I'll begin with how I started thinking about purchasing this truck. My wife and I had attended the Hershey Car Show about 30 years ago and she never stopped wishing to own a 3100 Chevy truck. After many years of messing around with old cars and hearing about an old truck pretty often, I kept remembering where one might be.
When I was in high school in the west end of Richmond, Va in the '80s, one of our neighbors in the old neighborhood was driving this 1950 truck as his daily driver and working on it on a weekly basis. So years and years pass by and in 2008, I'm working in the west end of Richmond and driving through my old neighborhood. I see Mr. J out in his front yard walking around the side of his house. I decided to stop in to speak for a minute. (I went to school with his boys and he remembered me.) I asked him what happened to his old truck? He replied that it's still in the back yard!
We walked around back to check it out. Half covered with an old tarp, it still had some of its black paint in a few spots, along with plenty of dents and rust holes. The bed wood was just about all gone and the cross bracing was bowed from years of wood hauling. The windshield was broken. It had been sitting there since 1995 when he stopped driving it.
I had to ask if he would sell it and his reply was very good to hear. He told me that he had planned to fix it up again. His neighbor use to build race cars and he was going to rebuild the engine for him. Mr. J was going to do the body work. His neighbor passed away and they never got into the project.
He said he had offered the truck to all three of his boys but all of them had families and none of them were interested in owning it and getting it back in motion. I told him I didn't know what to offer him for it. I was really being honest since I had never looked at any old trucks and had nothing to compare to it.
So I just threw out an offer of $800 and he said that was about what he had paid for it back in 1979. So I was about to become a Stovebolter and own an old rusty truck.
My friend and I went to town to get it the following week. The backyard was just big enough to get the tandem trailer in there. We were not able to get it up on the trailer due to only one wheel that would actually roll and four flats with stuck and missing valve stems.
The following week, I got someone with a rollback and we dragged the truck and a big pile of leaves up out of the yard. After seeing me battle to get this truck home, Mr J stuffed a $100 bill back into my shirt pocket to help cover the towing. I tried to give it back but he insisted I keep it!
I was planning to surprise my wife so I did not tell her that I was buying it. She was out of town on the day I was bringing it home and I couldn't wait so I told her about it. This was when she shocked me by saying "Don't buy that thing." I couldn't understand why she was saying that since she had pounded the thought of a 3100 series pickup into my head for years! She really wanted a 5-window but this one was not. However, she was suggesting not to get it because she knew I had way way too many projects that never seemed to get completed and she didn't think this one would either.
After it sat in the yard for about three weeks, I made room in my barn and dragged it in out of the weather. There it sat for about three years. In 2011, I went to an old field day of the past event with old machinery and vehicles and decided that day that it was time to drive the old '50 for the first time.
I went and bought a new 6-volt battery, points, condenser, and spark plugs and started getting the '59 235 ready to spin over. I pumped a little oil into each cylinder after discovering that the engine was not frozen. I got fire but no fuel. After a new fuel pump, a piece of hose dropped into a beer can full of gas, and a shot of starting fluid, it fired up and ran for about a minute.
I strapped a one gallon gas can under the hood, placed the new line into the can and took my first ride on the farm. It was tough to find second gear on the three-on-the-tree shifter, but I managed on the second attempt and was shifting to third when the ill feeling about how in the heck I would stop came to mind. The brake pedal was flat on the floor! It ran pretty well considering it was only running on 4 cylinders that day. I didn't even know this thing was a lot different from the '70s and '80s cars and trucks that I had experience on.
I spent the next three-plus years taking this truck down to bare metal and back together. I didn't do it right and would work on it so many hours continuously that I would often leave the project with frustration and cussing it like a smashed finger. My stubbornness persevered to see this truck get back into one piece.
Finding Stovebolt while hunting for parts was a big part of completing this truck. I'm pretty sure that this truck would have been shoved back into the barn without the details, advice, and terrific stories I found here to keep me inspired and moving forward.
I never really planned to make it look like a hot rod ready for a car show. I was originally planning to paint it myself but I wanted the original black paint color back on it and decided to go all out to get it right.
It has power disc brakes added using the original pedals with the master cylinder mounted under the cab. The 1959 235 has been bored with new piston, all new valves, hydraulic lifters. and a custom cut cam shaft for a little more power. The transmission is original, along with the torque tube driveshaft and rear end. The bed wood is walnut that I had milled to original specs. It now has a 12-volt system and a tremendous amount of stereo system components to make the slow cruising more enjoyable.
I have had the pleasure of getting to know the
ODSS fellows over the past several years and I am always ready to meet up with them for more good times.
Jim
