[Hendo67]

I've been watching the forum for a while now, but this is my first post. I hope to document my build of a 70 Chevy C10 short bed step side.

I think I should start with a little history on the truck and try to elaborate on the ever changing goal of this project.

One of my boys decided that he really wanted a truck like this to fix up when he was a 16 year old in high school. He did some searching and located this truck on E-bay and decided it was the one for him. I contacted the seller, and got some information on the truck and a few additional pictures. I asked about rust and the drive train and was told it had some rust in the usual places and the engine had recently had the heads redone and was otherwise a good runner with no knocks or smoke. The usual places for rust being the cab mounts and cab corners. From the pictures it looked like we were getting fairly accurate information.
We were successful (I use the term loosly) in winning the auction and the bells should have started going off when the seller wanted FULL payment before we picked up the truck. Like an idiot, I bought into his story of needing the money to snag up a good deal on some race car parts plus it was going to take me a week or two to arrange the trip from Minnesota to central Illinois to pick it up.
I made the trip down with a car trailer and was quite disappointed in the actual condition of the truck. You could see through the floor in several places and the area above the windshield was rusted through on the inside. The rockers were history as was the bottom of the kick panels on the inside. The rear ends of the frame rails were swiss cheese and the bed was held on with two bolts. To top it off the engine had 3 flat lobes on the cam (but no knock or smoke). This was my last vehicle purchase on eBay.
I got the truck home and the poor condition didn't do much to dampen my son's enthusiasm for this "project". We decided that the easy fix would be to find a new cab as the rest of the truck was actually not too bad. While we waited for the right cab to come along, we tore into the engine and did a full short block. It was good experience for him and a great refresher for me. With some sheet metal patches on the floor and some strategic duct taping, he was able to drive the truck through the winter. Unfortunately he realized that the truck was going to cost him too much in gas to keep driving and he wasn't going to get it done in time as he was planning to join the military when he was done with school. Long story short- I traded him a 2001 Chevy impala for the old truck. Not exactly what I had in mind for a project, but because it was his, I took it on.
I had originally intended to do a typical rebuild/ mild resto mod to the truck. Unfortunately for the check book, I let the project snowball.
My second plan of a stage 1 Porterbuilt suspension has morphed into a stage 2 front and rear with A- arms. The throw some aluminum heads on the small block has evolved into a gen IV 5.3 with a 4L60e. Naturally the rest of the truck will need to be pretty heavily modified to go along with the suspension and drive train, but that goes without saying-right?

I hope you all enjoy following along with this build, as I'm pretty sure I'm going to enjoy (gulp!) doing it.
Here is a rendering of the direction I want to go. Unfortunately the program (digital paint booth) doesn't have a step side in the database. I would like for the truck to have a NASCAR vibe to it and little to no flash. Very subdued and purpose built is the ultimate goal.
The color is a satin white (looks gray in the rendering).