01 March 2014
# 3054

Owned by Gary Compton "50chevyWa" Bolter # 36800 Washington State

1950 Chevy 3100 1/2-Ton

More pictures of my old truck

Join the discussion about this truck

From Gary :

Well, I've been going through the Stovebolt site enjoying it all. So I decided to add my story and pics of my project.

This 1950 Chevy 3100 was my Uncle's truck that he bought from the original owner who bought it new. My Uncle needed a trailer and he traded this truck to my Dad in exchange for our farm trailer.

It was 1976 and my 14th birthday. My Dad knew I liked to tinker with this kind of stuff so he let me have the truck.

When we got it, it was not running ... but it was not so far gone. Dad and I did a little work on it and we got it running good enough for me to drive to and from school, and around the farm, for the next three years.

Back then, the truck was red and one of my friends from school called it "The Old Firetruck." I liked it!

I left the farm in 1979 and left the old truck parked there. Several people contacted me from the area wanting to know if I wanted to sell it. Oh no! My intention was to go back some day and get it and restore it.

My kids were familiar with the old Chevy truck and got me Tom Brownell's book, "How to Restore Your Chevy Pickup Truck" as a gift one year. That moved me a little closer to the "intension." Plus, my Son Kyle wanted to work on the truck with me.

My parents had also moved from the farm to Washington State. About five years ago, they went back to the old place for a visit. Dad rented a trailer and hauled the 3100 to their new farm in Washington. The truck sat at that farm for five years.

In the Fall of 2013, I had my appendix removed and was going to be laid up for a while. Kyle suggested we go get the Chevy and bring it home for something for me to do while recovering. In mid-October, Kyle and I went to get her.

The truck was pretty rust-free when sitting in Oklahoma. When I got it here, I covered her with a tarp. That turned out not to be such a good idea. We have so much rain here, the conditions were not like OK at all. As I took out the front end, I discovered a lot more things had rusted than I thought.

Dad had primered the outside so that helped some with the surface rust.

I had never done any restorations or anything like that before. My mechanical experience has mostly been upkeep of our personal vehicles. But I have always WANTED to do that, so that's why I hung on to that old Chevy truck for as long as I did. My kids getting the Brownell book was actually the "start of things."

One interesting thing I found out, after removing the headlight buckets, the truck was originally a dark green.

Kyle is my youngest boy of three. He is the most mechanically inclined. He's also read Brownell's book. He's helped me take the truck apart. We got the front end off. We hope to have it down to the frame by this summer and start on the rebuild then.

Kyle is in the Navy at Whidbey Island, so he's home every weekend. We work on the truck here and there. We haven't been able to do a lot during the winter because of the weather and the truck being in a carport.

Come summer, we hope to build a shop to work on the truck. So by next winter, we can work on it even more!

Will keep pictures posted in the album, and updates in the forum! Probably be posting questions, too!

Thanks,

Gary

-30-