1988 Chevrolet S10

I'm the Automotive Instructor at Elgin High School in Illinois. My goal is to keep students interested in autos, but working on our lab vehicles (minivans, Saturns, etc.) gets boring. So, I started building project vehicles with my upperclassmen to keep student interest high. Our project vehicle this year is a 1988 Chevy S10. We want to turn it into an autocross/road race truck. Our setup is going to be a 5.3L iron block turned into a 383 stroker (Texas Speed internals, Auto machine is the shop doing the machine work), TREMEC TKX 5-speed, Quick Performance 9" Rear axle, and UMI Performance front suspension. I bought it as a roller, and since then my students pulled the cab and box. Next, we cleaned the chassis and stripped it down to bare frame. After that, they made cardboard templates to cut steel so we could box the frame for rigidity. It has some students’ trial and error - notice the bar above the Quick Performance rear axle needed to be cut out and relocated. I just haven't had time yet; it’s been a great learning experience. We then relocated the fuel tank behind the rear axle and had to cut pockets in the front to accommodate our new Viking coil-overs. The truck should be this year and hopefully doing burnouts in the parking lot! This is the type of learning I want my students to be part of; it's not as simple as just a bolt-on, they have to do some critical thinking at times which helps with student engagement, and I always tell them to think outside the box.