Your Trucks Past History

[Gray Ghost]

I am the third owner of a farm truck that was sold in Dallas at Johnson Chevrolet to a man in Wolfe City. The second owner drove it for years and gave it to his son. The son dropped it by cutting the coils [man that thing rode like a buckboard] and then lost interest. They actually traded it to a guy [who never registered it] for debt the son owed. I bought it from him in 2006 and the rest is history.

[vwdemon34]

My 70 c10 sb was a friends then myson bought it then I got and my son sold it to a neighbor he sold it to a friend then my neighbor bought it back then my son bought it from the neighbor and I bought it from my son and it aint leaving again.

[Ford Assassin]

I am the 4th owner of my '69 SWB Fleetside. It was ordered by Bakersfield's Kern High School District with white paint, heater, step rear bumper, rubber floor mats, AM radio, 350 sbc and a TH400 tranny (found the order sheet and build sheet). It never left South High's campus for its first 30 years of life. I don't think it was even registered during that time since it never left the campus (no DMV record of being registered before 2000). It was used for various tasks around the campus including landscaping and hauling equipment around. I knew about the truck since I went to South High as a student, but I was way too much into my '69 Chevelle in those days to pay much attention. In 2000 the truck was retired with a whole 50k on the clock, but those were the worse kind of miles with tons of idling I am sure. It was sold at a local auction for around $1000.

The second owner who bought it decided to 'customize' it by cutting the springs to drop the truck. Other than that he didn't touch it (thank God). In 2003 he parked it due to the TH400 losing a sprag.

In 2007 a buddy of mine noticed the truck in the second owner's backyard sitting in about 4 feet of overgrown grass. They struck a deal and my buddy paid $2000 for it a towed it home (he overpaid imo). He replaced the tranny and pretty much lost interest due to the motor being very tired and the truck being way too much of a project for him to deal with at the time.

Ever since 'Trucks' did "CopperHead" I took a major interest in these trucks. So in July of 2008 he and I traded his '69 C10 and some cash for my '74 K5 that I've owned for years. It didn't take me long to figure out that the valve seats were hammered, the bearing were very worn (low oil pressure), and it had at least one flat cam lobe. It wasn't a big deal since I planned on swapping in a LSx engine and overdrive tranny anyway.

Present day: I have since completed my engine/trans swap w/a 2005 5.3 LSx from a wreaked Escalade (37K on the clock) that is mated to a 2004 GTO 4L60e (13K on the clock). I have also replaced the very abused '69 front sheet metal with a decent '67 front end. Right now the truck is getting front disc brakes and a complete air-ride suspension that should be done this weekend.

[El Jay]

Wow! What a great thread.
Tipping my hat to you, 54Blackhornet (any Hudsons in your background, perhaps?).

Like many others, taking a real deep breath..................

I bought my '72 off a good friend of mine. I'm supposedly the 3rd. owner. I don't doubt that, as you will read.

According to my friend, the truck was originally purchased with a dealer installed, 11' slide in camper. The original PO and his wife used it for hunting/fishing/camping, etc. When my friend bought it it had about 26K miles on it. When he bought it, he got a ton of extra parts for it; a set of 16.5" wheels (with worn out tires), new radiator, new heater core, a case of oil filters; the list just goes on, & on, & on.
Well the city where he lives passed an ordinance that prohibited parking "campers & motor homes" in plain sight in front of their houses. So, he moved the truck/camper combination to a friend house up in the Sierra foothills; and there it sat, & sat, & sat.
Well the camper just sort of rotted away, so my friend just cut it up & hauled it to the dump, I think.
He then decided to bring the truck home. He got hold of me & said something like, "This truck is not running right. Can you look at it?" So, he limped it over to my house & I couldn't find any obvious problems.
I told him leave it, & I'll mess with it on a "time available basis." I drove him home.
I got it running. It had set so long there was a layer of "crud" on the inside of the dizzy cap and it was cross firing.
Once I got it running right, I'd take it out every few weeks & just drive it around just to keep things "exercised."
I had him reimburse me for a new battery because his was shot & I was tired of taking the battery out of my truck to put in his.
Fast forward 1 1/2 years, maybe a tad more......I broke a ball joint on my Chevy while cruising to work one morning; went home on the hook & grabbed my Plymouth.
A few weeks later, the Plymouth spit out its timing chain.
I asked him if I could use his truck for a few days, He says, "Yea."
A few days later I ask him to sell me his truck. We haggled a couple of days over the price & I bought it.
The sad part is, he'd offered it to me before when it was up in the "foothills", but I didn't have the cash available to buy it & the camper.
I ended up paying more for the truck than I could have gotten them both!
Such is life in the big city.
I bought it in '06, and it still has less than 40K original miles!

As for my '69; I bought it from my son when he decided to relocate to AZ back in '05.
As near as I can figure, it was an old Forest Service truck, or some such thing. The SPID show a GSA certification.

When he was in HS we spotted the '69, with a slightly higher than cab high, slide in camper, with a "For Sale" sign in the windshield.
It had a 292 with a "rock crusher" 4 speed.
As he was fixing to drive away on a test drive, I cautioned him, "Be careful. These trucks are notorious for being terribly 'under braked'"
In early '98, he beat a couple of valve seats into the head. Not his fault, he had a leaded motor in an unleaded world.
I just happened to have a 350 sitting in the garage. We had it rebuilt (we were going to do the rebuild, but the guy that did the machine work said something like, "I've done the machine work & you've bought all the parts from me. Do you want me to put it together. I'll do it for $100 & guarantee it for a year/12K miles." Call us when it done, Dude!!!!!!

Strangely enough, right after we got the engine stuffed in, it was time for NASCAR down in Fontana. I asked the kid if I could use his truck/camper for the weekend (How's that for a twist?) Jerry & I actually did a slow cruise & broke in the engine for him. It was that new.
The kid said, "Okay, but NO drinking in the truck!!!
Jerry & I had a good weekend.

Them's my stories & I'm stickin' to 'em!

BTW: SPID from the '72.
And the build sheet for the '69.

[CG]

No cool story about my 71 K20's history. Neighbor across the street bought it new. They retired and are now giant motorhoming it. Made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Drove it 100 feet across the street from his house to mine.

I do have all of the original paper work for it. Thats kinda cool.

[GOPAPA]

My 72 hasn't much history for me to tell as I only could go back 2 owners . all I know is that it was painted
purple and was refirred to as the purple people eater,,???it had a 350 /350 in it .

The guy I bought it from had it cab off and painted . And also had a 402 Chevelle Motor rebuilt and installed .. and a 350th beafed up and installed ..

Since then i have been buying and putting pulleys and pumps, alternator, tilt steering wheel and rear gas tank in it. window rubber , new glass .
I have all new lights ,bumpers , grille ect ect ,,$4000 worth of new stuff to put on it but waiting for summer and warmer weather ,,plus some one who knows motors better than I to help me get it running .. It only has 4 hours break in on the motor as she sets..

Its painted Black Cherry Pearl metalic . A 88-94 Chrysler color

I am having a hard time getting motivated to finish it ,, Our winters last to long ..

[70 Suburban]

ill keep mine short. I got my65 from the original owner. it was a dairy farm truck. then became the family shop truck ... till it sat under a tree. I came and say is just sitting there. The original owners son was running the shop said well Ill talk to my dad and we will see. this went on for about 2 years till I finally asked the right person (the dad) and he said well I don't know if it still runs... I parked it there in about 78.. I said wow. realy i would love the opertunity to fix her up. he walked over. with a 1/2 in wrench in hand... pulled the carb of the 283. rebuilt it in about 10 min. put it back on and started the truck... wow I couldn't believe it.. he asked if 500 was ok with me... I drove the truck home only able to use the emergency brake and clutch to stop... lol the clutch wasn't much help though. that was about 10years ago

[kgt]

My dad bought mine in 79(mine is a 68 1/2 ton 2wd) I went with him to look at it, I was 10, it was all factory with 69,000 miles on it, in 83 he gave it to me with 73,000 miles on it, i took it apart then and it hasn't been rained on or wet since. put it back together for the first time last year and insured it....kinda neat...

[longorange68]

I grew up in Rainier, OR out in the woods and I worked odd jobs and saved my money for a few years to buy it from my uncle George. He worked at a chemical fertilizer plant in the next town over and bought it from a guy who redid them on the side. I paid $1500 in 1994, and ran the piss out of her until things started breaking down, only like a high school kid can do... The motor was loose and drank oil worse than anything I have ever seen, and there was a lot of my tire tread all over the backroads of Columbia County. I graduated school and took the truck with me to Vancouver, WA where I used it to commute back and forth to crappy jobs in Portland. During this time I got some free body work from the cement median on Rainier Hill, and a little bumper work from a Cadillac on I-205. Sensing that I was going nowhere fast, I enlisted in the Navy and took off for boot camp.

I was stationed in Japan for three years and got into racing street bikes on road courses all over Japan. One fateful day I lost control on a road course outside of Nagasaki, and traded a little skin for pavement at 120 mph. Uncle Sam said I could head home to heal up if I paid my own way. My mom sold my truck for $900 to a guy, which pretty much paid for a round trip ticket.

I got out of the Navy in 2000, and put myself through school, landing a job with the US Department of Energy in Kalispell, Montana. In 2003 I moved to Longview, WA and ended working across the river from where I grew up. When I went out to do a meter run on a sunny friday afternoon, my supervisor told me to take backroads to kill some time. I stopped in my tracks on a road behind St Helens, OR when I saw an old truck underneath a cedar tree. I stopped by and talked to the owner to see if he wanted to sell it. I always had big plans for my truck back in high school, and always regretted selling it. He said it wasn't for sale, but I talked him into letting me go check it out. It was pretty dirty, and had a few rotten hay bales in the back, but I just about crapped when I saw the license plate. It was my old truck!!

He sold it to my for $1500 in 2003 because when he bought it it needed a new engine and a clutch. Wonder how those went bad... She is sitting in my garage right now about to get a 5.3/4L60E swap, and a new lease on life. I bought her back for the last time.

[mr48chev]

Years ago my uncle got my 71 in a trade for carpentry labor from a friend who owned a car lot. Over the years my students did a lot of maintenance and tune up work on it when I taught automechanics. Some of them got to know him well enough that they would see what he needed and just do the job and then tell me about it.
After he passed away and someone in my cousin's family ran it out of oil and blew a rod my aunt called me and asked if I wanted it. One stipulation, I had to haul off an 84 Olds 88 to be able to get the truck for free. That done it sat for a couple of years before I put the engine out of my sons totaled 79 Elkie in it and have been driving it for most of the past five years.
I counted one day and my uncle and the owner before him had drilled a total of 54 holes in it to mount various things that I will need to weld up some time in the near future.
The truck is due for a fresh engine and trans plus body work and upgrades in the near future.
I bought the 48 Chev for 75.00 in 1973 as a running beater with a 194 Chevy II motor and stock three speed and closed driveline.
It had a hand brushed paint job that pretty well came off at the local car wash, broken windows and jumped out of second gear on a regular basis plus 4 really sorry 16 inch tires.
I was living in McGregor Texas at the time and was planning on attending the Street Rod Nationals in Tulsa, Ok that year with my 23 T bucket. a couple of months before the nats I came to the conclusion that there was no way that the T would be ready and began a thrash that took at least eight or ten hours every day before and after work and on my days off.
I found a guy who had primo running boards, fenders, chrome seat frame and some other pieces from a truck he had sold and then got back after the kid who bought it bent the frame trying to do wheelies with cement blocks in the back of the bed.
That helped me get the body ready for paint while I would work on the truck in the morning, drive it to work, drive home and work a couple of more hours after work.
I had a friend do a super roll and pleat job on the seat, another friend sprayed the 72 Monte Carlo Gold paint. I picked up a set of 15x7 z-28 Ralley wheels from a coworker for 25.00 complete with rings and missing one cap.
The 54 Chev station wagon drums and backing plates came from the wrecking yard while the 61 Chev car rear end came out of a coworkers junker for 10.00. The grill was made up of bars from five different grills sourced from various wrecking yards and put together as a pretty nice chrome grill.
One of the prouder moments at Tulsa was going back to the truck and watching a kid have his photo taken beside my truck.
Since then it has been through a number of engines and transmissions, subframed and put back with a stock frame, totaled once. Chopped and subframed and then put back on a stock frame and now it is in the beginnings of going though another phase in it's life.

[spinning wheels]

I don't know much about my truck's history. It's a '72 GMC Custom Camper, with a 350/350 set up. Paint is stock Ochre and white with sprayed primer spots. The first time I saw it, was when I moved into my first home in '91. My neighbor across the street used to own it. It had these big chrome hubcaps that were supposed to make the truck's wheels look like big rig wheels. He had the original slide in camper sitting in the driveway.
He moved a few blocks away and parked the truck in his backyard, were it sat for six years, until I had a tow truck drag it out on flat tires.

I traded a '88 Ford Ranger with cracked heads. I parked the Ranger after driving home one rainy night. Somewhere on the drive home, the Ford lost all of it's oil. So at the least, it needed the engine rebuilt.

One day, the PO stopped by and asked if I wanted to trade the Ranger for his old GMC. It took me one second to say yes.
He told me that his truck ran, yeah right!
Since he was going thru a divorce, I was not able to work on the truck to get it out of his backyard.
When his soon to be ex found out, about our trade. She came over and demanded the keys to the truck. Since I still had the Ford in my driveway and not wanting to get in the middle of a divorce. I gave her the keys.
A few weeks later she was arrested, when she and her boyfriend were cooking some meth and the garage caught on fire. The truck was about 20 feet from the fire. With her in jail, the trade was on, but we no longer had any keys to the truck... AHHHHHH Thats what I get for dealing with two crackheads.

As soon as I got the title, I registered the truck in my name. Started working on it. Tearing out old yellow shag carpeting, removing an extra battery that had been installed in a very mickey mouse way. Found some crack making stuff in the bed. This truck had been used and abused, but amazingly the dash has not been cut up.
The PO had told me, that the heads were off a newer GM 350, and were designed for more power. I checked the casting numbers, they are stock '72 truck heads, most likely they were rebuilt with hardened valve seats.
The PO also told me it had a Turbo 400, but since it sat in weeds, I never checked until I purchased a filter kit for the trans. Doh, it has a Turbo 350.
I also took off his exhaust system and installed some Flowmasters 40s, that were on one of my project cars.
I rebuilt the rear brakes, that was a chore just trying to figure out what rear end and brakes this truck has. It has the BIG drum brakes
Installed new shocks, Bilsteins up front, Ranchos in the rear. 4 core radiator, changed the piece of s**t steering wheel, put on some 16 steel wheels, an Edelbrock 1406 carb, a Petronix ignition, new gas sending unit. Replaced the stock brake booster with a 9" dual diaphragm booster, new M/S, proportioning valve, trans linkage.
I never could get the second tank to switch over, so only run one tank.
I haven't done much to her in the last few years, as I don't drive her much. I recently got a 700r4 out of a '88 IROC, at a pick-a-part auto dismantler, for $80. The IROC seems to have been modified, and the tranny had a B&M sticker on it. I need to open it up and check and see if is a B&M trans. Future plans call for a strocker big block, but might just settle for a freshened up 454 I have sitting in crates.

[scott's69]

Im the second owner of mine. Its a 69 that my grandfather bought new. He traded a 62 2 door implala and got $250 on the trade. Still got the invoice and copy of original title. I was his only grandson and I grew up in the front seat of that truck. Lots of sweet memories with him!!