3 weeks, 1300 bucks, and a whole lot of sweat

[Tx Firefighter]

Some of you may know, I got injured bad at work and had to take off for 4 months. It really knocked the wind out of my sails, with surgery and rehab 3 times a week and all that.

Anyway, as therapy, I decided to build a little project truck. I've been without a shortbed truck for near a year now, and it's not fun. It was time to build another.

I got a chassis from Matt67350 for 300 bucks. I took it all the way down to the bare frame and detailed it as I reassembled it. I cleaned and painted everything. I rebuilt the suspension and steering and installed lowering components too. It's got 5.5 inch front drop and 6 inch rear drop.

I used an old 1 ton cab and doors I had. I just shaved off the cab lights. I left the neat old sign on the doors though.

I got a bed from Matt too. The bed was a basket case. It's about the worst bed I've ever seen, but the price was perfect. I wound up taking it all apart and replacing the floor. I spent considerable time repairing all the rusted sections too. I burnt a whole roll of wire in the welder on this.

I used an old 292 inline 6 engine that I got from Randy (teeitup) in Kansas. He gave it to me as a core, but it's actually a real solid engine. I figured it would be a good one when I found out it came out of a school district truck. They don't usually drive much, and are real good about maintenance. I had to put a fuel and water pumps on it though. I had an HEI distributor in my shed, so I used that too.

The transmission is a three speed, that I rebuilt by scavenging parts out of 2 other transmissions. I basically combined 3 transmissions into one. I made the shift lever out of an old SM465 4 speed lever, with Mr Gasket mechanism.

It has a used windshield that I traded some welding work for, I installed it myself to save money.

The grille is an old billet grille that was broken in several places. That took me a whole day just to fit it and repair it. It's still not perfect, but it's a decent 10 footer. The front bumper came out of my junk pile. I used a torch and rosebud tip to straighten it as best as possible, then painted it Rustoleum hammer silver color.

A fireman I work for gave me a late model set of rallys off his 88 model truck. I used the centers and rings on early model rallys for a neat look (thanks for the center cap tip Matt).

Anyway, I tally'ed up the reciepts and it came to a little over 1300 bucks cash, and a butt load of horse trading to get this thing to where it is now. I figured about 150 hours of labor over the course of 3 weeks.

I call it "The Plumbing Truck" do to the logos on the doors. I don't know when they were painted, but it was so long ago, that the phone number is "ILL 1692". For you youngsters, that's "Illinois 1692". Phone numbers used to be that way about 30 years ago.

It's still not totally done. I need to round up some turn signal lights, put in the tailiights, and build a new exhaust system. It just has a 3 foot piece of pipe under there now.