Owned by Stan Slawnikowski Jim's "SLAWNSKI" Slawnikowski's son Bolter # 32257 Romeoville, Illinois

1964 Chevy C-10 Utility Truck

"Montana"

More pictures of my old truck

Join the discussion about this truck in the 60-66 forum

From Jim :

We were looking around for a truck that would work for our son who was 19 and attending a local welding school - working full time and going to school at night. We kinda looked at the 60's to 70's era trucks, thinking that would work for him. Well, we saw this '64 on eBay and looking thru those pictures on-line, it clicked. We knew that would be perfect for Stan, especially with that utility bed.

The truck was out in Montana. We talked to the owner on the phone several times. He was good enough to walk around the truck with the phone and explain to us some of the damaged areas, etc. He never had a car shipped before, so I walked him thru that process. We sent off a check and I made arrangements for the pickup with a carrier. It was quite fortunate that the day the previous owner received the check, the shipper was coming thru and able to pick up the load. I think the PO was surprised how quickly and painless it all was ... us, too!

When the truck arrived, we power washed it in order to get a better look at what needed to be done.

Well, one thing lead to another. We took bolts off here and there to "clean." Before we knew it, the truck was completely taken apart. Everything was off it.

So, we had it completely stripped down. We took the cab down to the bear metal. My son had his chance to practice welding all over the truck!

The truck came with a good 292 ci engine. We completely sealed and painted it. The transmission was 4 speed with granny low. We cleaned it up and painted it.

We didn't do much to the frame but strip it down and power wash it. We painted POR15 over the entire frame.

The interior of the truck was pretty good. There wasn't much to do with the dash. I got a new bezel because the old one was pretty beat up. The gauges were in good shape; all we needed to do was clean them up.

We did all the body work and painting in the shop. A lot of the body work was with the floor and rocker panels.

In all, we replaced:

• driver and passenger lower rear fenders (behind wheel wells)
• driver and passenger inner fender braces
• driver side fender bracket (lower)
• driver side inner (50%) / outer rocker complete
• passenger side outer rocker components (just what was rotted)
• driver side lower A pillar (inside rocker)
• bottom or rear cab corners (small holes with hand made patch panels)
• driver floor section
• driver kick panel
• driver front cab support
• driver and passenger rear cab supports

That was it for the cab metal that was replaced. Of course, both utility boxes bottoms were rotted out so we pulled them apart. We got them clean, down to bare metal. We cut out and replaced the damaged parts with 16 gauge steel plate. Then got it primed and painted.

The wrinkly steel sheet of the bed was replaced with new 16 gauge plate.

We made the rear bumper out of light gauge metal framing members.

We never really planned on taking the whole thing apart. It just sorta "happened" as we started to get to the body panels that were bad.

"It's only a few more bolts then we can get to such and such, and clean and paint it," -- we said that a lot!

Back in August of 2012, we cleaned it up a bit and took it to a local show. After that Montana started her new life as my son's daily driver. It's a great vehicle.

We've had no real mechanical issues except last year, it ran pretty hot on a regular basis. We think we had a cracked head.

We ended up re-flushing the radiator. The original radiator was re-cored. We took it back to the man who did it he said it was packed.

When we first got the truck, I wasn't sure how it was going to hold up. I had a number from Craigslist for another motor and I happened to save the number. So, when we decided to pull the 292 last summer, I called the number (now the truck had been on the road for two years). The fellow answered the phone and was surprised. He said the ad hadn't been up in over a year. But ... he still had the motor!

We headed to Central Illinois, pulled the old one out and put the new one in. We didn't have time to clean it and paint it since this was Stan's daily driver and he needed to get it back on the road.

We are going to take the old 292 back to the trade school and let them see what they find. We did buy another used head, just in case.

As I mentioned we worked on Montana every day. We painted the walls of the cab one night because I didn't want to have to paint the top afterwards because I didn't want to overspray. That night went fine. The next day we came and masked everything off. I was painting the hood and I fell. I heard an awful sound in my arm and it really hurt. Plus, the paint in the gun dumped all over the place.

My right arm hurt but Stan mixed another batch of paint and I painted with my left arm. And we finished! Afterwards, I went and woke up my wife and said I needed to go to the hospital. Turns out I had three full thickness tears in my rotator cuff.

But ... I put off surgery, working as a "lefty" until we could get the job done. My son really came into his own there and I was proud and delighted. Everyone was calling me T-rex because I couldn't lift my arm all the way up.

We painted it steel blue and it looks really really good. We set up our own make-shift paint booth in our garage and shot it with a spray gun. We had plastic drops on all sides. We had ventilator fans going and used full respirators for breathing protection. We were very careful with the painting stuff!

This one picture in Photobucket of Stan driving the bare frame is what I use for my avatar since I think it's a cool shot. We only drove the truck once, when we first got it home - just around the neighborhood, for fun and to experience the whole truck moving thing. We did not drive it again until it was all finished. You can imagine how anxious Stan was to drive it (me, too actually!),.

From the time we got it home, to the time we got it back on the road, was only four months. We worked every night after work and every weekend.

Stan gets lots of comments when he's out in the truck. A few days after we got it all complete, he was driving it to welding school and someone came up to him, complemented him on the truck and offered him $12K to buy it as is. He came home and was a bit confused ... "How could I ever sell that truck?" I told him just because someone offered you money, doesn't mean you have to sell it. The man had given him a true compliment.

So Stan finished up welding school and he is a bone fide ... plasterer! (I am one and I teach plastering at the apprentice school.) He worked as a welder for a while but got a good offer to become an plaster apprentice. So, he took it! (Wow, more "like father - like son" ~ Editor)

This was fun and at times a frustrating process but we received a lot of support from our friends, families and Stovebolt through it all. Now my son and I have the memories and the experience we shared getting the truck to where it is and that's so much more valuable than the truck could ever by worth dollar-wise.

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