The Stovebolt Site Forums The Parking Lot '60-'66 Trucks 1964 C10 RR cab

I am new to this forum but not new to Chevy/GMC trucks. My Father preferred Chevy pickups, I was with him when he bought a new 1940 Chevy 1/2-ton, blue with black fenders. Dad traded in a 1939 1/2-ton and $25.00 for the 1940 Chevy. The so called "Good ole days."

Fast forward to 1947, Dad bought a new second series 5-window 1/2-ton Chevy. I learned how to drive in that truck. The 1947-48 pickups had the gas filler neck down on the right side running board in lieu of being in the cab.

In 1956 an Uncle of mine had a very nice First series 1955 1/2-ton. A real nice truck that my uncle was behind on the payments. He was about to loose the truck. I really wanted that truck. We had a deal all ready when Uncle Sam decided that he needed my services in the US Army.

In 1963 a company I was working for gave me a 1963 C10 1/2-ton with an 8' bed. I drove that truck for 100k. Then quit the Company to start my own business.

In 1965 I bought a new C20 custom cab, V8, AT, AC camper special. I kept that truck for 18 years. The man I sold it to still has the truck. I have tried to buy it back many times. He won't sell it.

I had a '68 K20 4x for over 15 years. Sold it to a nephew. He wrecked it. I bought the salvage on the truck and parted it out for future use.

A few years ago I began to think that I missed my 1965. I started looking for one that I could build into a nice daily driver.

I finally found a nice "66 C10 custom cab with factory AC and a 6 ft bed. I was gathering parts when I encountered a very unusual coach built Rail Road extended cab C10. (A "railroad cab" is a coach-built custom for railroads and/or a utility company.) It took me awhile to talk the owner of the RR Truck into selling it to me. He wanted to rebuild it into a family truck for his wife.

After thinking long and hard about what course of action I should take to restore the RR Truck, I decided to up-grade the truck with a new chassis. I picked up a '98 C10 Z71 that had been stolen and vandalized. We put the '64 body on the the '98 chassis, using the 5.7 Vortec, 4L60 trans/343 rear end.

We added Vintage Air, power windows and bucket seats.

The truck now has 2,400. miles on it. All of the assembly bugs have been worked out. It is time to start on the body issues and get it re-painted.

Wm.

That is a very interesting cab... great find!

I would have to say about as done perfectly as I have seen.

Awesome. Congrats

During the four plus years that I have been fooling around with the RR trk I have encountered four other examples of an extended cab pickup. Most of the trucks I have found were on-line, however, there was one for sale at the LA Roadster Show in 2017. A couple that I have seen were a little funky looking because they were not on a long wheel base chassis which meant that the bed was very short with the rear tires almost touching the rear of the cab. The bed on my truck is a conventional GM 6' bed.The rear side windows were not the suburban style like my truck, they were more like square camper windows with aluminum frames.Wm

I've seen crew cabs, but I believe that is the 1st extended cab of that model I've ever seen. Great score and better yet, it's in great shape.

Congrat's and Welcome.

John

Its nice when a plan comes together....very unique ride. Couldn't help noticing the flush door handles.

Very cool! Not too often one comes across an original extended cab truck

I had the good fortune to buy a truck that I had known about for many years, it is a coach built extended cab, w/back seat, the front portion of the cab is a conventional '64 C10, the rear portion is a composite of a suburban rear clip with a big window rear cap.
We rebodied the truck with a '98 C10 Z71 5.7 V8 w/4L60 trans, 343 10 bolt differential. The chassis is a long wheel base club cab to accommodate the added cab length. A GM 6' fleet-side bed was used.
We used a Painless wiring loom to manage the engine/trans, re-programmed the ECM to work with the eliminated systems. A Painless chassis wire loom was used to up-grade the requirements of PW, Door locks, AC, power bucket seats, etc.
The truck is currently in the body shop having some rust issues in the roof drip rail repaired. The truck will be repainted yellow as it was when I bought the truck in 2014. Wm

I was told by the people at The Truck Shop in Santa Ana, CA that the style of my truck would generally be called a Rail Road Truck, several of which were built for various rail roads and/or large utility company's.
From my experience the term Coach Built is generally used to describe company's that build bodies/vehicles that are referred to as being professional vehicles,hearse's, limo's, etc., and in some cases crew cab trucks. I have several brochures that show '38-39 and 40 3 dr GMC crew cab trucks.
I find it to be very interesting that GM did not generally offer custom bodies in the crew cab style until the mid '60's. The first one I saw was a '65-66 GMC crew cab with a large slid-in camper on it.
Ford came out with the crew cab style of truck in the F100/350 line in '59 and continued with that line of trucks through their current production. Wm.

Don't get me wrong, it's a cool truck. It's not a "railroad" truck. It's not a crew cab. It's not built by one of the companies from back then. GM did not build them, they were sent to a "contractor" to be fitted. They did not build them without doors. The 60-66 railroad trucks were not factory built either. There are some railroad trucks from the 55-59 era also.
First GM factory crew was 1973.

Yours is a well done extended cab. Fabbed by someone who knew how. But not one of the rare upfitted crew cabs built in the day called "railroad" or "Military" crew cabs.

There are companies today that specialize in building those trucks to your specifications. They are in the Custom Fab/Modified category.

I am using the term "railroad" truck because we both know what that means in the context of this post. Most were 4 door, some were 3 door.

I don't think it means much as to who or where the truck was modified, the VIN denotes it was originally built in the Fremont, CA plant as a C20 V8 4 spd. When I bought the truck it was already an extended cab body with a narrow 8' flat bed with dual rear wheels. We opted for a late model chassis and power-train which was a C10, Z71 with enough wheel base to accommodate the cab and a 6' fleetside bed. We had to do some frame work to get original coil spring suspension under the truck in lieu of the GMC leaf suspension.
Moving on.. The truck has been in the body shop for the past week repairing some minor rust out problems in the roof rails, A & B pillar area. A previous owner had hacked the dash up to accommodate an after market radio/sound system and custom gauges and a junk yard AC system which negated the glove box. There was no saving the mess so I picked up another stock dash.
The new dash is now in the truck. We modified the instrument cluster area, making a new insert for new gauges, radio and Vintage Air controls. Now have a glove box. The dash looks great. Nobody smokes anymore so the ash tray went away.
I have a stock '65-66 factory AC dash but opted not to use it, I liked the Vintage Air controls and vents better. Wm.

It has been quite some time since I have added any comment to this thread, i encountered a lot of problems with the truck. Over a eight month period I had the truck in three shops that claimed to be knowledgeable with the 5.7/4L60 transmission combo I have in the truck. Each tried to solve the problem by simply R&Ring parts.
It finally turned out that someone had captured a blue wire under the distribitor cap, when the cap's screws were tightened the wire was badly damaged. Then someone fried the ECM.. I finally found a shop that knew what they were doing. I will refrain from belaboring the expense and time spent to correct poor workmanship.
For over six months I have been trying to find a quality paint body shop that will repaint the truck. I don't want a two stage show quality paint job, the truck is intended to be my everyday driver with single stage yellow paint.
Most of the shops I have talked to want to dis-assemble, sand blast the body, then paint and re-assemble the body...
I think I have finally found a shop that will paint the truck, without dis-assemble, removing only the windshield, back window and bed. The bed should be removed and dis-assembled to install the new wood on the floor. Wm.

When I was a much younger version of myself, I had an idea of doing a modification to my '65 similar to what you have there, just on the stock C20 frame. So basically lengthen the cab and shorten the bed. I am glad I didn't do it. Seeing yours, I don't like the look. It is a nice truck, and it's different, and it has it's cool-factor to it. The door handles and rear fuel door are a nice touch. To me, it just doesn't look right with the xtra-cab and 6 foot bed. I think it is because it sits so low that my eye disagrees with it. 4x4 height of a '64 four wheel drive truck, to me, would look a lot better.

It's good you found a shop that could diagnose the problems with the transmission and ECM.

I have a feeling I may run into a similar situation when I go to get mine painted. I want a simple single-stage paint as well, and each panel will have already been removed, cleaned, rust preventative added, and reinstalled. The "outer shell" will only need some prep and be shot with color, nothing fancy. I hope I can find a shop that will agree to do that type of paint job. Basically the truck will be completely painted everywhere else when it goes to a shop.

I am not the least bit unhappy with my decision to put the extend cab onto a '98 long wheelbase chassis. I could have changed the front cross member to a C10 '69-81 unit that is basically a direct crossover, requiring the removal of 16 bolts. The big problem was the fact that the truck had started out as a dually, therefore it had parallel leaf springs and a 4.56 ratio rear axle. The Z71 chassis had leaf springs, I wanted C10 original coil springs with the GM trailing arms/panhard bar. Grafting stock Chevy coil springs, trail arms, etc., to the chassis was not a big deal.
I could have saved myself a lot of grief if I had opted for a non computer controlled engine/trans.

I keep my eyes open for examples of the older extended cab pickups, the Suburbans and crew cabs are encountered from time to time, i have only seen five examples of the extended cab versions similar to mine. My truck is the only one I have seen with a conventional 6ft bed in lieu of a shortened version.
I have attached a pix of my new dash and a pix of an extended cap C10 that I recently saw in a wrecking yard. Wm

It being a dually, wouldn't that make it a C30? Then again I am unfamiliar with the different aftermarket cab options that were done on these old trucks, and what drive train may have been used before the conversion was done. The extended cabs definitely have a look that doesn't agree with my eye, not these older 2wd versions anyhow. I wanted to buy a '65 4x4 suburban back in 1993 but they wouldn't sell it. I was in that town in 2015 for a job interview and it is still sitting there rotting away. Hopefully someone will scoop up that blue one before it goes to the crusher.

You definitely have a resto-mod going on there. I had considered modifying an original instrument cluster with modern gauges, but I now have three different clusters, so I have spare gauges. What rpm's do you turn going down the road? With the overdrive it's probably in the 2,100 range, depending on tire diameter.

The GMC's during the '60's/70's were a more HD type of truck, therefore, they had parallel leaf springs on the rear in lieu of coils. GM built Chevy's and GMC's at the Fremont CA plant. The GMC's of the mid '60's had the 303 V6 engine in lieu of a V8.
I can only guess that the original fabrication company of my truck had a contract to supply a number of specially modified medium duty trucks, some of which were spec'd to be dually's. When it comes to licensing the cost is based on the gross unladen weight, ie; a C20 is cheaper than a C30.
To meet the contract obligations some trucks/chassis were ordered as GMC's, some as Chevys. In the truck world it is quite common to purchase what is called "Slider's", complete trucks minus the rear differentials. Many years ago I had a motor home that had a 454 V8, dual rear wheels with a dual wheel tag axle. The RV was rated at 26,k GVW. by the RV manufacture, yet the chassis was actually a C20, Suburban chassis that had been modified for the air bagged dual wheels and tag axle. I did not keep the RV for very long, I found it to be very unsafe.
It is pretty well an established fact that GM did not put the 454 V8's in anything larger than a C30, the large HD trucks have 427 tall block, that being GM's HD truck engine.
My truck is still titled and licensed as a C20 with the unladen weight of a C20. Wm.

A little over a year has passed since my last contribution to the Stovebolt Forum. I have been very busy with other projects, one of which to get the RR Trk repainted, have been tryin for almost three years find someone that would paint the truck. I finally found a shop in my area that would paint the truck, we stripped the body/interior down od any shinny stuff and accessories. Work on the truck has progressed along very well the body is pretty well ready for paint, the interior is all painted to match the body color. Had to purchase a new right bed panel, the one on the bed had been worked so many times rendering un-repairable. Should have bought the panel three years ago, they were $500. in 2019, now they blow a big hole in $800. I bought the panel from NPD, have a local NPD warehouse so I saved the freight. Very nice panel, perfect fit. Wm

I does sound like you've been busy all along. The last three years (especially last two) have been very strange for many of us -- have been in a bit of a holding pattern on some things. But ... you continue to push on as best you can.

Glad you've checked back in. It's ONLY been a year.

Looking forward to more pictures!

I check on the progress of body prep yesterday, the shop is doing a very nice job, they found many areas that appeared to be problematic, where-as it was more a problem of to many paint jobs over the trucks life. Originally everybody i talked to wanted to strip the truck down to a bare body and sand blast it, I am not a big fan of sand blasting, generally results in severe damage to the body metal, alto I did agree to blasting the disassembled bed.
The interior is all ready for paint, probably on Tuesday. Wm

Sandblasting won’t necessarily cause damage. You just need to find an experienced blaster who knows to back off on the pressure and use the appropriate media for sheet metal.

I know of two very good body repairmen that will not work on sandblasted body metal, their claim being the sand blasting makes the metal brittle due to the 'peaning' effect of the sand under pressure. Of course the age and gauge of the metal has a lot to do with the sandblasting out come.
Until a few years ago we had two shops in the So Cal area that had tanks big enough to chemically strip car bodies, I have had three bodies dipped, and the body chemically neutralized with excellent results. The EPA forced both of the shop out of business.
Stepping back a bit from the present progress on my truck.. When I bought my RR truck, the previous owner had rebuilt the truck for his purpose, to transport his race car. He decided to upgrade his vehicle so he took the power train out of the '64 in favor of a '52 Chevy COE. As far as the body on my truck was concerned it needed some body work and a new power train, The interior was complete, with the exception of modifications to the dash, that were not to my liking, the interior was very nice with power bucket seats and nice upholstery.
The only thing the interior needed was replacement of the dash, some sound deadening/insulation on the floor and body panels, and a good consul between the bucket seats. I had saved the consul from the 98 Z71 donor truck with the thought that it might work in my truck.
Before I stripped the interior out of the truck for painting I tried the '98 consul in the truck, the fit was near perfect as you can note by the attached pictures. Wm

I got to thinking about the luck I experienced with the donor consul fitting my truck so well. Without warning the lights came on in my brain yesterday. The firewall in my truck, extending from the factory seam on the upper portion to a portion of the floor pan to under the front seat, actually came out of the 98 donor truck. We did this for the peddle assembly, steering column, and trans hump. Wm.

I bought a 67/68 crew cab truck built for unloading cargo planes. Still had the conveyor mounts on the front and rear bumper and had never been licensed for highway use. Strange in the way that both front and rear doors had vent windows. Geared so deep that 60mph was tops AFTER a 33% overdrive was installed. Great race car trailer puller.

What do you consider top RPM? What engine?

The 5.7 Vortec engine and 4L60 trans are being controlled by the GM ECM that was re-programed to eliminate systems I did not need such as navigation, theft/security, etc., the gear ratio/tire size was programed to the actual tire size, 23575R15, and the 3.42 gear ratio.
The truck runs very well, plenty of spunk, get up an go, turning about 2,100 at 65/70 mph. Drives like a 98 truck should.Wm.

After over three years of looking, I have finally found someone that would re-paint my truck without going through the hazel of sand blasting the body. When we were in the process of reconstructing/rebuilding the truck we replaced and/or repaired all of the issues the body had. In some areas damaged/rusted panels were replaced with excellent used parts and/or new panels.
The body has now been repainted GM Corvette yellow, that being the color it has been for the past twenty plus years. We are in the process of putting all of the trim, glass and accessories back onto the body. Looking good!
I have two problems, one being the stainless trim around the windshield. I have two sets of trim, however the trim clips are nowhere to be found. i have contacted every source I know to no avail.. The clips I need are approximately 7/16 ID x 1", they slid over the stainless trim to hide/close the joints. ANY HELP THAT SOMEONE MIGHT HAVE TO SUPPLY ME WITH THE FOUR CLIPS WOULD REALLY BE APPRECIATED.
The second problem I have is the fitment of the hood. I was able to secure a perfect original hood, however, we cant get the hood to land right where it meets the cowl. Left side is good, right side is up 1/2" above the cowl. One man told me the springs were the problem. I know there are a couple of adjustment points on the hinges. Adjusting the left hinge and "stop" solved that. The right rear of the hood can be pushed down by hand, however, when the hood is opened it has to be pushed down to line up with the cowl.

it has been over six months since I last made a contribution to this thread, Progress has been made getting the truck back together, difficulty finding the parts and other projects getting in the way.
Still have not found any trim clips for the S/S windshield trim. Solved the problem with the fitment of the hood,... New springs . Wm

An old saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words"
A couple of recent pix are attached...
The plan was to have the truck done in time to be at the C10 Naturals in Salt Lake City June 21-24, Situations beyond my control shot that plan down. My brother will be there with his red 64 C10 short box... Wm

Thx for the update. Did you end up with single stage paint ? I think I read earlier that's what you wanted but were having trouble finding a shop that would, or could, do it .

Wm L,

Sorry this may have taken a bit of extra time to get a reply posted in here on the quoted question above. A search of GMPartsWiki resulted in identifying that the original parts you seek are listed as GM# 3818416, Cap, molding and used on ALL 1961-66 truck cabs with the "delux equip" windshield trim (Parts Group 11.208).

According to several different Master Parts Catalogs (extract pics added below), there were "4" used on the front windshield trim and "2" on the rear window trim (all the same items) for the '61-'66 Trucks.

That same part number also showed up as being used on 1960-64 Corvair (4 dr sedan - "2" on rear window chrome trim) and 1961-65 F.C. Corvairs (Pick-up and Panel Truck models - "4" on the front windshield chrome trim). I added this info just in case you may come across any of these vehicles in salvage yard as they could be donors for your needed clips.

A search of the web found just "1" of these GM NOS parts being offered (not mine) from this seller.

Hope this info may be of some help. At least you have a bit more info on where you may be able to find more clips from other vehicles they came on.

Don't forget you can post your own ad in the Truck Parts Wanted forum to see if any fellow Bolters may be able to help you out.

Good luck in your search.

Dan

Dan,
Thank you for the info on the S/S trim clips, broadens the search options when the Corvair's are added into the picture.

Bill

RB.
To respond to your question about the type of paint we used..
I did want to use a single stage paint on the truck, however, the man that painted the truck insisted on using a two stage. The paint job turned out very nice.. My intent was to build a nice daily driver, not a show truck.
I know the cowl emblem shown in the pix is a '65, I don't care for the '64-66 emblems down on the fender.

Paint job looks good. Thx for the answer. My '66 came with the '65 emblems as well. I liked them so replaced them with new reproductions. Added bonus was I didn't need to drill holes in my new fenders.

Turned out real nice !

I digg it 👍🇺🇸😎👍

The short bed box on my truck was a pretty hard item to come up with. The truck had a short flat bed on it when I bought the truck.
The bed appeared to be in good shape, however, when it was sent out to be sand (media) blasted we found that he right fender panel had been worked many times, it was badly distorted out of shape an had some serious rust out. The from bulkhead panel was also beyond repair.
The is a National Parts Depot (NPD) here in Ventura so I purchased a new side panel and front bulkhead from them. Bothe of these panels were excellent quality.
Due to supply issues (Covid) I could not purchase the original white pine type of wood for the floor. had to buy Oak. I know that most people like the oak, putting stain and clear coat over it. I pained the oak black like it was when it was new.
I think the black paint and new stainless steel runners look very good. i also retained the original type of tail gate fasteners, opting for stainless steel.

A couple of pix that did not attach to my earlier thread

Tell us what the little doohickie is between the wheel well and rear bed support in the pix above?

Hambone et all:
The little "doohickie" on the bed rail above the tailgate is a very trick truck accessory made by a company called Bull-Ring Retractable. that was very common about 25 years ago. It fits in the bed rail pocket, telescopes up for use to secure a tie-down in/on the bed. I Googled Bull-Ring, the retractable tie-downs are still available.
I bought a bunch of them for my work trucks, put a couple sets (4 ea) away for future projects. Wm