This old truck has been sitting out in the backyard waiting for some attention for a couple years. Over Christmas a need to have a sturdy dependable vehicle came up, so I figured I would drag it out of the woods and do a spray-can rebuild on it to make it a runner.
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The Blue Truck
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In the end this is what we have:
1953 Chevrolet C1 series
1951 Doors and latches
P.O. said it was a 1985 305 H.O. motor. (shrug) maybe it is.
A Turbo 350 case - you can't call it a transmission anymore.
And all sorts of 1968 Chevelle parts laying around. The front crossmemember, suspension, brakes, and the rearend, maybe the steering column are from a donor car. The throttle pedal was something cable, and the brake pedal and booster were from a Pontiac power brake 1st-Gen F-Body, but it had an Impala manual master bolted to it (eek).Livin the dream
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Ummmm I still have been putting off taking out that aluminum plate that is sitting in the floor. I refuse to. The purpose of this build is quick and cheap and dirty to get rolling in six weeks.
So what happens? We begin to find out that the builders of this heap had two of their most favorite and dangerous weapons at their disposal...
What's that? Arc Welding and Acetylene Torch yeaaaah baby!!!Livin the dream
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So, anyways... Continuing on I got some tires on some old rims I have had laying around, and started to trim up the hackery.
The firewall is similar. These trucks had the brake master under the floor. This has an F-body brake pedal assembly "grafted" onto the firewall with no bracing. Hey, Mr Torch?
This goes without mention at this point - it became evident that this project was going to have to go off track. There is zero support of a floor in the truck and the brake pedal moves the firewall 3" and the bottom of the steering column floats around.
So, a couple more weeks work, but it blew the promised New Year's timetable.Livin the dream
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Continuing with the wire wheel we take on the front suspension. The Arc Welding looks really really ugly but where the crossmember is grafted to the frame rails is not cracking that I was able to find, so proceed, pass go.
However, the idler arm mount was way too sketchy for my tastes.Livin the dream
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Once things were cleaned up I had a friend make me a couple of plates for the firewall. I figured I could sandwich what was left of the poor firewall between a couple of plates and stop the buckle in the firewall when the brakes were hit. And produce the top half of the bridge to the floor where the column was beat through with the torch.
The second picture is because I had to salvage the brackets out of the old F-Body booster to bolt onto the back of the Impala booster that I had ordered.Livin the dream
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One bad thing about this whole grafting deal was the steering column as described. The lower half wasn't much better unfortunately. It had been cut off (with a blade on this one at least) but a little unsquare. And then a crossways 1/4" bolt was drilled crossways through the coupler and shaft. We'd be welding the replacement on.Livin the dream
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Another area that needed attention was a proper throttle pedal. We cannot describe what was in there as such, nope, we can't. I had the OE pedal assembly out of the old '65 truck, so I measured up against another 65 and my F-Body and mounted the truck pedal. It didn't fit all that well - so I stuck a spare F-Body pedal assembly I had in the hole and guess what... The F-Body pedal stays.Livin the dream
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Coming along nicely.
On the brake deal - on my S-10 clutch master I made similar though smaller reinforcing plates then I found that I had the stock S-10 clutch master reinforcing rods that go from the steering column bracket to the firewall. I think there's a pic in my build thread. Anyhow, something like that might be a good thing for you if you want it even stiffer.
Dan
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