Quote:
Originally Posted by pjmoreland
I suspect my truck was a fleet vehicle too based on the drilled out rivets on the door jamb, the CalTrans 516 orange, no radio and idiot lights. My drivetrain was a little more 'standard' though with a 307, although it did have a Powerglide. Is your cigarette lighter from a 67-72 truck, or is it from some other vehicle? I've never seen one with a white center.
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My cigarette lighter has the normal deluxe stainless steel center. ''In The White'' is a gunsmiths term for unblued metal. It's GM-style Counterparts 68/72 piece from Desert Auto Parts, a local Tucson brick-and-mortar shop who carried parts for '60s/'70s muscle cars and classic pickups. Sadly, they folded, driven out of business by on/line shopping.
I think my Stepside was also a CalTrans truck. Although anybody could select 516 Orange. The PO told me he was a sergeant when he bought it from the Catholic Chaplain at MCB Camp Pendleton, Calif. The Padre had orders for 'Nam, and advertized in the base newspaper for someone to take over payments. So he bought it. A few years later, with the Arab Oil Embargo, the price of Gas jumped. His then pregnant wife made him sell it to buy a Toyota. [He wasn't too happy about the deal.] I was a civilian --just graduated from junior college -- when I bought the truck from the former Sgt. For my own reasons, I wound up joining the Marines later that year.
I still have the plate under the VIN plate. It states something like: ''This vehicle has been furnished to the dealer equipped with the latest safety equipment as mandated by Federal regulations...''
Besides the idiot lights and no AM radio, my truck had once had a radio antenna or amber gumball machine in the center of the roof. Holes from long-gone cable clips trace a track across the upper rear window edge, below the floormat to under the dash. A rubber grommet in the hole still does not leak.
How the Padre came by it is an untold sea story. It was only 5 years old when I bought it in 1973, and the sergeant had it a couple years.