BLACK BETTY
Slam ’A Lam
Slam ‘A Lam
PART OF THE APPEAL OF having a truck is being able to use it to haul stuff in the bed. The problem is, a lot of us also like our trucks to be extremely low, which can definitely complicate things. If your ride is static, you may have to deal with little to no axle or ground clearance. If your truck is bagged or juiced, you may have a giant hole or step in your bed that makes it difficult to load anything. Coulter Manard of
Muskogee, Oklahoma, was determined to have it all with his ’66 C10—a low, useful truck that would turn some heads!
Coulter hadn’t seen too many done-up long beds around, and he wanted something to haul around his vicla (Socal style lowrider Harley), so a shorty would’ve been a tight squeeze. A long bed just made sense, and it just so happens that they tend to look a whole lot cooler when they’re a ’60-66 model GM! A tattoo artist by trade, Coulter is used to being the cool guy at parties, but having a Harley-hauling bagged truck is taking things to a whole new level!
Coulter’s C10 shows its history well, with plenty of oxidation on the worn black paint, and a few dings here and there for good measure.
It took about three years of on-again, offagain work, with Coulter doing most of the work himself, both for the experience and to save money. Even then, he still has about $20K into the build, which is somehow both a bargain and a decent chunk of change depending on how you look at it!
Old trucks are automatically ahead of the game in the looks department, and these days it doesn’t matter if your paint is shiny, completely missing or somewhere in between. Coulter’s C10 shows its history well, with plenty of oxidation on the worn black paint, and a few dings here and there for good measure. Yup, aside from the shaved cowl emblems and customized grille (which uses drawer pull knobs in true kustom fashion), the exterior is about as OG as they come!
Suspension-wise, Coulter laid out the truck the “old school” way (as in, before dropped crossmembers were a thing), by sectioning and pancaking the front crossmember, which added some much-needed ground clearance, and raised the front suspension a bit. When the hard work was done, he bolted in some Slam Specialties SS7 airbags where the coil springs once lived, as well as CPP spindles and Wilwood disc brakes.
The rear was handled with a step notch and another pair of Slam Specialties bags attached to CPP trailing arms, which sit neatly below the raised bed floor. Once the suspension work was finished, Coulter bolted up a fresh set of 15x7 and 15x8 Supremes by U.S. Wheel, which sport 6.70-15 Coker bias-ply tires with a 3-inch whitewall.
Under the hood, Coulter went with a mid-’70s 454 backed by an ’80s Turbo 350. The engine got some killer finned cast valve covers, an Edelbrock intake manifold/750-cfm carb combo and a pair of Doug Thorley headers, while the tranny got some help via a rebuild by Chad Blankenship, with a B&M shift kit and TCI torque converter.
The interior of the ol’ ’66 is simple and clean, with a reupholstered ’95 Silverado bench by Dick’s Upholstery in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Engine vitals are monitored with Stewart Warner Classic gauges, while sounds come courtesy of a Retrosound head unit. Finally, Coulter made a custom under-dash extension out of polished stainless steel, giving a cool ’50s vibe to the truck. The paint on the interior is still remarkably clean for being more than a halfcentury old, so it was left alone.
This is actually Coulter’s first foray into the bagged truck world, and we’re very impressed at the results. Now we just have to wonder which is going to get more use—the Harley, or the C10!