When Rob Scharnhorst started looking for an older pickup as his daily driver, he really wasn’t looking for anything special and certainly not another project. He was already focusing on getting a 1954 Chevy 3100 truck into show quality.

Rob says he found his ‘nothing special’ daily driver pickup in Indiana at a dealer that had classic cars and trucks in its inventory. The 1972 Chevy Cheyenne C-10 pickup was a nice, older, restored, clean driver that he drove everywhere.

Then one day, he started to see some rust in the seams around the windshield. Upon further inspection, he thought it would be a quick fix. The rust wasn’t too bad; he would just clean it up, sand it, reseal the seams, and repaint the roof.

And that was the start of it.

Unfortunately, Rob had no luck when he tried to match the paint on the roof. So, he decided to repaint the whole truck, which had an original green hue.

Of course, once Rob got into it, he found that the doors, fenders, and bed were all aftermarket parts that didn’t line up correctly. Many of the other body repairs he found weren’t up to his standards. The solution: The whole body was taken apart, everything except for taking the cab off the frame.

Ron made all the repairs and had the truck repainted red and white by Tom’s Collision in Markham, Illinois. All the panels were put back together and adjusted to fit. Rob shaved the fuel door and all of the bedside pockets. The only part of the body that wasn’t painted was the dashboard.

While the truck was disassembled, Rob took a closer look and decided to do some suspension work, installing drop spindles up front with shorter springs to match. The steering has been rebuilt, with new steering linkage, control arms, power steering gearbox, and column. The rear suspension got new springs, as well as lowering blocks.

Before Rob got the truck back, he had the engine rebuilt. It’s the original 350 CID, with a few exceptions: it was bored .030, and an upgraded cam was installed. He doesn’t know how big the cam is, but he says it has a bit of a lope to it. He changed the intake to an Edelbrock RPM Airgap unit and installed an EFI fuel system, as the carburetor was not cooperating, with hard starts and running too rich.

Rob says he updated the ignition system by adding an HEI distributor. To help it breathe, headers and turbo mufflers were installed. The transmission is a stock, TH350 unit, probably the one that came in the truck. The differential is also stock. The truck rides on 20-inch, U.S. 5-spoke mags with radial tires. The brakes are a stock, power disc/drum setup.

On the inside of the cab, the interior is original, including factory gauges in the dash. The radio has been upgraded. Rob has rewired the whole truck with an American Autowire Power harness kit.

Rob says that he takes his truck to as many shows and cruise nights as he can. His repaint and upgrades took him about six months to complete. Not bad for something that was ‘nothing special and just a daily driver.

Rob still has a project build going on, just not the aforementioned 1954 Chevy 3100, which he sold. He picked up a 1955 Chevy Bel Air two-door sedan; this one is a frame-off restoration. Hopefully, we will get to see it at a show or two in the future.

If you have a car you would like to see featured in Classic Wheels, contact Rudy Host, Jr. at Classic.Wheels.Rudy@gmail.com.