I have sort of inherited a project, my Brother in Law purchased a 57' 3100 with a 4" Chop on the roof , well I guess I get to do all the repairs. So some background on the truck. He found it on line and bought it after just a short test drive, I had asked him to wait a day so I could be there to help look it over that didn't happen. I am in no way claiming to be the resident expert on Task Force Trucks but I do know what is safe and is not.
The "Good, the Bad and the Ugly" are all represented in this build.
The Good:
- The paint is a pearl white, not to bad from even close up. The engine is a worn, smogged out 350 with a Holley, mild cam and an HEI distributor
The Bad:
- The chassis is a mess of welded up parts, an early Camaro sub frame from a gen 3 or 4 Corvette rear
The Ugly:
- Just opening the hood would have told me I didn't want this truck. The HEI is so tight against the fire wall that the cap was cracked. The carb was leaking, the wiring is a rats nest and the pulleys don't line up. All that before I looked under the frame. The front springs have 4 or 5 twist locks at raise them up, the brake lines are only mounted at the calipers and master cylinder. The transmission cross member is a piece of steel water pipe, the fuel line is several different pieces and not mounted either. The rear trailing arms have flat washers stacked to use as bushings, the rear leaf spring contacts the passenger side rear wheel. The bed is not even setting on the mounts. All of this can be seen just by looking under the truck, not even on the lift yet.
While I'm one of the first people to say I don't mind a Hot Rod truck I do at least what them to be safe. So as I expected he had already laid his money down (I don't want to say how much, just that it was north of 20K) the guy who sold it to him said "It's yours now so have fun".
I was elected to drive it home. The first thing I noticed is it had no brakes, NONE... filling the master cylinder helped.. a little. The worst is that when you hit a bump it changed lanes, not drifted but honestly changed lanes. It had a nasty vibration, anything even close to 40 MPH would rattle your teeth. We made it the 40 miles to his house just before it rained, good thing to because it has no wipers. There are many issues with the fit of the doors and windows as the chop was done by someone who had no idea of what they were doing, but all that won't kill you.
So I made it to his house and survived to see another day.
