A Good Buddy of mine brought in his GMC C10 truck that he recently-ish purchased.
He came to me asking how much it costs to restore one of these and how much those SEMA trucks are that he sees me post pictures of. That kind of a loaded question....but basically breaks down to "How much do you wanna spend on it".....because restoring old vehicles can be VERY spendy.....but they can also be managed financially well if you have a plan.
That's where we started.
I told him let's get some of the mechanical things out of the way first, then we'll move on to the feel good interior/audio/lighting upgrades, then you can figure out the look of it and just keep building on it as we go......so, a month or so ago, he brought it in and we did a few things to it:
Lowered entire truck 3"
Relocated Interior Gas tank to Rear of Truck bed, under truck bed
New Long Tube Headers with Full Exhaust System
Fixed minor leaks and mechanical issues
Now that the beast was awoken, it was time to make the truck more fun to drive....mainly the ability to drive.
The owner is all of 6'-5"-ish.....and the super awesome JDM seats someone put in there made it impossible to drive and not fly off the road if you happened to laugh or so anything that would cause your stomach or kneed to move slightly...as they were resting on the steering wheel and gear shifter.....basically, he was making love to his truck everytime he got in the thing because the seat was much to large and close to the dash.
Solution?
Full Interior Swap-Out.
Easier said than done....and after looking in lower profile seats, I found that short of going to the junk yard and finding newer seats and having them re-upholstered to have no headrests so they'd fit below the window line of the rear of the truck.....this was going to be tricky.......then I found TMC interiors. They offered a fully fabricated interior kit for a very reasonable price.
This came with Dual Bucket seats, a center console, full dash cover and full door panel covers.....in your choice of two color combos...or you could get fully custom with it...but I knew the two-tone brown/tan combo would work flawlessly with the Teal paint of the truck.
The new bucket seats saved us about 6-9"s of room and now the owner can comfortably drive this beast.
Next up...the lights.....the owners other truck has more lights than what most could dream of, so this truck had to be the same.....but tastefully done....so I went the non-traditional route and swapped out the separate high and low beam headlights for Quad high/low beam LED projector pods......Hiese Lighting offers affordable Chrome 5.5" Dual Beam headlights that fit right in place....ish. I just needed to fabricate some wiring harnesses to tie them into the factory wiring and BOOM....he's got 8000 lumen to work with.....about 7000 more than most people :-D
How bout that audio setup?
Well, since, as you can tell by the pictures, the interior is FAR from done due to the floor pans being rusted out, we went simple for now on the audio side.
Most important part, get a Retro headunit in there to look the part and then get some noise going.
Started with the Retrosounds Hermosa Bluetooth headunit with C10 faceplate and knobs.
Then did the C10 Kick panels with the Retrosounds 6.5" Component speakers....which got some sound deadening behind the plastic panels.
This setup sound good...but needs some lower end help once the floors are re-welded/patched, sound deadened and carpeted....THEN some BOOM can go in and this truck will be audibly perfect!
For now....we're done.....but watch out for more on this one!
He came to me asking how much it costs to restore one of these and how much those SEMA trucks are that he sees me post pictures of. That kind of a loaded question....but basically breaks down to "How much do you wanna spend on it".....because restoring old vehicles can be VERY spendy.....but they can also be managed financially well if you have a plan.
That's where we started.
I told him let's get some of the mechanical things out of the way first, then we'll move on to the feel good interior/audio/lighting upgrades, then you can figure out the look of it and just keep building on it as we go......so, a month or so ago, he brought it in and we did a few things to it:
Lowered entire truck 3"
Relocated Interior Gas tank to Rear of Truck bed, under truck bed
New Long Tube Headers with Full Exhaust System
Fixed minor leaks and mechanical issues
Now that the beast was awoken, it was time to make the truck more fun to drive....mainly the ability to drive.
The owner is all of 6'-5"-ish.....and the super awesome JDM seats someone put in there made it impossible to drive and not fly off the road if you happened to laugh or so anything that would cause your stomach or kneed to move slightly...as they were resting on the steering wheel and gear shifter.....basically, he was making love to his truck everytime he got in the thing because the seat was much to large and close to the dash.
Solution?
Full Interior Swap-Out.
Easier said than done....and after looking in lower profile seats, I found that short of going to the junk yard and finding newer seats and having them re-upholstered to have no headrests so they'd fit below the window line of the rear of the truck.....this was going to be tricky.......then I found TMC interiors. They offered a fully fabricated interior kit for a very reasonable price.
This came with Dual Bucket seats, a center console, full dash cover and full door panel covers.....in your choice of two color combos...or you could get fully custom with it...but I knew the two-tone brown/tan combo would work flawlessly with the Teal paint of the truck.
The new bucket seats saved us about 6-9"s of room and now the owner can comfortably drive this beast.
Next up...the lights.....the owners other truck has more lights than what most could dream of, so this truck had to be the same.....but tastefully done....so I went the non-traditional route and swapped out the separate high and low beam headlights for Quad high/low beam LED projector pods......Hiese Lighting offers affordable Chrome 5.5" Dual Beam headlights that fit right in place....ish. I just needed to fabricate some wiring harnesses to tie them into the factory wiring and BOOM....he's got 8000 lumen to work with.....about 7000 more than most people :-D
How bout that audio setup?
Well, since, as you can tell by the pictures, the interior is FAR from done due to the floor pans being rusted out, we went simple for now on the audio side.
Most important part, get a Retro headunit in there to look the part and then get some noise going.
Started with the Retrosounds Hermosa Bluetooth headunit with C10 faceplate and knobs.
Then did the C10 Kick panels with the Retrosounds 6.5" Component speakers....which got some sound deadening behind the plastic panels.
This setup sound good...but needs some lower end help once the floors are re-welded/patched, sound deadened and carpeted....THEN some BOOM can go in and this truck will be audibly perfect!
For now....we're done.....but watch out for more on this one!
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