I have had a "thing" for panel trucks since I was small and I finally got one to do as a father/son project in 1996. After months of looking we saw the add for this truck. We live in Orange County, California and we saw an add in the Recycler on the internet for this truck and decided we wanted to go see it. The only difficulty was its location: Phoenix, AZ . We did a "day trip" drive to go see it and decided to buy it. It was not in the condition that you see, it was an $1800 project truck. It was being sold because it was stored at a place that was being sold. The steering shaft was broken and the entire steering wheel through steering box had been removed. We went to pick it up on the 4th of July weekend and spent over 8 hours in 105+ degree weather getting it out and onto the trailer and loading the spare fenders, doors, hood, etc into the rental truck. ( Yes, we have spare panel/suburban front and rear doors as well as rear fenders, although they are not in the best of shape. ) We had to decide if it was going to be kept stock or modified, but with almost all stock pieces there ( including a seemingly recently rebuilt 216 and new wiring harness ) we decided to keep it stock. Next was the usual accumulation of new parts, mostly from Jim Carter's, and finding a body and paint shop to do that work. It took a while to find a body shop that we could afford, even though I kept telling people that I wanted a "driver" not a show truck. The guy who ran the shop
did an eye-ball match on the color of the paint on the firewall and used a Navy Blue which is close to the original. We were trying to get it ready for our son to drive during his senior year of high school. Unfortunately, it wasn't ready in time. Now lack of money and time has slowed the progress to a crawl. Obviously most of the body and paint work are done. The front bright work is all new. The interior still needs work. The door handles and rear bumper need to be re-chromed and the transmission, rear end ( Patrick's 3:55 gears maybe? ) and suspension need some attention. At least I think the suspension needs attention, because I don't think it is supposed to wander around the road the way it does.
One last interesting note. This truck was manufactured in Oakland, California, and seems to have been a California and Arizona truck all of its life. Apparently when brand new, a piece of plywood was cut to fit over the bed wood and it is( I think ) still original under that 50+ year old piece of plywood. When we cleaned out the interior there under the plywood was the original black paint in good shape. Some of the bed wood has splits along its length but is in great shape otherwise.
Regards,
Mike Mathis
