Home-Built Hero: Dalton Carter’s C10 Is One Hot Hauler

Father and son projects always pull at the heartstrings. It’s great to see dad passing down knowledge that should never be lost. Sometimes, we even hear about grandfathers being the knowledge base, and since dad likely got his info from his dad, what could be better.

I recently got an email from a young man named Dalton Carter who lives in Hillsboro, Oregon. Dalton decided to send in some pics of the C10 that he and his grandfather recently finished.

“My grandfather and I just completed this frame-off restoration in his small shop,” Dalton confirms. “I originally bought this C10 in 2018 to be my winter rig here in the pacific northwest. The C10 has spent most of its life in So Cal and was a black plate truck when I bought it. It had just migrated to Oregon when it was put up for sale.”

Dalton told me it was a nice truck when he purchased it, and still had the original paint. It is a Custom trim level long box and even had a rebuilt 350 mated to the original granny gear four-speed, a brand-new power steering setup, lowered suspension, and a recovered seat.

C10

“I drove it home with the intention of it being my winter rig,” says Dalton. “I fixed a few mechanical things, got the heater working, and touched up a few of the bare metal areas, and started driving it to work. However, once the Oregon rain hit, the windshield seal failed, and the cab filled with water. That was the tipping point of the age-old “while I am here might as well fix…” and that turned into a full frame off restoration.”

Once the truck was rolled into the shop, Dalton and his grandfather began by pulling the bed off the frame. At this point, the decision was made to cut the frame and make a short bed pickup.

According to Dalton, “my grandfather has been cutting these trucks down since the mid-’70s. It was pretty quick laying out the frame and getting the saw out, and in one weekend, we had the frame completed. I ordered new short bed pieces and we fitted it together to get the gaps set.”

Once the frame and bed were complete, the rest of the bodywork was done to the cab and nose. “Being a SoCal truck, there was not much work needed, other than fixing some dents. There were many days spent on sanding and blocking” he affirmed.

Once the bodywork was done, the Carter men primed the C10 in the home shop and then masked off the top. Dalton relayed that his grandfather then painted the grille and top bright white. Once that was done, they re-masked the truck and hauled it to a proper spray booth that they rented and his grandfather then suited up and laid down the factory Medium Blue Poly on the rest of the truck.

“When it was time to focus on the drivetrain, I decided to give the old granny four-speed the boot and replaced it with an M21 four-speed that was taken out of a Chevelle,” says Dalton. “To make the transmission swap work, I took the C10’s bolt-in, high-hump floor piece out and set it on the shelf. I then found a low-hump cab being cut up and removed the center of the floor to give my C10 a factory-looking bolt in low-hump floor.”

The shifter and linkage are from a ‘68-‘72 Chevelle which offset the handle to the middle of the floor. This places the shifter boot and ring on the flat area of the floor. The handle is a Hurst bench seat handle for a Tri-Five Chevy. The end result looks like the factory installed a car transmission. The engine is still the same rebuilt 350, but the cast iron intake was swapped for a ’69 Z/28 intake manifold. The rearend is the stock 12-bolt.

“The interior is all-new,” he says. “I used houndstooth seat cover over the stock seat, new factory-style blue carpet, original metal door panels that have been painted, and new steering wheel.”

C10

The suspension consists of dropped spindles and disc brakes up front. The truck is lowered 5 and 6 inches. The wheels are 15×8 Corvette-style Rallys with redline tires.

According to Dalton, all of the reassembly was done in the same little shop by him and his grandfather. “We had a blast doing this truck and it was a perfect project to have during the shutdown mess of 2020,” he affirms. “The summer of 2021 has been a lot of fun driving the wheels off this C10. While it’s no longer a winter truck, it is a fun weekend cruiser to hop in and go anywhere. It is a perfect twin to my first car that I still own, a 1968 Chevy Camaro SS/RS that is also blue/white, with a small block and a four-speed that my grandfather and I also restored.

Photo gallery

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Do you want to read about more Home-Built Heroes? All you need to do is click here. I want to see those reader’s rides. If you would like to share yours, I want to hear about it. Since I’ve started this series, I have received more than a few candidates, but I still want to see more — I can never get enough. If you want to see more cars built by you the readers, send a few pictures of your car showing the engine, interior, and exterior, along with all of the pertinent information, and I’ll make you internet famous. You can send your submissions to chevyhardcore@powerautomedia.com.

About the author

Randy Bolig

Randy Bolig has been working on cars and has been involved in the hobby ever since he bought his first car when he was only 14 years old. His passion for performance got him noticed by many locals, and he began helping them modify their vehicles.
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