Bryan's Sweet '66 - 1966 Chevy Pickup

Better Than A First Car

By John Gilbert

When he was 14, Bryan Castle saw a photograph of the '63 Chevy pickup his dad owned in high school. He soon discovered his ever-increasing desire to own a '60-66 Chevy C10 pickup as his first vehicle. For Bryan's dad, it was good news--he didn't raise his son up right just to watch him go astray and end up wanting a car.

The Castles spent almost a year looking for the right truck at the right price. Then one day after Bryan almost tossed out a throwaway paper, he found the '66 Chevy gracing these pages for $2,300. For his junior and senior year Bryan drove the '66 for basic transportation. Bryan told us, "Our plans were to make a nice daily driver for my first vehicle. Things changed quickly, though. Before we knew it, small projects were turning into big projects, and the money was adding up. Soon after I finished high school it was just two framerails in the garage on jackstands. The daily driver project had now officially turned into a complete frame-up restoration."

For the early stages of the build, Bryan and his dad lived in Vacaville, California. Bryan said the only good thing about the house they were living in was its big garage. They were able to spread everything out and work on different areas of the '66 at the same time. The truck originally came with a 250-inch six-cylinder engine and a three-speed stick transmission. During high school the six-banger was one of the first things to be tossed when Bryan and his dad started upgrading the '66. The easiest, but unfortunately the most common, swap would have been to drop in a 350-inch small-block motor. Instead, Bryan and his dad located a power pack 283 pulled from a '61 Impala. Standard-equipped with a Carter WCFB four-barrel carb and 9.5:1 pyramid heads, the 283-inch powerplant set the stage for a nostalgic escape from the alternative.

When the time came to rebuild the engine, the nostalgia theme was retained. The 283-inch mouse motor was punched out to 301 inches, and the WCFB with its cast-iron intake manifold was dumped in favor of Edelbrock products. On top of an all-aluminum Edelbrock Performer intake manifold, an Edelbrock Performer carburetor based on the tried-and-true Carter AFB was fitted. Air filtration is handled by a high-flow K&N filter. The slightly warm 283 hydraulic-lifter cam was replaced with a hotter grind from Crane Cams. Looking under the hood of any Chevrolet and spotting Ram horns is truly a nostalgic moment for any Chevy lover. Bearing this in mind, the Castles retained the signature cast-iron exhaust manifolds and chose a Flowmaster muffler to perk up the '66's exhaust note. To dissipate engine heat and help in the undercarriage looks department, a Summit finned aluminum oil pan was installed. An important area not to be overlooked was the 301's spark. To replace the original "window" Delco-Remy distributor and eliminate a points-type ignition system, a breakerless PerTronix Flame-Thrower was dropped in.

Bryan and his dad wanted to improve the '66's fuel economy. It didn't seem to matter whether it was the original inline-six or the 283-inch V-8, because the '66 got right around 10 mpg. In order to keep the interior as unmolested as possible, they sought out an OEM overdrive setup. The pair located a rebuilt overdrive tranny snagged from a '57 Chevy passenger car. As a rule, factory overdrives run 4.11:1 rearend gears. Figuring the souped-up 301 had the grunt to pull tall gears, Bryan and his dad left the '66's 3.73:1 gears in place. Around town the Chevy is still pretty punchy, but when they kick in the overdrive out on the highway, their truck can squeeze up to 17 miles out of a gallon of gas. Another area the pair wanted to improve was the truck's ability to stop. While adding front disc brakes, they opted to install 2 1/2-inch drop spindles with 2-inch drop coils. The stock single master cylinder was eliminated in favor of a dual master with a proportioning valve plumbed in below. To bring the ass end down they installed 5-inch drop coils and placed KYB gas shocks at all four corners for dampening.

From the very moment Bryan imagined himself with a '60s C10, he envisioned it in yellow paint. When they found the '66 it was in its second coat of light blue. Bryan and his dad stripped the repaint to the factory blue paint, leaving mostly bare metal and rust holes. Although they were surprised at the extensive amount of rust damage, they didn't let it slow them down. Bryan patched in new sheetmetal and welded it up. The father and son team pressed on until they had the '66 almost ready for paint. The '66's paint job was the only phase of the Chevy's build Bryan and his dad didn't handle at home. They turned to Saul M's Body Shop in Salinas, California, to shoot the '66 in DuPont Boyd's Smooth Yellow urethane.

In the four months the '66 was out for paint, Bryan and his dad moved to Carmel, California. Their next shop was a tiny one-car garage where they had to reassemble the '66 in extremely cramped quarters. Spotting light at the end of a five-year tunnel, the two hustled until Bryan's '66 was a completed daily driver ready to return to the streets and double as a show truck on the weekends.