I have been browsing here a few times, and decided to join so I could contribute some info now that I have a '65 c20 again.
(Mean Green) Grandpa gave me his '65 c20 in '87 and I daily drove it until May 2005 when I rolled it going to church. Was trying to avoid an accident and became the accident. The rear brakes locked up and I ended up rolling 2.5 times down from the freeway to the on ramp. There was a hub assembly for my jeep rolling around the cab with me, along with some other items that could have taken me out, but I had some angels riding with me that day. I bought another '65 c20 to replace it, and found out the frame was toast. Was going to do a body-off restoration of the replacement truck using the frame from Mean Green, but not having a garage, and the risk of parts walking away scared me away from moving forward on the project. 10 years went by and I started missing the sound of the old transmission and the feel of the old truck. I found one locally, and turns out I am the 3rd owner. It came with a 283, 3-on-the-tree and a Borg Warner Overdrive with 4:57 rearend gears. At some point the 283 was ditched and a L48 350 was installed. I had a crash course in learning how to drive the truck with the overdrive's freewheeling feature. Luckily I didn't crash, even though it felt like I was close a few times. The previous owner didn't tell me anything about the overdrive except you can't backup with it engaged, and how to engage the solenoid at highway speeds. After learning how to lock it out, the truck was better to drive in town, and having the OD on the highway was a plus. Had to rebuild the transmission because the bearings were shot, took off the carter afb carburetor and put on a quadrajet, swapped in front disc brakes, found a factory driveline to put in that eliminated a bunch of slop in the drivetrain. With having 2 extra trucks to source parts from, and having already bought a bunch of upgrade parts for Mean Green, this new truck is shaping up nicely. My next-up upgrades are adding c10 rear cab mounts, adding an HEI distributor, and adding headlight relays. The relay harness was another supposed ready to install kit, but it's not. It didn't require lots of modification to make it work, but it definitely needed to be altered.
So that's what I am and have been up to in a nutshell. This site looks like it has a lot of good info and good people. Looking forward to being here.
Shane
