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Where It Started

Yet another $500.00 vehicle added to the Hutchings family collection. The guy selling it wanted $800.00, but cash does wonderful things to a persons attitude. The catch? It would not move under it's own power. We had it towed home by our good friends at Two-Bit tow. In the initial teardown we discovered the output shaft on the manual transmission and the coupler in the marriage unit were roasted. This was no big deal to us as we wanted a truck with an automatic transmission anyway. The broken manual just made the decision to swap in a Turbo 350 that much easier.

Can you say "thrashed ranch truck" boys and girls? Looks like this poor thing has endured at least two really bad paint jobs and numerous minor collisions. After a real close look at the frame no damage to it could be found. If the frame on a truck like this is okay, just about anything else that could be broken is relatively minor to repair. 

The giant dent in the side came right out with a light tap. Some moron actually tried to fill that huge dent with bondo. It just popped it right out in about 5 seconds.  Now we have to grind off all that damn bondo. Argh . . .  

This truck came to us with a gooseneck ball, heavy duty rear bumper with a hitch ball and a receiver hitch. We should be able to hook up just about anything to it. Now whether the wimpy emissions choked motor can pull it is another story.

Loose Bed

There was a constant rattle from the rear of the truck that was very annoying. This was traced to six out of eight bed bolts being loose. All but two of the original carriage bolts had rounded the holes in the bed to the point they could no longer be tightened. Two of the bolts had to be cut out and the rest came out with a little muscle. Since most of the square carriage bolt holes in the bed had been rounded off I was left little choice but to use standard nuts and bolts to replace them. I got some that were ½" longer and used lock washers on both ends.  It cost about $10 for all the new nuts, bolts and washers and boy was it ever worth the trouble. I'd say the noise in the truck driving down the road was cut in half.