2001 Chevy S10 - True Truckin'

Exterior
To smooth out the S-10's look, a Corvette rear bumper was molded into the truck's body along with a new hood, grille and front bumper, all painted Daytona Blue. Moreira also lowered the S-10's suspension 3" in the front and 2" in the rear, upgraded to 22" Verde Madonna wheels and installed a K&N intake.

Bringing It Low
Given the truck's limited interior space, only two 12" subwoofers are needed to handle the system's bass. The install team mounted a pair of DLS Ultimate Iridium 12 subs in the rear of the cab in custom fiberglass enclosures built into the amprack. "We originally planned to port the subs," DeJesus says, "but they're so efficient that we ended up sealing both enclosures and have been able to get the tight bass that we wanted, even with the small boxes."

As a competition and show truck for DeJesus' employer, DLS America, the other goal for the S-10 was outstanding sound quality. "We really tried to create a home audio type of environment in the vehicle," he explains of the truck, originally built in 2004 with the help of DLS installer Joe Moreira. "We've made changes every year-this year it was adding the tube amplifiers-but we really just wanted to get the best possible sound quality that we could from what we had."

Driver
Eddie DeJesus, 52, spends his days as the international sales manager at DLS America in Tampa, FL. He has been dabbling in car audio ever since he learned to drive and his project vehicles have appeared at shows and competitions all over the country.

Custom Air
A special touch in this completely custom truck, the air vents for the HVAC got a new look.

From The Bottom Up
Before installing the system, DeJesus and Co. gutted the truck and lined every exposed surface with Dynamat sound dampening material. From there, the interior was hollowed out, redesigned and highlighted in black and royal blue to match the exterior. Custom fiberglass paneling was laid over MDF to create the dash, door inserts, center console as well as the amp/sub rack.

On A High Note
To create the front soundstage, Moreira mounted two sets of 6.5" DLS Ultimate Iridium 6.2i component speakers in the custom dash and placed tweeters up in the truck's pillars. In addition, he added a second set of midbass speakers-5.25" DLS Ultimate Iridiums-in a pair of sealed fiberglass kick panels that were covered in black carpet to match the interior. "The mids are so powerful that we could actually turn the subs off and still get a pretty full sound if we wanted to," DeJesus says.

Juice It Up
Four DLS amplifiers-a pair of twin monoblock Ultimate A3s for the subs and two Ultimate TA2 dual-channel tube amps for the front components-power the system from the S-10's fiberglass-covered amprack, producing a total of 1,600 watts RMS at 4 ohms. DeJesus calls the TA2 tube amp, which is new to the S-10 this year, "probably one of the best amplifiers in the world in terms of sound quality."