“Juxta” 1966 GMC

The main idea behind the truck was to build a super nice “Patina” truck but with all top of the line undercarriage with a bit of crazy fabrication under the hood and throughout the truck. Until you look deeper you won’t realize just how nice this truck is until you get close and personal with it, see it perform, hear it, and most importantly experience it! This truck was built to be driven HARD! The Choppin’ Block Extreme air ride chassis wasn’t really designed specifically for auto-crossing but we did it anyways and found out that it does very well on the course, especially for a fully bagged truck that can lay frame. The truck is a blast to drive. It rides nicer than most new trucks. With 660 of those Don Hardy horses pushing it has no trouble pulling away from the starting line. A Bowler Performance 4L80E transmission was custom built for this rate of horsepower and transmits power through a Dan’s Driveline custom two-piece drive shaft and then onto the Gear FX third member with 3:70 gears in a ford 9″ housing. With 14″ Baer Brakes all around it stops just fine as well. It’s got 20×10 and 22×11 Ferrada Wheels wrapped in Continental tires. Heavy duty front and rear sway bars keep the truck planted on the track. We used Chad Cris Designs Air Valve block which integrates flawlessly with the Dakota Digital Gauges for air pressure readout.

Many of the standard restoration parts came from Classic Parts of America in Kansas City, MO such as the glass, trim, carpet, door handles etc. The interior was painted the stock fawn color with satin clear paint. Jay Schluter teamed up with Hammerfab to design and build the modified original bench seat. We chose to use Relicate distressed leather and we designed the 3D printed seat belt pass throughs in Solid Works and then wrapped them in the same leather. It has 5 point aircraft retracting harnesses that are attached to the custom roll cage. We built the cage to be nice and tight to the inside of the cab so that it is as inconspicuous as possible. It ties into the engine bay down bars under the dash. We wanted to be able to powder coat the cage and to do that it needed to be removable. If you look closely you can see several bolt joints in the cage which allow this.

We wanted the interior to have somewhat of a stock feel to it, with stock colors, satin sheen, and mostly painted steel surfaces. We kept the factory style arm rests but wrapped them in the distressed leather. We had Sparc Industries design and machine a one-off billet steering wheel that is a 15″ version of the original 17″ wheel. It is wrapped in leather top and bottom and fits the Ididit steering column perfectly.

Where’s the shifter? Good question. Every once in a while we will see something someone else does that is so cool we just have to implement the idea ourselves. Such is the case with the shifter. We transformed the original hand emergency brake handle into the shifter. Delmo’s is credited with this clever idea. It works great and keeps the floor and column clean and keeps everyone scratching their heads.

Resto mod air conditioning is used to keep the cab cool. We used their stealth black knobs and ordered a few extras to keep all the knobs the same across the dash. We also used their billet vents. AZ Pro Performance makes a really cool billet adapter that is designed to work with the GMC dashes. It adapts the Dakota Digital C-10 gauges to the GMC opening.

There is a ton of custom metal work front to back on this truck that can only be seen when you pop the hood and bed lid.  We made custom down bars that tie into the chassis utilizing our “Strip Tabs” welded to them.  These are a great way to evenly space your bolt holes while giving your engine bay a cool look.  The aluminum inner fenders are bead rolled and then powder coated a textured bronze that ties in well with the wheels and brakes.  We also made a custom 14ga firewall that is stamped on our pullmax machine.  

The bed is as trick as they get!  We tried to find a way around making the bed structure, raised bed floor, and tilting lid our of square tubing.  While that method is easy to make and works well we wanted to think outside the box (no pun intended) and do something that looked a little more at home.  So we took some measurements from the Choppin Block chassis and the original truck bed and brought them into Solid Works to begin drawing the inner structure.  The goal was to have it all laser cut and CNC press broke with tolerances in the thousandths of an inch per part.  Once the design was complete it showed up on a pallet and we began installing it in our truck bed.  

Speaking of the bed.  We shortened the long bed to factory short-bed specs and we also converted the small back window to a big one using Classic Parts of America’s new big back window inner panel.  The asked us to test fit it on Juxta and we of course said “YES”!  The part fits perfect.   We designed the back compartment to have a little bit of storage just above the custom designed Ricks gas tank.  To fill the tank just pop the truck and the gas cap is inside this storage compartment.  

When you open the tailgate you will notice a few subtle mods such as the lack of tailgate chains and a pleasant HAMMERFAB script across the back when opened. We developed some new billet latches that utilize the factory chain mounting holes for 59-66 GM fleet-side beds. When you eliminate the chains it also means you now need a way to prevent the tailgate from opening too far. We developed “flippers” or tailgate stops to fix this. They come with the tailgate latch kit but can also be purchased separately and either welded or bolted onto the bottom of the tailgate.

The truck has full titanium exhaust from front to back including the Ticon industries mufflers. We designed the custom billet exhaust tips to resemble a muzzle brake and had Evod machine them for us out of billet aluminum. High Point powder coating applied the bronze Cerakote.

All in all we are super pleased with the way the truck turned out. We’ve taken it to a few Good-guys shows and even auto-crossed it a couple times. It’s a blast to drive! It has gotten some press recently as well. It got picked as a contender for the GM Iron “Builder of the Year” award, it got a pro’s pick, it’s been in the Good-Guys Gazette, and it has most recently appeared in a multi-page feature article in Truck Hub Magazine.