1962 Chevy Delivery Truck

	Owned by Sal Hathaway "SALaMANder" Bolter # 19074 Wisconsin

From Sal :

I wanted to send in my Stovebolt story for the Gallery. My new ride is a 1962 mid-sized Chevy, aluminum bodied, package delivery or "step truck."

I have been wanting to do a mobile work shop for some time now and I had a lot of opportunities to take the plunge and buy the type of "old" vehicle I was looking for. I was able to come up with the money the guy wanted for this thing after I saw it advertised on Craigslist. The second I saw the pictures, this was yet another vehicle that I said to myself "I can afford that..." but generally that was about as far as I've ever gone.

A few weeks back now, my Grandfather passed away and left behind all of his "stuff." Unfortunately, the one thing I miss the most from him, he took with him when he left this world ... his stories about the days of working on old cars. You see, my Grandpa wasn't just a body man ... he was a Father... of 12. He was the top dog in the body shop at Nickey Chevrolet in Chicago but he preferred to spend his time in the machine shop.

My Grandpa, Ed Czupowski, painted a LOT of cars in the midwest. Pictures never do justice and the photos I have are 20 years old and are not helping the cause.

Anyway ... I was around when this guy was polishing blobs into gold bricks. I use the term "polishing blobs" because he, like me, was a frugal man and could see the value in the satisfaction of "fixing" something or even better "fixin' it up."

As I remember, Grandpa never seemed to run out of elbow grease! This man turned out some amazing work in his day, even helping the Packard dealership across the street sell a few cars by doing some of the first "two tone" paint jobs seen in our area on ANY vehicles.

Before he passed, I told him I wanted to get a truck and load it full of tools and have a mobile "werk" shop. He seemed to like the idea. I told him that I wanted to follow in the footsteps of one of my heroes: the late Kenneth Howard, or ... Von Dutch. I have a book with some great pics of Dutch working in his converted metro bus from the 1970's and it was inspiration for me to do something similar.

After I came back from visiting my Grandfather just before he passed away, I decided to myself that I wanted to buy some "old steel." Well.. if you remember what kind of truck I told you I bought, it's not even half steel! There's a lot of aluminum on this truck and I'm starting to love that fact. If there's one thing that I have NO idea what I'm doing when it comes to cars, it would be body work. I'll turn a wrench all day but I have not a clue on the right ways of how to sand something. Turns out I don't need to worry about that now. The aluminum on this truck was freshly media blasted so it's down to the raw metal itself. [ View from the rear - view from the back ]

It's a cool look but I don't want to keep it like that. I do get to work on the kind of steel that I like though, THICK steel! Sometimes I like to think that I want to learn how to weld like my Father use to when he was around. I can do a good job welding on thicker stuff and I'll have plenty of opportunity for that with what I want to do.

I'm a member of the Klik Car Club, a local car and truck club in the Madison, Wisconsin area. The club has been around for about 10 years and has quite the stories so far, and I'm expecting many more to come. We have a focus on the mini truck culture but with more of a stylistic hot rod approach. We'll put it like this: these are trucks that even you guys might have some respect for. Granted we love our adjustable suspension (air ride, hydraulics, etc.).

I think I'm leaning towards laying this new truck on the ground. It's four wheel leaf so it'll take a bit of design but one of my best friends / roommate / fellow club member has a lot of experience under his belt and he can fabricate rather well, so we'll see.

This delivery truck isn't road ready, seeing as it needs a bit of break work along with new tires and flat glass. That probably won't stop me from getting to drive it around in our backyard at home! I love this thing. I had to crawl underneath it to look at the casting number on the block and at no point in time did I get any rust on my face or in my eye like most of the more recent cars I own and work on. It's pretty clean as you can see from the pictures.

I haven't had time to take good pics but you'll have them shortly after I'm able to take some.

I'm very excited to own something that I've been wanting for a long time. This vehicle has a lot of meaning in my life right now and I'm glad there is such a supportive group out there dedicated to folks like me that just want to have something cool and something unlike what every other guy has. I'll be spending some time on your site and wanted to thank you for doing what you do.

Keep up the good work.

Sal

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