1979 Chevrolet C70 Conversion to OEM Air Conditioning

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PTO is installed, awaiting hydraulic pump which will be bolted to the flange.

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Jon Wickham & Associates is making good progress on getting the bed installed.

[83GMCK2500]

Excellent! How long is that deck?

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It is a 21 foot bed. In the pictures it is moved back about 3 or 4 feet from the cab. It will roll forward to within 4 inches of the cab.

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More pictures of progress by Jon Wickham and Associates installing the rollback wrecker bed. The first pictures shows them installing the wiring (had to add additional wires in the traveling loom for work lights. The second picture shows the bed rolled all the way forward for the first time.

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Another picture of the progress:

[Andy4639]

That sir is a cool truck! You should get many a thumb's up with this rig!

[C10 - C90 Bill]

Sounds real good, but I never knew Dallas had that much traffic!!

(Most of our Hi-ways around here are 2-Lanes).

[jumpsoffrock]

That video is the last straw.

I f&@*ing love your truck. Jealous as all heck.

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Originally Posted by jumpsoffrock

That video is the last straw.

I f&@*ing love your truck. Jealous as all heck.

Thanks!

I was in California a couple of years ago and a salvage yard North of Modesto had one of these for sale. It was red with tilt hood. They were asking 5k for it and claimed it had a fresh motor. As I recall it was a 5 sp tran and 2 sp rear. It was a cab and chassis only and was parked behind their building. It was a self service U-Pull type junk yard, they also did vehicle maintenance and repair.

I would have bought it but it was too far away for me.

[MJN]

The truck looks and sounds great! Keep them RPM's up though, those 53's were made to scream and will run better and longer that way.

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Jon Wickham & Associates got more work done on the rollback bed installation. The rear underside of the bed had some damage which they agreed to repair.

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Incredible work they are doing restoring it to original condition. I doubt Jerr-Dan welds would have looked that nice!

[C10 - C90 Bill]

Truck looks great.

Should provide many, many years of great service.

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Thanks Bill. I will post some better pictures when I have a chance. The toolboxes are real nice, a great addition to the truck.

[Katrina/10]

The truck looks great, and now it has a useful function again! Did you solve the wheel balance problem?

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Have not solved the wheel wobble problem. I talked with a local shop familiar with these Dayton wheels, going to have them align the rims. Also going to change the rear rim spacers to 3.75. It has 4.0 now. The narrow spacer will get the wedges closer to the hub which will help with the wobble.

[Katrina/10]

I'm sure you'll get it figured out. Hopefully get some highway use!

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Had to use the truck today to recover my Suburban. My son Seth called and the burb had quit on him. It appears to be an electrical problem. Given the location where it was parked, we just pulled in on the bed backwards (it was raining). Weight distribution would have been better to load it going forward. The truck did not seem to care about the distribution, it handled the load well.

[C10 - C90 Bill]

It's nice to have a Roll Back in the family.

Especially a nice one like that with a great engine to boot.

[jumpsoffrock]

I know this may sound elementary, but I had a set of ultramega OLD tires on my truck and it wobbled pretty bad and was worried about something serious. My wheels were at the time normal hub widowmakers.

Got new tire on modern tubeless rims and the truck is fine.




I have also found that when using a 9k lbs truck to pull your friends 5k lbs van, it does not care that he steps on brakes or hits a curb.......lol.......it pulls the damn thing come hell or high water.
The weight distribution hardly matters with as much as that truck probably weighs...

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Did you convert from Dayton style to Budd wheels? I have new tubeless 11:00 22.5 rims and radial tires. My old rims and tires did not wobble (bias ply), however they had flat spots from sitting for 20 years. I spoke with a tire shop and they seem pretty confident they can install 3.75 rim spacers and align my tires which will fix the wobble problem. I did not plan to use the truck before getting this done. This was an unplanned deployment of the truck.

[jumpsoffrock]

No, it had conventional bolt on wheels, and still does today. I really hope it works out to be easy, but it sounds like you already changed your wheels and tires, so I'm no more help...

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Unloading our Suburban. The rollback works very slick, an amazing tool! The Suburban rolled all the way off the bed using the winch to regulate the speed. Once on the ground I set the parking brake on the Suburban and then retracted the bed out from under it. Once it was clear, I lowered the bed and rolled it forward onto the bed locks. Way too easy. Turns out the alternator had failed, made a trip to O'reilly Auto Parts and it is back on the road again.

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Micah, my son at the controls.