Re: C10CJ: A Pro-touring '71 Stepside on a No Limit Pro-C10 Chassis
 

If you are following me over on social media, than this may be old news, but wanted to let you guys know I tested the 'touring' part of pro-touring. I put around 800 miles on C10CJ this past weekend. Truck drove very well. Cruises down the highway at 75 mph with ease and got around 17 mpg overall across the 800 miles. The only issues I had were interior related and the interior is still something I need to tackle. The issues were basically too much wind noise due to leaking windows. I really need to replace the vent window seals and all the other window seals. I did the door seals earlier and that just showed me where the next problem was (which I expected). So here's a little photo journal of the trip.

The trip was to my Dad's place in the black hills. The route was 380 miles each way, straight up I-25 from Denver then cutting across Wyoming on US 18/20 to US 85, then on US 18 again into SD over to SD Hwy 79 up to Hermosa then towards Keystone no SD Hwy 40. Fairly easy drive with elevation reaching as high as 6100 ft then down to ~3500 ft at Dad's place.

Shot on the drive up, somewhere on I-25
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Parked in my Dad's buddy's shop. That dark grey C10 got some updates I installed over the weekend.
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The upgrades were installing a new throttle/TV cable setup. He's been having trouble getting his truck to shift in to OD and one thing I found was the TV cable wasn't quite right.
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So I fab'd a bracket to bolt to the non-standard throttle on that giant Holley Ultra XP carb (950 cfm feeding a 555 cu in BBC built by Pat Musi)
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The final setup.
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Re: C10CJ: A Pro-touring '71 Stepside on a No Limit Pro-C10 Chassis
 

Spent a chunk of Saturday at the drag strip in Sturgis watching a friend run his alcohol burning beast of a '34 drag car. He hasn't had this thing running long so he was doing some test and tune. As I helped him do a couple jet changes he made sure to jab me some on carb vs EFI (all in fun of course). But after spending a bunch of time on his knees working in a cramped engine bay, he did admit EFI wasn't sounding so bad as he could just be making a tweak on a laptop and done in 5 min vs the 30 mins to do a 4 corner jet swap on his 1050 dominator (setup for alcohol). Good times.

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Interior shot of the '34
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Heading back home. Had some very heavy winds, sometimes a cross wind, then a head wind in Wy. If you zoom in to the vehicle in front of me, that's a motor home with a little lean to the right not due to bad shocks, but due to the wind blowing that hard. He wasn't going very fast due to that.
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Wound up doing some night driving.
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Truck got really dirty on this trip.
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Re: C10CJ: A Pro-touring '71 Stepside on a No Limit Pro-C10 Chassis
 

That dirty water is the rinse bucket from a 2 bucket was setup. If you aren't familiar with a 2 bucket wash, the intent is to always keep one bucket with clean soapy water. The other is used to rinse/scrub the crud out of the wash mitt. Each bucket has a grit guard in the bottom. This helps to prevent dragging dirt all over the car. Works pretty well.

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Just after the wash, looks good. Still have a ton of work to get the chassis back cleaned up.
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And dang! 1878 miles on this build! Time for some maintenance.
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So up on jack stands C10CJ went.
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Re: C10CJ: A Pro-touring '71 Stepside on a No Limit Pro-C10 Chassis
 

Great to see you driving this one. That '34 looks bad a$$.

What kind of floor is that in your shop?

Re: C10CJ: A Pro-touring '71 Stepside on a No Limit Pro-C10 Chassis
 

Hey Karl, thanks! I built this thing to drive and have the rock chips to prove it!:lol:

The '34 is definitely a bad a$$ beast. He got into the high 5's in the 1/8 mile and engine was still rich so there was more power to be had. This is all naturally aspirated. No nitrous, no turbos, no blower. Good stuff!

The coating on the floor is from Epoxy Coat (http://www.epoxy-coat.com). They allow you to choose the colors you want. I have the "premium" package which includes a clear epoxy to put over the colored epoxy and acts as a clear coat. It is more expensive, but much thicker. I have abused my floor pretty hard and do have a few spots where the coating has chipped, but that may be due to a poor bond to the concrete usually a product of bad prep. I used the chemical method vs a diamond sander since my floor was new, but I'd probably do the sanding thing next time to ensure there is a good profile on the surface for good adhesion.

Re: C10CJ: A Pro-touring '71 Stepside on a No Limit Pro-C10 Chassis
 

Looks like you had a great trip! Appreciate you sharing it with us.

The night picture shows a decent headlamp spread...was the lighting good?

Re: C10CJ: A Pro-touring '71 Stepside on a No Limit Pro-C10 Chassis
 

Hey Doug, Trip was awesome. Glad to get some good highway driving and even a little inclement weather driving. I was actually impressed with the lighting during the night driving. What I did with this build is simply got the headlights off the headlight switch and on relays. Those lights are just some ~10 yr old Sylvania's (halogens) from one of the local autoparts store. So just changing to the relays they are way brighter than they were before. I do have some tweaking to do to the aiming. They are a little short for rolling down the highway at 75-80 if there weren't any other cars (just slightly overdriving the lights). I haven't set them yet after the stance changes. I do worry they don't have the beam focus though (once I do adjust them) since when I bought them 75 mph speed limits weren't the norm like they are today, and 80 mph in WY.

For those curious on the headlight relays, what I did was use the existing feed from the headlight switch to drive two relays, one low beam and one high beam. Since the headlight switch puts out 12v, I just wired them straight to a resistor style relay (to make sure the current pulled through the headlight switch was minimal now). The relays are in those littelfuse blocks I added on the radiator support. So the headlights have a much more direct path to the battery and can pull the current they need. The headlight switch in our trucks winds up acting like a resistor so it restricts current to a degree, resulting in the sub-par light performance. One reason why those super bright headlight upgrades all include relays.

Re: C10CJ: A Pro-touring '71 Stepside on a No Limit Pro-C10 Chassis
 

Hey guys, tossed together another video showing how I setup my cooling fans using the Holley software since I'm running a Holley ECU. I've got the ECU controlling the fans and it is setup to turn the fans off above 50 mph. Posted over on youtube ...

Re: C10CJ: A Pro-touring '71 Stepside on a No Limit Pro-C10 Chassis
 

I was curious which rear brake setup do you have from no limit? I have the floater rear end and the wilwood caliper no limit gave me is a single piston unit with an integrated parking brake. I have 6 piston calipers up front and I'm worried about brake bias issues given the large difference is piston sizes.

Re: C10CJ: A Pro-touring '71 Stepside on a No Limit Pro-C10 Chassis
 

Hey man, I've got the 12.88" rotors and 4 piston calipers. Most likely your rear brake setup is just fine. Don't get too hung up on the 4 piston rears vs a single piston rear. Couple things ... the front still does most of the braking and the difference in piston area from the 4 piston to the singe piston probably isn't as big as it sounds. The 4 pistons in the back are pretty small. I went that route as for the non-floater rear end, it was either an 11" rotor/single piston or a 12.88" (or 14") rotor with the 4 piston caliper. The 11" setup was probably enough, but I wanted the rotor to fill the wheel a little more with my 18s so I went with the 12.88" for aesthetics.

And since I haven't been around in a while, here's a recent shot from my instagram account @c10cj

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Re: C10CJ: A Pro-touring '71 Stepside on a No Limit Pro-C10 Chassis
 

Hey Chris - So a lot of time has gone by and I was wondering if you have any suggestions, regrets, or whatever with your truck.

Thanks

Re: C10CJ: A Pro-touring '71 Stepside on a No Limit Pro-C10 Chassis
 

Hey man, I got no excuses for the lack of reply ... So far so good on the build. Everything runs quite well. My main things are not replacing the 90's glass and I still have to sort out the bed floor. Otherwise, I haven't come across anything the annoys me or drives me nuts.

I do have some updates I need to add to the build thread. After a great season in 2019 I qualified for the Goodguys Duel in the Desert final autocross in Scottsdale, AZ and made a few changes for that event since I would be racing the pros. I did change tires from the Nitto 555 G2s to BFG Rival S 1.5 which made a huge difference on the autocross track but I actually like the Nitto better on the street.

Main things I changed other than tires was moved the battery and trans cooler to the bed and changed the front springs to a stiffer spring rate. The stiffer spring rate (from 450 lb/in to 550 lb/in) was great for autocross but definitely makes the bumps in road driving a bit worse. So the usual tradeoff for a stiffer spring. Now after 1.5 years of no racing due to you know, time to get back at it next weekend with GG Colorado.

Re: C10CJ: A Pro-touring '71 Stepside on a No Limit Pro-C10 Chassis
 

That's great. Any pics would be great also.

Re: C10CJ: A Pro-touring '71 Stepside on a No Limit Pro-C10 Chassis
 

Nice Build ! I just found it. My next one will be a no limit, how do you like everything? Do you drive it much?

Re: C10CJ: A Pro-touring '71 Stepside on a No Limit Pro-C10 Chassis
 

Thanks! So far so good. I love firing that thing up and listening to the Don Hardy Racing stroked LS rumble at idle ... As far as driving it, I was driving it a ton up through 2019. Then the truck sat (other than firing it up and moving it out/back into the garage and a few trips around town) most of 2020 b/c, well, all the shows I had planned were cancelled and everything in CO was closed for much of the year. So we went camping instead. Things slowly started back up this year but I was too busy with work in the spring, then we were super busy in the summer, so finally started getting back to shows and stuff in August with Hot August Nights in Reno, NV and now Goodguys in Loveland, CO next weekend. Heading to cars and coffee in Lafayette, CO (a fairly large one, usually a few hundred cars) tomorrow. The it's into the shop to check the alignment and get ready to race at GG.

Hopefully I get some time this weekend to get the handful of build updates posted.