Old-School 1958 Chevy Shortbed Fleetside

Frank and Tina Ayres spent about five years turning a 1958 Chevrolet shortbed Fleetside into something that rides and stops like a modern vehicle while looking like it never left 1959. The build passed through a now-defunct trade school campus and a Sacramento custom shop, picked up a Heidts Mustang II front end and a 350 small-block along the way, and ends on Coker wide whitewalls. It also starts an argument about what year it actually is. Read on for the details.

Walk up to this truck at a show and the first thing that happens is a disagreement. Look at the emblems on the sides of the front fenders and they say Apache 3100, and those particular emblems are 1959 items, not 1958 ones. So is it a 1958 or a 1959? The owners call it a 1958. The badges say otherwise. And the honest answer is that it does not matter even slightly, because almost nothing on this truck is the way the factory sent it out anyway. What does matter is a five-year build list that includes a defunct trade school, an independent front suspension swap, and a set of tires that cost more than the truck was worth when the project started.

The Bed That Only Existed for About Two Model Years

The bed itself is worth understanding before anything else, because it is the rarest structural thing here. The Fleetside bed, with its smooth flush sides in place of the traditional Stepside fenders, arrived for the 1958 model year, and by the time the all-new 1960 trucks appeared the original Fleetside design was already gone. That is a production window of roughly two model years. There was never a large herd of Tri-Five era Fleetside Chevrolet and GMC pickups roaming the earth, and a shortbed example is scarcer still. Starting a build with one of these rather than the far more common Stepside was itself a decision that shaped everything that followed.

⚑ Featured Gear

Start Car Conversations →

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Five Years, Two Shops, One Truck

The owners are Frank and Tina Ayres of Sacramento, California, and their goal was straightforward: more performance and more comfort than a half-ton pickup from 1958 was ever designed to deliver. The shortbed Fleetside was the only real factory advantage the truck arrived with, and the project ran roughly five years from start to finish across two very different shops. The first phase focused entirely on making the thing handle, stop, and sit correctly, on the theory that a truck that looks fast and drives like a 1958 half-ton is not actually finished.

Throwing the Straight Axle in the Scrap Bin

The suspension work happened at the now-defunct WyoTech campus in West Sacramento. Up front the entire factory arrangement went in the scrap bin: the straight axle, the drum brakes, and the recirculating ball steering box all came out. In their place went a Heidts Mustang II crossmember, which in a single operation converted the truck to independent front suspension, gave it precise rack-and-pinion steering, and allowed the addition of Wilwood disc brakes as a Heidts option. That combination of changes is the single biggest difference between how this truck drives and how it left the factory, and it is why builds like this get driven rather than trailered.

Getting the Rear Down Without Ruining the Ride

The stance came from a pair of two-and-a-half-inch drop spindles bridging the gap between Heidts A-arm style tubular upper and lower control arms, with coil springs and Monroe telescopic shock absorbers handling the damping. Getting the back end down took more invasive work. The WyoTech students box-notched the framerails to create clearance, which allowed de-arched leaf springs built by Sacramento Spring to tuck the Chevrolet 10-bolt differential deeper into the rear fenderwells. That differential carries 3.90 gears, a ratio chosen for acceleration and street driving rather than highway cruising, which tells you something about the intended use.

Goodbye Stovebolt, Hello Small-Block

From WyoTech the truck moved to Blue Collar Customs in Sacramento, where a crew of self-described old-school devotees finished the project. Under the hood the stock 235 cubic inch Stovebolt six was shaved and gapped, then set aside in favor of a 350 cubic inch small-block Chevrolet V8. Induction is an Edelbrock aluminum intake topped by an Edelbrock AFB carburetor under a chrome air cleaner, with Cal Custom finned aluminum valve covers capping the heads. The exhaust starts with a pair of block-hugger headers feeding two-and-a-half-inch pipes into dual mufflers and out through two tailpipes that flank a receiver-type trailer hitch, because this is still supposed to be a truck. Behind the engine is a TH350 automatic rebuilt by Josh Fox at Blue Collar and shifted through a Lokar unit.

Oxblood, Gray, and a Key Switch Where the Floor Starter Was

The interior is where the build’s philosophy shows most clearly, because it mixes eras deliberately rather than accidentally. The dashboard features laminated Plexiglas teardrop knobs, a period custom touch, with the stock 1958 Chevrolet gauge cluster left in place and a 1954 Chevrolet passenger car steering wheel in front of it. The stock 1958 steering column was adapted to accept the Heidts rack rather than being replaced with a modern tilt column. Ward Auto Interiors laid gray square-weave carpet over Dynamat insulation and recovered a later-model C10 bench seat in gray and Oxblood vinyl. Crucially, the exposed steel areas found in any stock 1955 through 1959 interior were left exposed and painted two-tone gray and Oxblood to match the exterior, rather than being upholstered over. A Lokar chrome spoon pedal replaced the stock gas pedal, and the floor starter that lived next to it in six-cylinder trucks was converted to a key switch. American Autowire supplied the harness, and Kidwell’s Glass handled the windshield and window installation.

Steelies, Beauty Rings, and 670-15 Whitewalls

The finish work is what pulls the whole thing together. Holland Hollingsworth sprayed the two-tone gray and Oxblood exterior in Valspar products, and pinstriper Dillon Proctor pulled stripes inside and out in One-Shot striping enamel, which is the traditional lettering enamel that hand pinstripers have used for generations. The finishing touch was a set of four Wheelsmith 15-inch steel wheels capped with beauty rings and spiders, wrapped in 670-15 Coker Firestone wide whitewalls.

Why the Whitewalls Are the Whole Point

That wheel and tire choice is the whole build in miniature. Anyone chasing outright performance would have put modern 17 or 18-inch wheels on a truck with a Mustang II front end and Wilwood brakes, and the numbers would have improved. Instead the Ayres family put a period-correct steelie and whitewall package on a chassis that is thoroughly modern underneath. The result is a truck that looks like it could have been parked outside a diner in 1959 and drives like something built fifty years later, which is a much harder target to hit than either extreme on its own.

Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Republished by Blog Post Promoter