Hello all.
I picked up my 9 footer right after New Year's last year(2019).
We were looking for an older truck and immediately fell in love.
Original drive train, mostly original sheet metal. I am sure it took a hard lick somewhere in there left front area in it's past. The dash on the driver's side has a little ripple in it and the driver's door just doesn't match the body contour and refuses to close tight although it does lock.
Started right up when we went to look at it, no smoke, no puddle underneath.

Born at the GM plant in Baltimore and raised on a farm in Virginia by an elderly couple, it spent much of it's younger days hauling various things around the farm. I found a couple of chunks of anthracite coal in the stake pockets as well as some bits of hardwood. Not a lot of time out on the road as it only had 59k miles when we got it. It was adopted by a younger couple with a teenage son in 2006 with the I tention of maybe restoring it.
Around 2008 it was trucked to Arizona and sometime after that the tie rod somehow got bent and it was shuffled off to the garage where it would sit for the next 10 years. I did check driveability as well as I could under the circumstances. 25-30 miles an hour required 2+ lanes verifying that it ran, rolled, shifted and stopped was the extent of that ride.
Needless to say we still had no problems making a decision and a week later we had it trucked here.

TIE ROD
What an adventure that turned out to be. I did considerable searching, even had a tie rod delivered that I was assured would fit even though I was fairly sure it would not. I got advised to go to an aftermarket conversion to a newer tie rod and end assembly but couldn't bring myself to even entertain the idea of going to an essentially smaller tie rod assembly on a 1-ton truck. I didn't believe that it would even work without a certain amount of modification which again I believe would weaken overall strength.

I considered going to a machine shop and asking them to manufacture one but wound up finding a solution by a little junkyard digging.
Length and diameter measurements in hand, I started looking under the front ends of the 1.5 and 2-ton trucks. 10 minutes in and WOOHOO!!!
'46 ton and a half Chevy with 20" wheels and without even measuring it, I knew I had my tie rod. $25 pull it yourself, <5 minutes from my house. Had already purchased new ends just in case I decided on giving a go at straightening out the bent one myself which I may still do just because.

1500 miles later runs like a top, still has some issues to clear up but so far so good.
More later.