When friend, and longtime BangShifter, Scott Liggett told us he had found a bitchin almost original 1967 GMC C1500 truck and that he was going to fix it up and drive it daily, we were thrilled. When he told us that the build was going to be on the cheap and using wrecking yard finds when possible and appropriate we were short of breath. That is so our speed, so we told Scott he had to document everything and give us the scoop. Here is the first installment, there is plenty more on its way!
It’s my pleasure to introduce Project Hay Hauler.
(Words and Photos by Scott Liggett)
Since moving back to Nebraska about 2 1/2 years ago, I started looking for a pickup to replace my ’70 Caprice. That car has been great to own considering I found it in a junkyard 14 years ago, and drove it home. But, I needed a truck. As big as the trunks are on my ’65 Impala SS and my Caprice, they can’t carry a fridge, or a sofa, or 8 ft lumber. Not to mention how much more convenient it is to get an engine block out of a pickup bed than a trunk of a car.
About 18 months ago during Cruise-Nite in Kearney, NE, I came across this ’67 GMC C1500 sitting in the back of a local used car lot. I stopped eating barbeque long enough to look over the truck and snap a few pictures. I went back a few days later to get a closer look, find out the price, then take it for a test drive.
Surprisingly, it drove fantastic for an unrestored ’67 GMC. 1967 was a model year change for the GM pickups. While the body got a complete make over, the chassis still had many things left over from the previous years. 1967 was a one year only for many details on the new body style. Most notable was the small back window, though there was an option for a larger one. In ’68, GMC added the larger back window, side marker lights, and moved the GMC logo from the grille to letters on the hood. I made a deal and bought the truck that day for $2,000.
These pictures are the ones I took the day I saw it for the first time at the used car lot:
As you can see it wasn’t the prettiest girl, but she had a lot of redeeming qualities. She was mostly straight and mostly rust free considering it was from Nebraska. The rockers are a notoriously weak spot on these trucks and these are no different. Also, typical of this era are the cab mounts just inside those rocker panels. That’s OK, these parts are made new by a dozen companies and they are cheap. There were very old, weather checked General 16″ tires and old crusty, once chrome wheels. They were holding air and didn’t vibrate at highway speeds.
Up front, The grille and headlight surrounds are in good shape. The painted GMC letters have faded off the grille. In ’68, GMC moved the letters up onto the hood for a bolder look. I like this grille better. You can see the patinaed hood with it’s faded Dark Aqua Poly paint. The bumper is straight, but the chrome peeling away at the bottom. It will do for now.
This particular truck is a Custom model. It was just a fancy trim option with side trim and emblems on the front fenders. These changed nearly every year. I am missing that trim piece off the passenger door, but thankfully companies like LMC Trucks sell these pieces.
The only real dent on the truck is the passenger side quarter panel behind the tire. Looks like a tire came off, or a tread separated, at some point in the truck’s lifetime. Nothing that can’t be fixed with a little elbow grease.
The back of the truck is nice and straight, but missing a couple trim pieces off the tail gate. The rear bumper is a nice chrome piece that almost looks brand new. Thankfully, not some ugly painted steel step bumper. You can see the hitch. It is some add-on type and is bolted to the frame. It will do for hauling a car trailer, but not much more.
The bed is steel on this truck. Thankfully. Most I have seen are wood and completely rotted away. It is still very solid, probably because it had camper shell for most of the truck’s life. In the far corner of the bed floor, there are two wires that probably were for a light inside that camper shell.
GMC got leaf springs standard, while truck arms and coils were an option. Chevy C10’s got the opposite. That is a Dana 44 with some kind of posi unit. I will be servicing that soon enough. Something tells it it hasn’t been opened in a long time. You can see the rusty dual exhaust with really long glass packs. They are still pretty solid and functioning, so I will leave them for now. The real good news is that the frame is solid as a rock. No rust at all.
Now, under the hood. The truck was originally powered by a straight six cylinder. There is a 350 in it now. This easily spotted because the distributor cap is crammed up against the firewall. Factory small powered trucks are about 4 inches farther forward. Not that any of this matters to me.
This 350 has the really lousy ’87-95 era TBI, or swirl port cylinder heads. These things are boat anchors for making any kind of horsepower. The short block is a ’77-’79 truck block 350 two bolt by its casting number. A previous owner added the Edelbrock Performer intake and Edelbrock 600 carb, and Mallory Unilite ignition. the Edelbrock 10″ diameter air cleaner is filled with dirt. It runs great, idles nice and smooth, and revs right to 4000 rpm where it falls on it’s face. Those headers are Flowtech Afterburners for ’73-’87 era pickups, as best I can tell. Those are $75 Cheverolet Performance chrome valve covers.
Someone added that parts store overflow tank with the very useful duct tape lid.
There is a brand new brass and copper four core radiator. The engine somehow ran dead nuts at 180* even though the previous owner had the flex fan on backwards. I already rectified that little issue.
The interior of ’67 GMC’s were all business, even with the custom model as this one. The bench seat looked great, but the springs were done in. Hitting a big bump meant my bony butt hit the 6×9 speaker box under the seat. The rubber floor mat is hard and brittle. Touching any part of it means having that piece break off in your hand. The interior of these trucks was all no frills. The door panels are stamped steel. The original purchaser did not check off arm rests, or a passenger side sun visor. They got to squint.
That same OG buyer did check off the full gauges, minus the factory tachometer that would have been in the middle of the dash cluster. Original ones are going for near $1000 bucks on Ebay. Repops are $600, or more. I won’t be getting any one of those, unless I find one in the junkyard.
This is how I found the pedal pads. I put them back on and they fell off almost immediately.
What is cool about the ’67-’72 GM pickups is that their option list is right on the inside of the glove box. Except mine doesn’t have it. Crap! What’s to know. I can plainly see what this truck has for options. I did find the original owner’s manual which is cool. The glove box also had a parts store electric pump to fix ailing windshield washer pumps, a paper oil funnel, a spare spark plug, and the plug for the trailer hitch plug which is hiding behind the license plate along with the jacked up wiring.
Over the past 18 months I have done quite a few upgrades and repairs to the Hay Hauler, which I will show you in future articles. I will show how I used ingenuity and a lot of junkyard crawls to make improvements and keep the truck running, instead of a lot of expensive parts.
Scott Liggett
Love it. I had a 70 C20 3 door suburban that I wanted to do the same thing with, but due to lack of time, I had to cut my losses and move on. Can’t wait to see the progress!
Been looking at these 67-72 models and can’t believe the price difference between a short bed and long bed!
Look in the backside of the seat cushions for the build sheet. I have a 1967 GMC C20 and when I redid the seat I found the build sheet in both top and bottom cushions. Super brittle so read before removing.
The build sheet was there behind the sheet in tatters. I collected up the bigger pieces, but haven’t tried to reassemble the puzzle yet. But really, what is there to know on that? It won’t make the truck any more valuable. It’s not a rare short bed, big block model.
….behind the seat in tatters.
These are great trucks, I have a 69 C20. Damn good truck!!!
My favorite vintage, about the only thing I don’t like are the motor mounts which can be swaped out for the 73-up clamshell mounts with some junkyard scrounging, a drill and some 1/2″ spacers on top of the frame.
shouldn’t the original engine be the 305E v6?
It’s possible that it did have the big 305 V6. It was gone before I got it. I would have to check the owner’s manual to see what six cylinder options there were for this year.
67-72chevytrucks.com. Enjoy the addiction! Solid ol truck!