Hello All,
I, like most, have a problem. Some may call it an addiction. Most of the time it doesn't cause any issues, but sometimes it flares up and gives me major grief and financial burden.
I am referring to, of course, looking at old trucks for sale -- be it on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, or just on the side of the road. Regardless of the condition, if a truck is ~45 years old or older something deep down inside of me says, "That's cool. You should look at it and maybe even think about buying it..."
Well, a few months ago I saw a 1948 Chevy pickup listed online and it was the coolest-looking truck I'd ever seen. Fast forward to last week and I managed to both save enough $$ to grab it and to convince myself that it wasn't completely idiotic to buy another old, junky project vehicle at this stage in my life. (Well, maybe I just convinced myself to ignore the latter point even though said point is most definitely a fact. But I digress...).
So, on a Tuesday night after work when I had somehow managed to convince one of my buddies to drive me ~2 hours and 150 miles away from home. I set out on a mission to buy that truck and bring it home.
From the get go I knew that the truck ran, drove, and stopped. Well, all I really
knew was that it drove up and down a gravel road under my control at 10mph and that the previous owner had told me he'd taken it into town a few times. I also knew that the headlights were the only functional lights, however my friend was going to tail me on the way back. All that was good enough for me, so I paid the man, hopped in the truck, strapped my bluetooth speaker to the steering wheel and turned on some Red Foley (somehow my music taste dips into times even older than the truck!), and got on the road.
By the time I was driving the '48 away it was ~6 hours since I or my friend had eaten. So the first stop was a burger joint 10 minutes down the road. Five minutes into the journey, I had learned a few things about the truck:
#1: It is the coolest thing ever.
#2: It only goes 43mph.
#3 The truck is alot less stiff than I anticipated and the shocks are terrible. (I later learned that the rear shocks are disconnected for some reason).
Nine minutes into that first leg of the journey I learned that the brakes no longer worked. I tried to stop at a stoplight and the pedal went straight to the floor. I tried the pedal three more times to almost no avail. I tried to parking brake for the first time only to figure out it was seized. So I did exactly what I hoped I wouldn't do: I panicked and held the pedal to the floor while my mind raced to come up with other ideas to not bump into the car in front of me at my speed of 2mph. (It later occurred to me that I should have tried jamming the truck in gear and shutting the engine off.) Well I got lucky and the brakes had just barely enough to stop me before I hit the car. So I took the left turn at the light, pulled into the Walmart parking lot, found a quiet corner, and parked the truck before anything bad happened.
At that point my nerves were a little frayed and my dreams were close to shattering, but while my buddy grabbed food, I decided to check the master cylinder. After five minutes of searching, I finally found it, and lo and behold it was completely empty.
A little bit of brake fluid and what felt like a million pumps of the brake pedal later, and the brakes were feeling more solid than ever. They still need to be adjusted, but after a pump or two, they firmed right up and stopped the truck. I won't say they stopped it well, especially compared to my 2005 Dodge or even my 1966 Jeep, but they do stop the truck.
After burgers, it was time for the real journey to begin. The interstate was not an option (obviously) and the interweb mapping websites told me the trip home on backroads would take three hours, so I foolishly estimated four hours.
The actual drive home went pretty well. Other than the drive taking six hours instead of three or four, my accidental pulling of the apparently very sticky choke cable while tying to figure out how to open the cowl vent, and the rear ladder rack bar trying to fall off of the camper shell, it was trouble free, reasonably comfortable, and a boatload of fun.
I made two gas stops and made around 8mpg, but the truck has carb issues which I'll go into detail on in a later post...
On the second gas stop it was starting to get dark, and I still had no marker lights. So rather than use skill or intellect (I have neither) to whip up a marker light or suitable alternative, I took my LED-converted 2D Maglite flashlight, wrapped a red pair of shorts around it, turned the light on, and taped it to the rear bumper. It was total garbage, but my buddy reported that it worked well, especially on the dusty dirt roads I was to hit later in the trip.
Although it did take six hours, somehow the truck made it the whole ~150 miles back home under its own power. I was quite impressed by it considering that the truck has been out of driver-duty since '99 and has only a made small in-town trips in the past couple of years. On another note, somehow my friend had the patience to sit behind me for six hours at 43mph, and I definitely owe him one for that.
Well, if you read through that whole bumble of text, I applaud you. If you just scrolled down to here, I can't blame you because I secretly do the same thing. Either way your patience (or lack thereof) will now be rewarded with pictures of my newest bad decision:
