[wild one]

I had always liked the 60-66 short fleet side trucks - just could never find one that I could afford. Whenever I found one in my price range they were soooo full of rust they usually looked like it had spent the better part of their life below the ocean.

To add to that, I have always liked older panel trucks (regardless of make) - so in late 2005 I was at my union local hall talking to one of our Business Administrators and we get into a conversation about older cars. He tells me that he has this "old chevy panel truck" sitting in his side yard with a bad gas tank - he wasn't sure if it was a 66' or 67'.

I made the comment that if he ever wanted to sell it to let me know, I might be able to find a buyer. He then tells me "first twelve hundred takes it home" - I try not to sound to excited when I ask when I can stop by to look at it. When I am able to stop by to look it over, he tells me that he has had this truck for the past 18 years and had swapped out the original 250 I6/3 on the tree combo 10+ years ago with a "350/350 combo out of a 70 something wagon". He then goes on to say that within a year of completing the swap the gas tank develops a leak and he parked it - that was in 1997!

I then spent the next month talking to my wife about it (she was 7-8 months pregnant with our first child - no easy way to ask " Hon, can I bring home ANOTHER project - Pleeeease?"). She finally relented to my persuasive ways with the deal being I finish a long list of honey do's before I can bring the beast home. In May of 06 I finally had completed the list, and with many thanks to a patient seller I went to pick her up and towed her home the 70+ mile trip.

Once i got her home, I went through all of the receipts and found out that the drive line was out of a 1975 Impala, was actually a 400 cid small block, the truck had lowering springs already installed (a 2"/3" drop) and had 295/50-15 BFG's on the rear with 275/50-15's on the front and VERY minimal rust issues (mostly surface rust). I put a blazer tank in her, replaced a cracked exhaust manifold with a set of swap meet shorty headers, went through the entire brake system and upgraded to power discs then flushed all the fluids and started her right up!

Future plans call for a 1972 rear end swap with 3.42's and a posi, (to match the 5 lug front discs the truck now has) a repaint with some new steel wheels(think 15x10's on the rear with 15x8's on the front) and some other
minor details.

Here is how she looked when I first laid eyes on her: