Ol’ Cotton: Our Modern Muscle Truck Project
The call for a return to cheaper and simpler trucks has been an ever-growing echo in the automotive enthusiast community. But as much as the comment section of whatever social media page you follow seems to cry for less tech, less luxury, more manual transmission options, and old-school engines, the reality is, it’s never going to happen. This is why I’m building Project Ol’ Cotton.
The hard pill to swallow is this: those that think cheap, minimalist trucks would sell out like Taylor Swift concert tickets are nothing more than a very vocal minority. The majority of buyers that are willing to sign on the dotted line at the local dealer don’t want bare-bones and are willing to pay for loaded trucks. The car industry is for profit, and trucks like my old Silverado work truck just don’t sell to the general public anymore.
What Is Ol’ Cotton?
Ol’ Cotton is my 2004 regular-cab, short-bed Silverado work truck. It is a true zero-option work truck that was ordered from Chevrolet for fleet-duty in the West Texas oil fields. And just like one of the hard-working roughnecks from TV’s Landman starring Billy Bob Thornton, this truck has been the most reliable thing I’ve ever owned. The name Ol’ Cotton comes from a nickname given to older men with white hair (like a cotton ball), which is fitting for a truck that originated in the West Texas region known for farming cotton.
Manual windows, manual locks, a rubber floor, manual transmission, and the 4.3-liter V6 is how this trusty mule was born. When it came time to retire this 2-wheel-drive short-wheelbase pickup from the oil-field life, it was then purchased by a Lubbock cotton farmer, and when it came time for that farmer’s retirement, he traded it back in to the same dealer again where I worked. It didn’t have the V8, but I still snagged it before anyone else could with my employee discount.
From Humble To Hustler
For the first 60,000 miles I owned Ol’ Cotton, it remained an unmodified reliable pickup that hauled project cars, car parts, motorcycles, and ferried me to and from work so I could pay the bills. But after many years as a faithful work horse, it was time to build my dream truck: A V8, manual trans modern muscle truck.
Out came the iron V6 and in went a 5.7-liter LS. An iron 5.3 truck block was filled with an LS1 rotating assembly and topped with LS1 heads and TBSS intake and finally treated to a 224R camshaft to give it the “muscle”. The stock 10-bolt axle was rebuilt with 4.10 gears and a limited-slip posi, and the truck was lowered with McGaughy’s suspension and finished with Texas Edition 20-inch wheels. Some say the tried-and-true 4.3 makes the same power as a 4-cyl while getting big-block gas mileage, and I can attest to that. The 5.7 LS gets the same MPG as the stock V6, but makes more than double to horsepower.
Row, Row, Row Your Gears…
With almost everything mechanical on Ol’ Cotton either rebuilt or replaced, only one major component of the original drivetrain remained: the 5-speed transmission. For a gutless fleet-duty V6, the original NV3500 transmission worked just fine. But once lowered with a cammed-LS, the sloppy 5-speed felt mismatched and out of place for a modern muscle truck.
If you want that simple all-mechanical truck, don’t bother with your local dealer, you have to build it yourself. Project Ol’ Cotton is the V8, manual transmission, jack-of-all-trades. And the last piece of the puzzle is the transmission, so we went to Tremec for one of their world-famous manual transmissions. This kind of swap isn’t as easy as changing your brake pads, but we’ll be documenting the process to show you how it’s done.
