Mike Self
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November 14, 2023
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C10 Builders Guide
EVERY TRUCK HAS A STORY. Whether it’s as simple as helping the family breadwinner haul materials to the next job or being a long-forgotten project that finally sees the light of day years later, we’ve never met a truck that didn’t have an interesting history.
Marc Mullin’s Chevy is no different, and its story includes tales of father-son bonding, new friendships, deep loss, camaraderie, renewed hope and ultimately triumph. As to how Marc got the truck in the first place … Let’s just say that he had to expand his search a fair distance away from home.
“I originally bought the truck about five years ago, a 1963 C10 big back window shortbed Fleetside,” Marc says. “In my mind, it’s the best looking C10 ever made. The truck came from Iowa, since trying to find something even somewhat clean in Pittsburgh where I am from is nearly impossible, or at least impossible to afford.”
I THOUGHT ABOUT HOW ALL OF MY DAD’S FRIENDS CALLED ME HIS ‘SHADOW’ SINCE I WAS ALWAYS WITH HIM AND WAS A CARBON COPY OF HIM,” HE SAYS. “FROM THAT POINT ON, THE TRUCK WAS KNOWN AS ‘SHADOW.’
And Marc drove the truck around daily for about a month, but as luck would have it, he was offered the opportunity to work on someone else’s SEMA project, which was a dream come true for Marc. This kind of put a halt to Marc’s plans for the time being, but once SEMA came and went, he got back on track.
“After the build was over and I caught up on sleep, it was time to tear into my truck,” he says. “My better 3/4s, also known as my beautiful wife Megan, and I went to the shop and I started taking the bed off , then the front end, and so on and so forth. The truck started to come apart very quickly. The plan was wheels, slam it, pump up the small block in it, and a paint job done by my best friend, Jeremy Seanor of Luckystrike Designs.”
But there were other things going on in Marc’s life that would soon consume him and give him pause, both mentally and physically.
“During this time, and for the past 10 to 15 years, my father was quite ill,” Marc recalls. “He started getting much worse, and during the holiday season was in and out of the hospital numerous times with chronic pneumonia.”
On Jan. 17, 2014, Marc lost his dad, and it hit him hard.
Regardless, he was determined to keep it together, both for his sake and the sake of his mother. Making sure that his mom was OK became a top priority, as did keeping the family business (an auto repair shop) in operation. Within a year and a half, Marc had actually increased business 30 percent and had a full roster of all-star techs working with him at the shop.
As Marc told us, the C10 slowly crept back into Marc’s mind.
“Things at this point were somewhat settled and I felt it was time to work on the truck again,” he says. “I remembered picking my dad up from the hospital to take him home, and we had been talking about the truck. He said, ‘You really need to bag that thing and put an LS in it!’ Remembering that conversation opened up Pandora’s Box.”
The next thing he knew, Marc was full-on back on the C10 with a newfound sense of purpose. The truck would now not only be a memorial to Marc’s father, but an inspiration that Marc would carry from that point forward. Some things would change throughout the duration of the build, such as upgrading the engine a couple of times.
The current powerplant is a BluePrint 6.0L crate Chevy, and Marc built up the engine with Trick Flow Specialties GenX 255 heads, a Trick Flow intake manifold, Trailblazer SS throttle body, Sanderson headers and a custom-built exhaust system. The 4L80E automatic transmission was assembled by students at Rosedale Technical College with a Circle D Specialties 2,800rpm stall torque converter and moves the Eaton Tru-Trac limited-slip diff via the Driveline Services custom driveshaft.
Now that the truck had as much motivation as Marc, he took a step back and realized that the suspension that he had planned out just wasn’t going to cut it. Marc had already decided on bagging the C10, but the parts that he had chosen weren’t going to get it as low as he had dreamed. This would involve buying a Porterbuilt front dropmember and rear suspension setup. While cruising eBay one night, Marc came across a complete second-hand (but never driven on) Porterbuilt Fab setup. After some time and negotiation, as well as some help from his best friend Jeremy, Marc made the purchase.
The only problem now was getting the parts to Pittsburgh from California. The seller went the extra mile by dropping off the chassis at Delmo’s Speed Shop in Burbank, where Del Uschenko, whom Marc had met at SEMA, helped out by stripping the Porterbuilt parts and crating them up and shipping them to Marc.
“Walking into the shop that day seeing this gigantic crate was one of the best moments of my life,” he says. “I tore into it like it was my birthday! I laid tarps on the floor of the shop and proceeded to place all of the parts alongside the truck in their respective places.”
Before long, the ’63 was sitting tough over the 20/22-inch staggered Budnik E85 Surfaced series wheels and Toyo tires, and Marc was able to move on to the rest of the truck.
An amazing interior by Scott Zielinski of Sew It Seams Interiors was whipped up using Relicate leather, and of course Marc was finally able to have Jeremy from Luckystrike Designs spray the custom-mixed PPG “The Art of Orange” paint inside and out after modding and prepping the body.
It took four years of hard work, some setbacks and a lot of heartache to finish the truck, but when he was done Marc, his girlfriend (now wife) and his friends had a hard time coming up with a name for the truck. Then, one night it hit Marc:
“I thought about how all of my dad’s friends called me his ‘shadow’ since I was always with him and was a carbon copy of him,” he says. “From that point on, the truck was known as ‘Shadow.’”
It obviously took a lot of folks working together to build a truck of this caliber, and Marc wanted to make sure no one got left out:
“Special thanks go to my beautiful wife Megan for always supporting me and dealing with me living at the shop. My best friend Jeremy for putting me in place when I needed it and also painting the entire truck in three days, my brother Chad Mullin, Zach Smith, Scott DeSchon, Josh Hart, E.J Talik, T.J Gefert, Travis Zeigler, Anthony Chick, Ian Stowe, Greg Geibel, Jeff Elstner, the Defibaugh family, Scott Warburton, Nik Barto, Rob Sever, Eric Lowery, Dan Baker, Phil and Brian Palmer, Mike Alexander, the crew at Premiere Street Rods, Randy and Jenn Borcherding, Noel Irvin, Mark and Jill Richner, Sean Carley, Matt Trombley, John Jackson, Luke Munnell, Martin and Dave from Pristine, PPG Refinish, Ronnie Wetch, Derek Churchyard, Working Man’s Auto Glass, and my dad Art for showing his presence in the weirdest ways when I needed it the most.”
TRUCK SPECS
OWNER
Marc Mullin
Pittsburgh, PA
1963 Chevy C10
SUSPENSION/CHASSIS
WHEELS/TIRES
ENGINE/DRIVETRAIN
BODY/PAINT
INTERIOR/STEREO
SPECIAL THANKS:
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