan on going to full multi point fuel injection when it becomes forced induction time but to get this thing on the road I got an air gap dual plane intake and a QFT (Holley) 750cfm carb. A favorite quote of mine comes from David Freiburger of MotorTrend "Don't get it right, get it running" which as he explains it's hard to maintain motivation when you can't enjoy the fruits of your labor in a timely manner. You can always improve it later.

So here is the intake manifold I picked out as well as a shiny new carb and water neck.


I also went to a local swap meet and picked up some NOS Holley valve covers and some unbranded long tube headers which looked like they'd fit my truck.


Okay, so you've heard me keep speaking about forced induction... well cats outta the bag. The goal on this thing is to have boost and superchargers are lame, so she's getting twin Garret GT3582R turbos that I'll be putting on these NOS STR BBC manifolds.





My turbos have yet to arrive and unfortunately I've installed the new Comp cam and lifters and my hands were so oily I didn't even take a pic during. So nothing to show there :/

 

Uh oh I'm back on my shit, well I was back on my shit. This is all taking place in the past of course and at that specific time I was preparing to reassemble my engine. So some parts needed sprucing up and some others needed some light modification to accomplish the goals.

For starters I cleaned up the oil pan and welded in two -12AN bungs for turbo drain, but in the meantime I have them capped off.


I also sandblasted and then painted the front cover, engine mount brackets, and some accessory pieces I no longer think I'll be using...


Got some important work done as well, like putting said oil pan on, installing all the lifter and pushrods, adjusting the valvetrain, putting the intake manifold on, bolting the SFI rated flexplate on, and pre lubing the engine with some AMSOIL 30wt break in oil.




Got this really ugly starter mounted up as well for fitment verification with my headers.


And some other junk found its way onto the engine as well and will likely find its way off as well since it's not going to work with my accessory bracket choices.




And a jokester pic since we have way too many filters.

 

Looks great!

 

Thanks, I'm really looking forward to driving it. Been a while since I've done a full drivetrain build of anything.

Welcome to the shitshow!