BLKWUD | This Time He Really He Tried To Leave It Alone

He Tried To Leave It Alone

NEW PROJECTS SOMETIMES HAVE A FUNNY WAY OF MATERIALIZING. For Matt Smith, the thought of another project came about after an unfortunate accident while photographing his previous truck for Street Trucks, a Chevy S-10 known as REDDWUD.

The short story is that there was a mishap with the gas pedal that pretty much ruined his show truck. The silver lining was that most of the photos had already been taken, so we were able to run the feature. On the not-so-bright side, REDDWUD was in bad shape and would require a major rebuild that would take six months. Not only that, but Matt took a beating as well.

With a ton of time and money going into creating version 2.0, Matt pretty much lost interest in working on the tow pig square body dually project he had previously bought to tow the S-10 to shows. The reality of it was that Matt wasn’t looking forward to spending even more time and money on another, and so it took a permanent back seat.

While at the Made of Steel show in Dover, Florida, with REDDWUD, Matt met Brian Harmon, who owned a pretty wicked ‘bagged ’97 Chevy C3500 dually.

“While we were talking, [Brian] mentioned that it was for sale,” Matt recalled. “I didn’t give it much thought since I already had a dually at the house, even though I didn’t have it in me to actually work on it.”

Once he was back home, though, Matt couldn’t stop thinking about Brian’s truck, and to top it o, Matt’s wife Vicky told him that he should go get it!

“So, I tracked Brian down and made arrangements,” Matt said. “My son and I made a day out of it and went and bought it!”

With a new tow pig now in the driveway, Matt was finally able to let go of the square body and sell it to someone who would finally give it the love it deserved.

We should mention that Matt promised his wife that he wouldn’t mess with his new-to-him dually for at least a year, and to his credit he was able to keep his promise. In fact, it wasn’t until he accidentally put a dent underneath the right-side taillight 14 months later that he finally found his excuse to start making the truck more his own.

Matt was already way ahead of the game since Brian had already ‘bagged the dually and laid it out on milled-down 22-inch Alcoas, which pretty much already made it cooler than most trucks on the road. Now, Matt is a painter by trade, so fixing that dent came naturally enough to him, but so did the desire to lay down a ton more paint.

Since his plan was to tow REDDWUD, which has a woodgrain theme, Matt figured he’d follow suit with the dually. He started off by applying a fresh black base that he’d bought from his buddy Carl Stuart, then taping off the sides and adding the graphics. Jason Haymaker from Airbrush This then came in to do his thing, adding the woodgrain details to the rest of the graphics, as well as creating a mural on the tonneau cover. Another awesome touch was the custom paint-matched notch cover that was fabbed up by Dallas Maynard of Full Penetration Welding, which is removable for easy access to the rear axle.

For the rest of the truck, Matt focused on details that freshened up the rest of the exterior, like Morumo LED headlight bulbs in fresh clear/black housings. The interior also got some revamping, with a smoothed, painted and pinstriped dash, and a Grant Steering wheel sitting in front of a Dakota Digital gauge cluster.

Matt isn’t done with the dually by a long shot and plans to modify the interior even more. Knowing how wild his other truck is, we wouldn’t be surprised if Matt eventually decides that he needs a tow pig for his tow pig!