By gathering parts from several trucks, David Bosse created this unique version of the S-10. It happens to be the world's first and only stock floor body-dropped crew cab with a longbed S-series Chevy truck. That's a long and complicated way to describe it, but every single bit of it is true. Let's also not forget to mention that this beast is powered by a limited edition LT4 small-block engine from a rare Corvette.
David is a skilled builder and has worked on many vehicles in his Afterhours Fabrication shop in South Plainfield, New Jersey. Even though he works on all types of trucks, he loves the S-10 pickup. Who could blame him? The S-10 has some of the cleanest factory body styling for a mini-truck.
This truck started out as a '94 Super Sport edition of the S-10. David decided to beef it up with a 350-cid LT4 V-8 plucked from a '96 Grand Sport edition Corvette. In case you don't know, Chevy only made 1,000 Grand Sports, so Dave probably pissed off the other 999 GS Vette owners with his mini-truck. Once he found the engine, he dropped it in andbolted it to the stock 4L60-E transmission. Then, to get the fuel injection running, he bought a harness and a Pontiac Firebird reprogrammed computer from Fuelinjection.com. The SS truck was quick with the new motor and ran a quarter-mile time of 13 seconds.
Because David worked on the S-10 a lot, he subscribed to S10forum.com for information about the truck. He logged onto the site so many times that he became one of the site's administrators. There were some posts on the subject of a longbed crew cab, and it inspired David to attempt building one. What a lot people don't know is that, from 2001 to 2004, Chevy produced the crew cab version of the S-10 in the U.S., and for David, this truck was going to be the platform for his project. After an extensive search, he came across a crew cab with the factory shortbed from a junkyard. Of course, the truck would need a running motor, and the Corvette motor and transmission from the SS would work perfect for the buildup.
Next on the list was to find a working frame and a long bed. David found the long bed on a '98 that he purchased, took the bed off of it, and resold the rest of the truck within two weeks. Then, he got a '95 standard cab that had a blown 2.2L four-cylinder engine. Since it was not running, the truck was a perfect donor for the frame. David took the front clip, slid it in front of the crew cab, and then made a frame from the firewall back to the rear mounts of the long bed. To tackle such a feat, David downloaded the GM build sheets of the trucks on Gmupfitter.com. The website has a plethora of dimensions for any GM model truck between the years of 1999 and 2007, and it was a helpful place to start.