The Stovebolt Site Forums Project Journals Archived Journals 1952 GMC 1/2 ton Project - starting with a basket case

Well I had been picking some brains here for several months already so I thought I would finally post something and was encouraged to start a Project Journal.

A little background. I live in the center of Arizona in a little town called Camp Verde. I had sold one of my vehicles and wanted to start a new project. Having recently retired, I needed to stay productive.

I'd owned a 1953 Chevy 1/2 ton that I bought from my brother when I was much younger. I sold it to help with a down payment for our first house. So I have always been fond of this vintage of trucks.

I had been looking for a long time for something affordable to get started with but didn't have much luck. Last summer I finally found the 1952 GMC in Albuquerque, only 6 hours away haha.

So me and a buddy went for a road trip and ended up coming home the same day with a $2200 basket case. Knowing it was a long journey but I knew I wasn't coming home without it.

When I got it home is when I really saw what I was getting into. Like floor boards, inner and outer side cowls, firewall, and of course cab corners. Not to mention all the fender work and missing parts. The drive shaft was even cut in two.

You get what you pay for. I am about a year into this thing and it's now summer again and getting real hot in the shop so I'm starting to slow down some.

That's about all the words I'm putting down for now.

Paul

I did get the truck home safely. Only 1 flat tire on the trailer, and started doing some inventory. The truck bed was totally roached out, I found a replacement bed in Phoenix. The cab was pretty bad too, in my novice opinion.

Since I wasn't the one who started this project, I probably won't know of all the parts I'm missing til reassembly time.

Anyway, I thought I would tackle the body work first, get it into primer and cover it up.

I took some classes at our community College a few years back: auto body 101, auto welding, auto paint. It was a lot of fun and great learning something I had never done before.

I am not going to go through a step-by-step process that I did to get things done. Rather I am going to just give me a overview because there is a lot of information on this website that covers all these step by step processes. I think it's fun to read about particular challenges that people run across the so that's what I'm going to try to do. So doing the usual cab corners inner and outer cowls floorboard patches firewall patches and getting everything pretty close to being good haha I sprayed epoxy primer on all the body parts followed by several coats of heavy sanding primer.
I also wanted to tackle the front grill because it was really bad. I disassembled it drilling out all the rivets, did the body work on all the individual pieces painted them and then reassembled the grill using 3/16 rivets. I think it came out okay.

Welcome, good luck with your project. If you look at my project journal you will see that I am in a similar situation. I purchased a 1949/50 3600 in AZ late last year from a person that decided it was too much of a project (he had bought it from someone else who also decided that). Anyway, much longer haul from AZ to WI but I have been working on it and contune to make progress.

This forum has a lot of great experts that will help you along your journey.

I think the inner cowl panels where the hardest things to do. The replacement panels just didn't seem to fit well, a lot of cutting and tweaking was necessary. I think they may be covered during the interior process anyway, not sure yet.

When I first got this project I had noticed the drive shaft was partially cut through so I wanted to keep it semi original I found a 1950 Chevy Chassis with rear end motor and transmission to use. Since one of the Cross members was butchered pretty well I decided to use the 1950 Chevy Chassis also. Everything to me looked pretty much the same from one chassis to the other. After cleaning the chassis scraping wire Wheeling power washing priming and then finally painting I was ready to work on the rear end. I used Rust-Oleum super primer and protective enamel on the chassis 1 quart of each was just fine . Then I found out it had Huck brakes. Everything I read about Huck brakes said you had to realign the shoes but I found new shoes at O'Reilly's for $36. So to recap I am now putting a 52 g m c onto a 1950 Chevy chassis and rear end still using the 52 front end

New King Pins and all new brakes for the front end. Ordered the incorrect kingpins return them, got the correct kingpins cleaned everything up and install them, it really wasn't that bad of a job.

I reinstalled the rear end, doing this all by myself was a challenge in itself. Installed new shocks. I cleaned all the original brake lines, they looked to me to be in really good shape and the fluid inside was clean so I ran brake cleaner and air pressure through all the lines several times and reused them. Of course, new MC. It's finally starting to resemble a truck again, at least part of one.

I see you followed my advice and started a Project Journal. It’s both fun for you and informative for us. Good luck and I will be following your build!

Paul, on your recently done King Pin project, just wondering if you used a reamer thru the two bushings for the alignment. If so, is it something you had on hand. I need to do King Pins on both my 1950 1 ton, and the 1946 3/4 ton. That's the tricky part of the project for me is getting those bushings properly aligned. Both trucks take the .921 dia. pin, so I guess your supposed to use a .922 or .923 reamer. Where in the world would you get one of those? Any comments welcome.

Thanks,
Tom

Didn't use a reamer Tom. Everything went together nice and snuggly

The 0.921" reamer is for 3/4 and 1 ton front axles. I bought a brand new reamer on eBay last November when I re-bushed my GMC 152 front axle. If anyone needs to borrow it, $50 (refunded when it gets back to me) + shipping costs.

Yeah phak1. Nice to give back a little. I should have taken more pictures along the way.

The project came with a 292,which I didn't know till I got it home and ran the numbers on it. I thought that was pretty cool, not knowing the extra hassles involved.
So I reattached the bellhousing and transmission to mock up the motor mounts. After getting it into position I realized the front crossmember on the chevy chassis was a little different from the GMC member. So 24 rivets later, I have the GMC member mounted into the chevy chassis, using grade 8 bolts. I found that I could grind 2 slots into the rivets head, then air chisel the head off, then air punch the rivets out. Got it down to less than 2 minutes per rivet.
Welded up some chassis mounts using some roll bar tubing I got from a friend. Thought the tube would look cool.

It has been stinking hot, 106 today. Not much shop time lately. I did get the steering wheel done though. JB welded the cracks sanded it down, primered it, sanded it down, sprayed it with gloss black epoxy appliance paint.

A few weeks ago I thought I'd pull the head off the 292 motor. Come to find out the head is cracked. Located ahead in Phoenix for a hundred and twenty bucks. Took it up to the Machine Shop in Flagstaff had him do everything to it. Came out nice. Reinstalled it. Still have to set the valves. Bottom end looks to have been rebuilt, hope they did a good job

Haven't done much for a while, but I did get a few things accomplished. I do have the 292 motor installed and hooked up. I found that I did not have to cut or modify the cross member for the transmission there is enough clearance. I may have to fabricate something for a transmission mount, but a friend of mine said I may not need that middle Mount, that the end transmission mount and the motor mounts are enough. I had to modify clutch linkage to get the setup to work properly the fan clears the radiator even though the 292 is longer than the 235 because in the GM the radiator mount is farther forward than the Chevy.

I got my exhaust system installed last week. Because I'm using a 292 engine, I bought a kit for a 67 C10 with a 292. I modified it to work on my truck I had to weld across a piece in for the center hanger and cut and reroute the pipes but I think it came out okay. It was 1/2 the price of the kit for a 235 too.

Today I got my engine started for the first time, that was an exciting moment. Didn't get it up to temperature but let it run for a couple minutes. It purred

Looking good and congrats!

That first time the engine runs is always a milestone on a project like these old trucks.

Congrats. The next milestone wil be the maiden voyage.

I have a problem where if I don't see some kind of large scale progress, sometimes I start feeling discouraged. So, my wife and I went and picked out paint together a couple weeks ago. Originally I was going to go with a light creamy color with black emblems, and running boards. The wifey just couldn't handle that and talked me into a fancy color. I'm calling it burnt orange. In bright light it looks more orange and in dimmer light it has reddish hues. I like it a lot. Painted the interior a metallic grey. I am still going with the black emblems and boards. I was going to do the cream color in hopes of it not showing quite all the body work imperfections, but oh well. It's gonna be a driver and will be getting dinged up anyway.

We have only 2 days of 70s weather left for this fall season. We are getting rain day after tomorrow and then it gets cold for as long as my weather app goes out. I wanted to get the cab painted so I would have it to work on during our winter. Can't wait to get it mounted back on the chassis.

Looks great, I know what you mean about getting the cab back on the chassis, I only have mine in primer but I did mount it and hope that I can paint it in place.

Wow! Love that color. Nice job!

Looking good! The cab will keep you plenty busy for quite some time!

Well I managed to get the cab mounted a while back. Having a lift made it seem an easier task. I'm not very good at documenting all the steps but I haven't been spending a lot of time on it either

Had to do some fanagaling to get the carb linkage hooked up using the original gas pedal setup. Many beers and lots of staring at it helped

After reading lots of threads on insulation and what guys have been using I decided to use some peel and stick roof stuff for behind seat. I found 6x8 indoor/outdoor carpet at Lowes for 25 bucks, it went with the interior color great. Probably use it on the floor too

Painted the floor with some Rust-Oleum high gloss protecto paint. I bought a quart of it and just brushed it on with a disposable brush, I figure it's going to be mostly covered up eventually anyway. Didn't want to buy a new transmission cover so I fiberglassed the rust holes in it, I know that's cheating but I'm on a budget, well actually my budget is blown. Got a gauge installed, it's actually starting to look like a truck now.

Gas tank installed. I think I may cover it with the same material that is behind it.

Bought a headliner from Classic Parts. It took me and a friend about 30 minutes to install it it really wasn't that bad. After reading all the stuff about installing headliners I had drawn a template off of the ones I bought just in case. I read that it was better to go from the front to the back but I did the opposite we put in the rear piece first and slipped in the front and it was pretty simple

Well after several attemps of trying to put in the rear glass in, and breaking it, I opted to call the local glass guy to have him install it. Since he was here I had to do the windshield too. Money well spent.
"Man's got to know his limitations."

I made the clips to cover the gaps in the windshield molding myself because the chrome ones that you can buy we're so darn expensive. Use the metal from a stainless pie cutter, they polished up pretty good

Built a battery tray from bed frame material and mounted it in the engine compartment. Didn't want to pull up carpet every time I had to access the battery.

Oh and I got the windlace installed a couple months ago. Man was that a pain. I read a lot of threads on doing it, one of the best suggestions was taking a small piece of it and running it through the channel before trying to install the windlace. That was a great tip cuz I was able to find all the problem spots. I slid it in using much soap on the passenger side but the driver side was too close to the dash so I used the blunt tip screwdriver approach and pushed it in all the way around, I think that ended up being the easier of the two.

Thanks to the help of Tophat, I was able to get seat cushions from him, and Jethro in VA I was able to get seat tracks from him. I opted to pay the extra dollars and have a professional upholster cusions, and they came out really nice. He also built matching door panels. I bought seat belts from seatbeltsplus.com, and made brackets to bolt them in using suggestions from other threads. The tracks were from an earlier year and not sure about the cushions either but managed to make everything work

pauld,

That is one beautiful seat!!! Super well done and love the seat belt additions too!

Dan

Wow, that's some very nice work! Looks great!

Actually pulled the beast out of the shop on its own power. Have to work a little more on the brakes before a test drive.

Brought the bed into the shop, already found a major issue. Very altered bed. Going to have to get creative to be able to ever mount it. I knew someone put a metal floor in it but never looked at the under side

Glad to see you back at it. Your truck looks amazing and congrats on moving her on her own power,

For those looking for a little follow up on the bed dilemma, Paul has a great thread started in Making a Stovebolt Bed, "Done with the cab; ready to start the bed: questions begin!" Great input with lots of photos!

I wish I had before pictures of the doors but I sure like the after pictures. The guy that did my upholstery made door panels for me and then upholstered them. I made door pulls out of 3/4 inch steel tube, they are very sturdy

Oh wow. I do like those door pulls. I have to pull on the door *somewhere* and not use the window or regular handle to open the door. It'd be neat to have a pull up top, too, to help me pull into the truck.

I ended up having to get another used running board because one that came with the truck was so roached out I could not use it. I got so tired of messing with surface rust, so I took the two running boards to a guy who sandblasted them and then powder coated them. I scored four brand new tires on Chevy rims from a guy who pulled them off of a Jimmy, for 300 bucks, I left the tires on sanded the crap out of the wheels and then painted them with a single stage enamel, the same enamel I used on the grill and trim. I was able to polish up all the lug nuts and reuse them

Yes, that pull is very useful helping get up into the truck

Mounted the front bumper today. The bumper was broken at the far right mounting hole, cracked completely off. I cut 4 inches off of the good end and welded it to the broken end and reshaped the cut end. Having to drill a hole through that bumper was tuff, I don't know if it was the steel and weld combined or what. Got through it with a$15 1/2 inch carbide tipped masonry bit.
The bumper is 4 inches short on both ends, still looks good I think.
Need to come up with some sort of apron now.

That bumper looks good. Not surprising you had trouble drilling it. Original bumpers are high carbon (spring) steel and are tougher than woodpecker lips (to hijack one of Jerry's expressions )