Since I got Goliath back from floor replacement surgery a couple of weeks ago, I’ve managed to rack up a couple hundred miles on the truck. The driving has been varied with lots of short trips and one decently long haul that even tested the truck’s highway prowess. Most of the miles have been logged with one (or both) of the boys strapped into the seat next to me. 

For starters, it took a good 50 miles to really get acclimated to driving the truck and getting comfortable behind the wheel. I had a propensity to over drive it when first cruising in it. With the big meats front and back, the truck likes to follow the undulations in the road. Initially I was constantly correcting the wheel, not realizing that a steady hand on the tiller would keep the truck on track. On most roads I can zip along with one hand on the wheel and the other hanging off the mirror frame in the breeze.

I had been nervous about how the truck would act when hitting pot holes and the tons of uneven pavement here in New England after an awful winter. Bump steer is not a problem, basically because there is no bump. The truck is so stiffly sprung it essentially just plows through stuff rather than bumping over it. On average pavement, the truck rides like an unloaded one-ton. On junky pavement, the ride could probably best be described as being violent.

That being said, when we left the tractor show last Sunday, my youngest son fell asleep and slept the whole way home, a feat that proves children could literally sleep through an aerial bombing campaign. There was one section of the ride that was akin to a 30 minute long car accident and he was just snoozing away, all the while he was levitating out of his seat a couple times due to the bumps and crappy condition of the road.

My $40.00 junkyard bench seat from an 1988 GMC was a great addition to the truck. The standard seat, which was really well sprung by the looks of it, would be like sitting on a trampoline in some situations. The cloth GMC seat doesn’t have a lot of spring to it, so while you get tossed around in the cab from the bumps, it doesn’t try to throw you through the ceiling and it provides at least a little cushion. After spending a couple hours driving the truck, I would have been able to go a couple more comfortably.  

The biggest trip thus far in the truck was a jaunt of about 50 miles each way to the NEATTA tractor and truck show. That ride included some highway miles, which kind of freaked me out. I knew the motor would be singing just to keep the minimum speed covered on the highway, and of course my mind was thinking about every hose, clamp, and adjustment I had made over the last couple years in fiddling with the truck. I have confidence in myself, but there’s always that little voice in the back of your head thinking, “I should really be prepared for anything here!”

On the highway, the truck was easy to drive. My father in law paced us in his late model Ford truck and came out with a speed of just under 60mph at 3,000-RPM. We weren’t interested to see how far we could push it before the motor blew, and that number was just fine for us. We were being passed by other traffic but it certainly wasn’t like we were tied to a stump or something.  

The truck keeps up with regular secondary road traffic well and does not impeed anyone as it zips along. I will admit that first gear, while generally useless, is a perfect tool to use if you have a jackass on your bumper. Starting off in first gets the truck moving to about walking speed before grabbing second. If anyone is stuck behind you at that point, chances care they’ll be annoyed.

As one would imagine the truck draws a bunch of attention as it cruises along. Lots of older guys have shared stories with us about C50 dump trucks, flat beds, and other configurations they have owned over the years. Kids and dudes in pickup trucks normally have the best reactions, which are always stunned smiles and thumbs up. 

The Chevy 292 is loved almost universally by fans of old trucks and more than a couple people have told us that they dig the fact that the straight sixer is in there instead of a V8. Don’t get me wrong, I’d jam a 409 in the truck quicker than you could say “giddy-up” if I had one and the money to do it, but I don’t and I don’t. There won’t be a 350 heading into that engine bay so long as I own the truck.

Fuel mileage is working out to be in the neighborhood of 10-12 miles per gallon. It is a rare occasion to see the engine pulling any less than 20-inches of vacuum, unless I’m into it deeply climbing a hill in fourth gear or something. The stumbling block is the gearing. Even in fourth, if the truck is going more than say, 30mph it is working to maintain that speed. Coasting, unless done with the clutch in doesn’t really happen because the gearing is constantly trying to pull the thing down. Essentially, you are always on the gas to maintain speed.

A while back I wrote another column with the title “The Real McCoy”. In it I said that people had made a lot of legitimate suggestions to modernize and improve the truck but I really wasn’t interested. I bought Goliath for a few reasons, but  the main reason was that I wanted a big, old truck that rode and drove like a big, old truck.  I am proud to say that after driving it for a couple hundred miles, I am sticking to my guns on this topic. I get a lot of enjoyment out of thinking that a guy was driving this truck the exact same way I am now, except he was doing it more than 40 years ago. Yeah, it would be cool to go 70 on the highway, and it would be more comfy to bag the suspension and drop the truck, but let someone else do it. Goliath is what trucks were. Rough, crude machines that were pressed into work service. Styling and creativity were not hallmarks of truck owners in the early days.

There’s still a bunch of work to do on the truck. I need to fix the license plate light, repair rust holes in the doors and patch a small hole in the cab corner. Oh, I also need to get my state inspection sticker. The problem is that I am having too damned much fun driving it!  

As I’ve said in the past, some of my earliest and happiest gearhead memories involve riding shotgun in an old Ford F600 that my grandfather drove for the family business. To know that my kids are having much the same experience is pretty cool to me.  

So long story short, the truck is slow, it rides like an over sprung dump truck, gets pretty junky mileage, and we love it more than words can describe.