Tag Archives: Chevrolet

Fender work

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I finally decided to get back to doing some rust work on the truck. I haven’t yet figured out how to fabricate the inner rocker, so I decided to work on the rot in the fenders first.

I cut the bottom of the fender off, only to discover the inner bracket was rotted out and a prior owner had done some hack repair work. All the original bracketry for attaching the fender was cut out and not replaced properly The fender was actually welded to the cab.

 

Now I have an entirely new problem to deal with. I have to decide whether to buy all the patch panels to fix the cab mounts & fender bracket which would cost about $250. The other option is to fab it all from scratch, or only buy part and fab the rest. I’m going to have to do more thinking on this.

 

 

Instant Upgrade? Just add Seat

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The seat in the ’64 Chevy was a disaster area, and made the cab look like it had been a home to wolverines with a 2-pack a day habit.

It was torn, paint splattered, and yellowed with nicotine stains. And it was covered with a cheap ill-fitting cover that came off every time you climbed in.

A factory-correct replacement seat cover was $150 + shipping and that wouldn’t fix the battered foam. A local upholstery shop gave me a quote of $250 to completely re-upholster it, but that would be in plain vinyl that would be pretty boring looking.

 

I was surfing the list that is Craig’s one day when I found this bench seat for sale for all of $100. It is from a similar truck but had been custom upholstered. The seller was replacing it with some bucket seats. It was in perfect condition aside from one minor tear in the piping.

 

I power-washed the whole thing to get the grime out of all the nooks & crannies. It turns out the tweed portions were once blue, but had faded to the current grey(which I’m ok with, as I prefer the grey). I also painted the brackets on the sides while it was apart.

 

After installing the seat I was amazed at how much it changed the interior. With no other changes but the seat the cab now looks respectable with a bit of patina.

Tool Boxing Day

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One thing the truck is sorely lacking is storage space. Putting stuff under the seat is a recipe for being smacked in the ankles under emergency braking. I had an old crate in the bed to hold various ratchet straps, bungee cords, tarps, etc. The problem was it would slide around when driving, and everything got soaking wet in the rain.

I bought this tool box at the flea market for all of $5, I liked its design, and the somewhat battered look suits the look of the truck quite well. I knew it would stop the getting wet problem, but I needed it to both not slide around, and to make it a little harder for someone to steal it.

 

I bought two wing screws(like wingnuts, but screws, I didn’t know this existed before I found them) and some nut inserts for wood. Then I figured out where I wanted the tool box to be(making sure to position it so the lid could open), and drilled two holes through the bottom of the and through the wood of the truck bed.

 

From below I hammered in the nut inserts, I went from below so they wouldn’t just get yanked out if someone tried to pull the tool box up. Turns out I didn’t get the holes completely straight which made getting the inserts to stay properly was a pain.

 

Finally the wing screws were installed. Now the tool box won’t be sliding around, but if I need to remove it, it should only take a moment to remove the wing screws and lift the whole thing out.

They aren’t kidding about this thing hauling.

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I ran across this 1953 Chevy sedan delivery at Home Depot while picking up house supplies. Just as I was entering the store this burbled through the parking lot. I dashed around getting my shopping done as fast as possible in hopes it would still be there when I was done.

 

Luck was with me, and it it was still there, parked a few spaces away from where I’d left my truck. “Moving Violation” seems to have been built in the classic 60’s gasser style with a straight-axle front pointing at the sky, big slicks in the back, and a worked over V8 under the 1-piece flip-front hood.

 

The car was rough around every edge, but had the look of something that gets driven, and driven hard. And the very fact it was driven to Home Depot of a Saturday was awesome in my book.

 

 

I spent a good long time looking the car over and admiring all the details through out. It was clear the car was well-loved and built by someone with a sense of humor. But the best part was the large sticker on the rear window, which made it clear how the owner feels about people giving him shit for the car not being perfect.

 

The start of rocker repair on the truck

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When I bought the ’64 Chevy I knew the worst rot on the truck was in the driver’s rocker area, the whole area was rotted badly enough you couldn’t step there without the whole thing crunching and feeling like it would collapse at any second.

Part of my plan with this truck is to fabricate metal repairs wherever possible, so I could practice metal fabrication, and save money. With the rocker I decided to buy a replacement outer rocker, but fabricate the inner stuff myself.

 

I started by pulling off the sill plate(which was a ruin in and of itself), and made a pass with my Harbor Freight sandblaster to find all the rust holes.

 

 

 

I was left with very little good metal. It quickly became clear that the decorative sill plate had become structural, and was stronger than the remaining rocker.

 

 

So first I cut back to solid metal, getting rid of all the marginal stuff so I knew I had a solid base to start from.

 

 

 

Then came the first of four patches. I formed the right angle bends with the help of a brake, but the rest was hammer formed using whatever around the garage had the shape I needed.

 

 

Then it(and the second filler patch) was welded in and ground smooth.

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Then the second patch, before and after.

 

 

 

 

 

And the third. This patch only got tack welded in before I ran out of light.

 

 

 

 

 

Then between Hurricane Sandy & selling the wagon I haven’t gotten back to it. But the floor is already noticeably more solid with just this much completed.

A new addition to the fleet

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Well, the fleet here just got bigger by one.

I bough her home yesterday, but the story starts last week. I saw an ad for this 1964 Chevy C10 on Craigslist. It listed it as running & driving well and all original. However it was 2.5 hours away, and there was no way to cram a 5+ hour round trip into my schedule that week. So I sent the guy an email saying I was interested in looking at it the next week, and tried to put it out of my mind, figuring if it was as advertised it would be gone by the time I could see it.

I loaded up the newly upgraded Wee Trailer(more on that in another post) and went away to PiCon(a scifi con) for the weekend. I returned home late on Sunday, and monday morning gave him a call only to discover the truck was still available.

This caused me to leave work on monday, pick up the ever patient girlfriend, and drive to New Hampshire.

Upon arrival I was greeted by the most basic truck I have ever encountered. Inline six, three speed on the column, no radio, no power steering, no A/C, no power brakes, no passenger mirror, no passenger sunvisor, no center mirror, no passenger key lock. This thing is the platonic ideal of truck. Only the things you need in a truck, and nothing more.

However when he turned the key the engine instantly sprang to life, and ran well. And the transmission shifted well once I figured out the quirks of the column-shifted three speed. And everything on it worked like it was supposed to. And inspection of the body revealed rust on several locations, but nothing terminal or structural, meaning it could be repaired at my own pace. The only big issue was the ancient bias-ply tires.

After a test drive and some negotiations I put down a deposit and headed back home, planning to return Thursday to pay it off and take it home.

Thursday after work found me once again trucking up to New Hampshire, and once arriving I paid him, got a bill of sale and the key in return and headed home. Once I stopped trying to shift quickly and got into the rhythm of the column shift(and thereby stopped getting the linkage jammed up) the drive was pretty uneventful. The truck ran well, and I drove home, though I did curse the terrible tires much of the way as they inspired zero confidence what so ever between the shaking, squealing on turns & tracking of every minor groove in the road.

The only minor issue that came up was when playing with the high beam switch(on the floor) I managed to make the low beams stop working, so I drove home on the high beams which no one seemed to notice as I didn’t get anyone flashing their lights at me.

Once we returned home I re-arranged the cars and was able to get most of the truck into the driveway(though the last foot or so spent the night on the sidewalk). This morning I drove it to work without the slightest problem or issue.

I’ll have another post in the next few days with more pics and a more detailed breakdown of it, but for now I’m just glad to have a classic vehicle that I can actually use and enjoy.

The siren call of a big truck

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I Will freely admit that I have a weakness for pickup trucks. I also have a weakness for dual rear wheel flatbed trucks. And, thanks to my late father, I have a weakness for ’67-’72 Chevy trucks. Combine these with a habit of surfing craigslist & ebay for cheap old vehicles and it is a recipe for unexpected roadtrips to look at old junk.

A few weeks ago I ran into this particular truck, advertised for the princely sum of $700. It is a 1967 Chevy C30 flatbed with an inline six and 4-speed manual. According to the ad it needed a new radiator, but would run and drive once that had been installed. A brief conversation with the seller ensued where he informed me it had been his buddy’s daily-driver for years until he got something else, then was driven occasionally until the radiator was stolen a few years ago.

Rationalizing to myself that a truck would be handy with the new house, I and my ever-patient girlfriend headed out on a 4-hour round trip to see it. I called the seller when we were an hour out as he had requested, and got no answer. Multiple follow up calls as we got closer met with similar lack of response. We eventually found the truck anyway, parked down a steep asphalt ramp in the basement hole where a building had been and half covered with local flora.

Sitting before me was a truck that had clearly not moved in a long, long time. The flatbed wood was rotted away(something he had warned me of, and a cheap fix). But it was clear after even a cursory inspection that it was going to need far more than a radiator to be ready to hit the road. The muffler was hanging half off, the windshield was cracked, one vent window was a precariously dangling piece of broken glass hanging by rusted metal.

However the green interior was in really good condition, without a tear in the vinyl seat. And the cab seemed free of the rocker & floor rot these trucks are infamous for. So I was willing to at least give it a chance. I had dragged a collection of car-reviving items with me, battery, jumper cables, tools, gas can, carb cleaner/engine start. So out came the battery and over to the truck to pop it in and give it a shot.

No. Battery. Cables. Whoever had stolen the radiator for the copper scrap had gotten the copper battery cables too. Now I was looking at a truck that would need $20-$50 of parts to see if it cranked over, let alone started. Then a $150-$300 for rad& hoses to see if it ran & drove. Since at this point we were still in frantic house renovation mode to prepare for our upcoming move, the last thing I had time or money for was a truck where I didn’t know if it was a good runner or a paperweight.

So with much regret I called the guy to say I wasn’t interested(he didn’t answer), and headed for home. I was glad I’d walked away before getting sucked into another massive project, but at the same time I was sad to let it go because if I’d found it at a different time it would have made an excellent project truck due to the lack of rot & the good interior. Ah well, maybe next time.

I did find a really neat ghost sign in the parking lot next door, so it wasn’t all a waste.

Crossing the line from ‘rusty’ to ‘dissolved’

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(This is a car shopping post from before I bought the wagon)

Unlike the ’59 Pontiac, the seller of this Chevy truck was at least up front that it was really rusty. He’d advertised it for $1900 and said it ran well and had all new brakes, but needed the rust fixed and needed to be re-assembled. The truck was supposed to me a 1953, but the cab details didn’t match, the doors without vent windows imply it is a 1950 at the latest.

Upon arrival I found the truck, or more accurately the pieces of the truck, still loaded on his trailer from picking it up. He’d apparently traded an International pickup for it to someone who wanted a drivable truck. These “Advanced Design” trucks are very popular, and go for good money, so I wasn’t surprised to find that a $1900 truck was in this kind of condition.

However this truck was way beyond both what I was interested in working on, and what I had the skills & time for. Someone had started replacing the floors & rockers, however they were welded to more badly dissolved metal. I could tell very quickly that any metal repairs to the truck were going to be a struggle to find metal solid enough to weld or bolt to. Even given all of that, I couldn’t help but like the truck. If it was a bit more intact and a bit less rotted I would have been quite happy to pick it up and bomb around in it in its trashed state for a while. However I was at least smart enough this time to stare down the barrel of massive amounts of work to simply get it on the road, and turn away.

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