1969 CST 10 Project

[ennisk1]

Two years ago my father in law passed away after a brief illness while spending the winter with us at our home in Florida. He lived in SW Colorado on some property. Before he passed he told me and my wife to give our oldest son his 1969 Chevy pick up. It has been in the family since new, having been purchased by his father at Reedman Chevrolet in Langhorne, PA. My wife has quite a few memories of this truck while growing up in Miami in the early '70's after her father aquired it.

We traveled to Colorado shortly after his passing in January 2010 to go through the ranch and I decided I'd take a look at the truck to see if it was worth saving and the expense of shipping it across the country.





The good news was that the truck had been in Utah and finally the arid high desert of SW Colorado since the late '80's. Therefore, the rust really was not bad at all. In fact, I was amazed at how solid it was. In addition, I discovered that it was a CST, with factory bucket seats with console. In addition, it has a 350 V8 with a three speed manual on the column. The paint was pretty much all original but severally weathered. The truck had been used all it's life and spent the last part as a ranch truck before it was parked about seven or eight years earlier due to a bad starter. I told my wife that it was in fact worth saving and that we could go ahead and restore it. As a side note, this is a pretty special project for her as it will never be sold and she gave me pretty strict instructions to get HER truck back on the road and looking good. We decided that we would be back out there again in June of that year and have the truck removed from the property at that time.

Upon arriving in June I looked it over again and made arrangements with a local shop owner (Scott at Alpine Auto Doctors in Durango, CO) to come get the truck, clean out the mouse nests, and hold until I arranged transport to Florida. Surprisingly, the brakes were not locked, the tires held air, and it readily moved from the place it had sat all those years. We took it as a sign that it was excited to have a new start! By the way, this was also the first time my oldest son had a good look at the truck....something that will be his after college.





While packing up household items and papers at the ranch that summer, my wife also came across quite a bit of original documentation. We have the original bill of sale, the owners manual, and the original protecto plate issued to her grandfather. A few months later, I arranged transport and the truck arrived in November of 2011. As I typically work on vintage Porsche's, this was something a bit different....actually refreshingly different. As with most projects, it has taken a little while to get started and it now appears that we are also going much deeper as the truck has now been completely disassembled. The chassis and suspension pieces were all sent out to be stripped and powdercoated. the body has been stripped of paint and all rust (which was not really that bad) was repaired with metal. The only replacement panels have been the rockers. The bed was the most amazing, it was sand blasted to reveal only a handful of pinholes around the very rear of the floor....that was it. I'll have pictures of that up shortly. Next step begins later this week which is to start putting the chassis back together and have it as a roller within the next several weeks.



I just discovered this board as I am in a parts accumulation mode right now and also making decisions on the direction of this project. We have decided to keep it fairly stock with the exception adding disc brakes up front, three point seat belts, 5 lug wheel conversion, some mild upgrades to the original motor, dual exhaust, addition of Vintage Air (a must in South Florida), and some type of period correct wheel and tire set up. This is a fun project and I'm really looking forward to the finished truck.

Keith