The Stovebolt Site Forums The Parking Lot Big Bolts '52 Chevy Flat Bed Dump Questions

Over the years I've owned several Stovebolt cars and worked on countless other 216 & 235 c.i. Stovebolt engines back in the 60s while working as a mechanic during my college years. But 30 years ago my wife, Ann, gave me a birthday present that totally surprised me. She had done some horse training (her full time profession) for a woman who had a small farm up the Conejos River from our own farm in southern Colorado's San Luis Valley and the bill for her training was $200. The horse's owner said Ann could have her choice of cash on the barrelhead or clear title to one of her deceased husband's two old trucks. So Ann chose the latter option with the choice between a '57 Ford pickup and the '52 Chevy Big Bolt dump truck being mine to make. I had no problem figuring out which of the two I wanted!

Turns out the lady's husband was the original owner and the truck had been sitting in one of the farm's pastures for 14 years, since the death of her husband. I checked the truck out the day we picked up the title and as we approached from a distance all six 8.25-20 tires looked to be flat. But on closer inspection it turned out that they were all sunken in to the sod, nearly up to their rims but they all still had a modicum of pressure. It looked like I'd be able to inflate them to a modest, but drivable pressure in order to drive home. Next, when I dumped the contents of the fuel sediment bowl, I was amazed to find that, though the liquid had lost most of its color, it still smelled like gas! I disconnected the supply line to the fuel pump and the gas draining from the tank looked and smelled absolutely fresh, once some water drained off first. Ah, the good old days of tetraethyl lead and no ethanol! So on the day when we returned to retrieve the old truck, it took a long time for the little 12v compressor to air up the 20" tires, but they eventually got to 25 PSI and held there. With a brand new 6 volt battery installed and 5 gallons of fresh gas added to the tank, she fired right up in neutral and purred like a kitten.

However, when I went to put her in gear they would just grind, in granny & reverse, and the synchromesh wouldn't allow 2nd through fourth gears to be engaged. But the clutch pedal pressure seemed normal for a healthy pressure plate and the truck was still low mileage, so I reasoned that the clutch plate was stuck to the flywheel ... possibly by rust? That seemed to be confirmed when I turned the engine off, put the tranny in granny (I'm a poet!) and, with clutch pedal to the metal (still a poet!), the starter wouldn't even turn over. Each time I'd stomp on the starter pedal I could feel the old girl almost imperceptibly try to lunge forward. I was out of patience by then and stupidly did something I knew to be potentially very risky. With the engine restarted in neutral and at idle speed I gritted my teeth and quickly jammed the gearshift into granny, which killed the engine. But when I restarted the engine I found the clutch to be miraculously working normally. I may not have much Irish blood in me but I sure had the luck thereof that time ... that same clutch has been working perfectly ever since. Then the part that I had worried most about turned out to be a piece of cake. Using granny and reverse alternately to clutch and lunge forward and back it only took three or four cycles to pop the old girl's feet up out of the sod to level ground. Sure beat the heck out of trying to jack them free with a bottle jack!

After driving around the seller's farm a bit everything but the turn signals seemed to be functioning normally, so it was time to hit the road. The running lights and brake lights were all working so I correctly figured it was the aftermarket controller on the steering column no longer controlling the turn signals and asked Ann to lead the way at 35 MPH. Face it, even 30 years ago a lot of drivers didn't have a clue about hand signals. Having Ann lead the way turned out to be a good thing because when I hit the brakes for Antonito, CO's 25 MPH speed zone the master cylinder suffered a complete blowout and if I rear-ended anyone it would just be my wife and all I'd need to do was buy her a new truck. As for whiplash, I was still employed then and had excellent group medical coverage. But, as it turned out the one system I hadn't bothered to check, the parking brake, worked perfectly and both of our vehicles, to say nothing of our marriage, survived the scare.

Once home I decided that, while the tires still had plenty of tread, they were definitely not survivors. Fortunately, however, I was able to scrounge a dozen or so 8.25-20s in serviceable condition from family, friends and notably my younger brother, who has a ranch down in the Estancia Valley, east of Albuquerque, NM. Then my daughter, who lives just across the CO/NM border and at the time drove a school bus for the Chama Valley School District came up with a full set of brand new 8.25-20s that their mechanic ordered for their one remaining bus that used 20" wheels. That bus died a mechanical death before ever wearing its new tires and the school district simply wanted someone to take the 8.25-20s off their hands. Years later my brother told me that the Moriarty school district still had busses running 20" wheels and I got several serviceable used tires from them for $10 apiece. But they only ran 9.00-20s, which are too fat to run dual on my Big Bolt's rear axle so I had to fork out nearly $100 for my local machine shop to turn a couple of 5/8" spacers to give the 9.00s some air space between the two tires. I'm still running 8.25s up front so's to eliminate the rubbing problems.

My Big Bolt flat-bed dump has been living down at my daughter's remote home in the northern NM mountains, and she's pretty much decided that it's actually her truck. That's fine with me as she and her husband (a factory trained professional mechanic of Motown's Big 3) have a fully equipped auto repair shop on their small ranch and have been fixing the old girl up in addition to using her for hauling sand and gravel from the local yard. When I first got the truck I mostly just used it to haul off the mountains of trash that we inherited when we bought our CO farm to a local landfill. But after the turn of the century I picked up an off-grid piece of land just a few miles from my daughter's home, moved the truck down there and mostly used it to transport my sand and gravel needs while I built my log cabin there. It originally came with four foot high stake panels, as the original owner used the truck for transporting livestock. We've used the stake panels, lined with plastic tarp to haul a dozen or so cubic yards of sawdust from a local mill but they're sturdily constructed of oak and steel so at my age they're just too heavy to mess with, unless I have daughter and/or son-in-law to help me.

So on to my questions:

1. I know from multiple weighings at the gravel yard that with a 200 pound driver (me), short side & back rails, and a full tank of gas it weighs 7700 pounds so it should easily handle 3 tons and still be below its GVW. I've hauled a little more than 3 tons of gravel to my daughter's home with no problems but I can't exceed 2-1/2 tons when hauling to my log cabin. At 12,700 pounds with full throttle in granny gear and a running start it can just barely make it up a short (≈200 feet) stretch of my dirt 3/4 mile long driveway where the grade reaches 20%. The original factory data plate and the title both say that its Serial Number is 5VKB-1191 and lists its GVW at 14,000 pounds. The seller said that it was a 2-1/2 ton truck. Is there such a thing as a 2-1/2 ton Big Bolt? The 6 oak stake panels combined weigh about a thousand pounds, so maybe the original owner rightly considered it to have a 2-1/2 ton capacity in that configuration. With a full steel dump bed I'm guessing there's no way it could handle more than 2 tons and stay within its GVW. Does the 5VKB VIN prefix reveal anything about its model? Other thoughts on any or all of the above?

2. I had long been thinking of converting to 22.5" radials but Grigg's forum thread here on the subject has me second guessing that prospect. Would it be more practical to pick up slightly more modern front and rear axles at a salvage yard to replace my old girl's original axles and achieve tubeless rim capability?

3. As can be seen in the two attachments here, my Big Bolt isn't suffering too badly from skin cancer (rust) and most of what's present could easily be handled with my daughter's plasma arc and MIG machines. But there's one exception that's just horrendous. For a long time we didn't notice that the bottom rear corners of the cab were badly rusted. That, because the original owner had "fixed" the problem by laying in a temporary floor to those corners and then filling them part way up with concrete! Does anyone know of after market suppliers who can supply right and left rear cab corners for this truck?

4. Related to question #3, when I was in college and working as a mechanic our shop had a 1949 Chevy pickup that I often used and I swear it had the same interior space as my Big Bolt. Is the only body change between medium duty trucks like mine and the Advanced Design pickups just the larger fenders?

Any clarification you guys can provide will be most sincerely appreciated.