The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk Things you found in your Stovebolt when you bought it ?

On my '53 5 window I found a '73Alberta Plate and in it I found 3 old coke bottles behind the seat , one with a long dead mouse inside it , also a newspaper dated Aug 8 , 1972 and in the glove box a few little wrenches , assorted light bulbs, a tax bill , phone bill , and a collection notice from a doctor all dated July , 1972 and in the headliner a 12" X 12" mouse nest and about 2 lbs of mouse crap scattered throughout , it's even on the top of the visor.

Just found the motherlode of mouse crap yesterday when i pulled down the headliner!! What a smell! Can't wait to pull out the gas tank!

dont be smelling that mouse poo dust... you might get the mouse poo/pee disease... forget what it's called, but it's a nasty way to die.

wore a mask when cleaning it up! and gloves!

Not my truck, but an abandon '49 GMC 2-ton I was exploring down in the deep woods today had three dead oppossums in it.

hantivirus? someone mentioend it earlier in this thread... also had a link to some information about it.

-W

My 57 3200 had an old delivery book from the original owner, he had a poultry farm, every registration slip, the original delivery reciept, the original jack (I think), the cross tire iron + a couple others, lots of broken glass probably the back window, a tin can wired over the top of the draft tube and a plug in the bottom ??? and 48 yrs worth of dirt, oil, grease... on the drive train...not anymore though.

**boing**

back to the top...

-W

i found a bent up nasty yellow handled screwdriver in one of the stake pockets, along with a bunch of rocks.

My '52 was a beautiful thing when I bought it... and then I started looking closely at the mechanics of the truck. Just yesterday I found some nails. Not a big deal until you realize that is what was holding the clutch linkage together. Of course I was more appalled at the bailing wire that snapped off when I touched it that was holding the brake linkage together. POs are scary!

Hmm, stuff in my first series... well let's see, a spare set of headlight bulbs, a house fan, a few packages of sandpaper, a Garfield phone, some old little kid's toys, pack after pack of cigarette boxes lodged in the gap where the headliner meets just above the driver's door, the list just keeps going like that. We also found some carpet that a previous owner had put in there. Lucky it was in there though, because it made getting the rat poop out just that much easier. To put things literally, you couldn't see much carpet in comparison to the rat poop. Also, we found the source of the problem, the rat itself. That was "pleasant", especially being 11 at the time and cleaning it out by myself. Actually there's an interesting story behind the rat. Since we kind of do the farm thing, we decided to get a shovel and "fling" the rat away. Unfortunately, the rat's tail was curled up like a hook. So, when we flung it towards the trees, which is where the predators go at night to hunt, it actually got it's tail curled up around a branch, sort of like those hiking clips that people put on their backpacks. Anyways, it hung there for about 2 weeks until either the rain softened it up, the tail broke off, or the wind blew it off.

My truck had only a few fuses, 2 bulbs and a couple of pens. What a fascinating read of the other posts though; amazing what was found!

1 penny in ash tray

approx a bushel of old wheat behind the seat.
an empty brake fluid can
can of Knock-er Loose
wood handle screwdriver

in the back?
a 900 gal (3 section) fuel/oil tank.. with winged caps

misc rolls of hog wire fencing
90 gal fuel tank w/stand and hose/nozzel
tolkiem model 39 gas pump

About $6 in assorted coins, 3 pges from porno mags, assorted chicken bones, a roll of surgical tape, a really nice foxtail hand broom, half a can of nasty wheel bearing grease in the left cab corner, about3 lbs. of Georgia clay in the right cab corner. The bed was full of glass block and broken bricks.

I found a large nest of Harvester spiders in the engine compartment and termites in the bed. lol...

in my 50 I found stamps, food stamps, tickes from many Fair's from the 60's,and asorted bolts in the glove box. I have yet to take off the seat so we'll se what i'll find.

Under the steering column, I found an auxillery radio mounted to the firewall. A bit smaller than a bread box, but heavy, with tubes and ports for cable tuners that threaded back up through the dash where there original radio would have gone. No cables though. Don't know if it worked.
I traded it for a swivel Kleanex dispenser

4 different squirrel nests and about 2 dozen spent 22 shorts…..I wonder who won ??

Well here goes...

1992 Corvette
$1.25 in the '92 vette. Had to take the drivers seat out to unstick the handbrake and found it.

1989 Phord Van conversion
Bought it new so you wouldn't expect anything to be in it. But found a 3/8" socket left over from the conversion.

1962 Studebacker Post Office Van
Bought it from Government auction in 1970. Converted it to a camper. In the conversion found bulk mail undelivered down between the dash, a big flat area, and the side of the van.

1959 "Bugeye" Sprite
Found it in 1974. About a hundred pounds of bondo on the back of the car.

1980's dually Military 1.5 ton panel truck.
It was the best and not even mine. My neighbor across the street, when I lived in Merritt Island, FL, used to collect and restore old military vehicles. He purchased the box truck from just outside of Washington DC, in Maryland, at one of the air bases. Drove it back to Florida. It had been abandoned at the base. As I was helping him dismember the interior, it had a desk and cabinets built in, we started finding Gov' documents that had slipped behind the cabinets. Nothing particularly important that we could make out. I seem to remember CIA on some of them. We surmised that the truck had been used for 'black ops' and abandoned at the base. My friend said that no one seemed to know where the truck came from when he picked it up.

Looked like the truck described in the book "Clear and Present Danger" that has been made into a movie. In the book the truck was used to run the op in Columbia, South America. I don't remember seeing it in the movie though.

That's about it for the moment. Still looking for a 40's - 50's bolt.

Great thread, Wade in Florida

I didn't find much interesting stuff IN the truck... but I bought my 65 Chevy 4wd for $1500 from a mech at our local Chevy dealership (back in 1988) and when I went to take him the $$$ at the dealership I found $300 in an old cash register out back while we were looking for some parts. At the age of 17 I thought that was pretty cool.

I found a sunflower seed inside my swaybar bushing. My grandpa added the swaybar in the 70s, and used to eat sunflower seeds. I also found a bunch of them under the seat.

In my F-5 I found an egg and in my C-10 the bed was full of cardboard

I found Jimmy Hoffa strapped under the bed, but he fell off somewhere along the route home.

Actually, I didn't find anything of interest in my truck.

In the 42 I found a Dear John letter from Amelia Earheart dated 1937 to GP. Huuuum?!?! An old map of the north atlantic with an x marked titanic here. And an old wooden cup, (grail if you will), with the inscription jc on the bottom. But nothing realy cool like porn or condoms.

LMAO ,I just started reading this post starting on the first page.Part way through the 2nd page I noticed the date changed to 08-01.I rent so I pay attention to the 1st.I grabbed my watch which said 07-29.Slightly confused I looked at a calender which said the same thing as my watch.Comepletely lost I woke my girlfriend up and asked her what the date was,she accosted me and told me to turn the light off .I then looked at the post again and noticed the year was 2005 :o .I feel a little dumb,gotta make coffee.I had a bunch of little junk in my truck and have all of it in a bin,I will check today and see exactly what I got.here is my interior.

http://community.webshots.com/photo/551424330/2276370810092821122Avzndk

This thread is great... I've been amazed at the stuff folks have found in their trucks.

Good stories.

-W

I found a 1964 penny and two screws from unknown holes between the running board and splash pan on The Binder (yeah, not a bolt, but it's got a Chevy engine in it)

light bulbs, beer caps, and a four way

In the '53 3100 I had in high school, I found several dead rodents and that's also when I found out how fun a 327 with a four speed can be at the age of 17. In my '42, I found alot more bondo than I expected and some really old medicine bottles under the seat. The '51 I have now wasn't as exciting, but I did find a couple of old Snap-off (Snap-on) wrenches down in one of the cab corners and a brand new looking turn signal set-up under the seat. It's really fun to read some of the finds that have been made.

in the 51 i found beer bottle tops,what looks like grian dust and lots and lots of strange rusted and brocken bits of metal.this would later turn out to be parts removed by previous owner.sadly no sign of anything useful.

** bump **

Thought I'd see if some of the new Bolters could add something in here... or maybe the old bolters with new projects.



-W

Under the binders ugly purple paint, I found some atrocious body work (if you want to call it that) where a PO welded the roof to the cab sides (they are supposed to be bolted on), and the fenders have numerous cracks with a half ton of slag on them... all covered with about 100 lbs of bondo in huge lumps.

In the bed, along with 20 years of assorted junk (lawn chairs, paintings, board games) I found about 9 hubcaps of two different models - the owner claimed both sets were original. In the cab under the remains of the seat was most of the jack, very rusty, a condenser, piles of mouse poop and nest debris. The worst was opening the glove box, what might have been the owner's manual was so shredded that the door basically exploded open, when I tried to shut it the rotten mouse-pee-soaked remains of the glove box insert let loose from its fastenings, never to go in again. Later I also found that the original owner, the father of the seller, hid ignition keys in numerous places in the truck, under the hood and under the dash, and not only keys to the truck, also to some long lost other Chevy. Good taste he had in vehicles, I found only Chevy keys.

Got my 58' from a dealership, so it didn't have much but a old Bud Light bottle in a cab corner and a plastic cup in the other with a 50's drive inn on it.

found a set of tire chains under the seat, as well as the original header bows....

Found a penny from 72, registrations dating back to the 60's, a few pieces of tools, and at least 3 complete mummified mouse corpses and a shop-vac's worth of mouse droppings.

this is all in the cab - 4 barrel carb, hootie and the blowfish cd (even though there was no cd player or speakers), c10 side emblem, tons of quarters, screwdrivers, more cd's.

This came out of the 61 apache cab 1 camel match book 1 nelson's sinclair service matchbook with gasoline alley cartoon on back, 1 have a coke bottle opener and 1 emro bottle opener plenty of mouse turds and corpeses and the most revolting thing a set of electric powered MERCURY seats in a bolted in the cab made me want to cry.

In the back of the 'burb I found...
All the orginal seats, the orginal metal trim pieces, the orginal radiator, 3 spare rochester carbs, the orginal 6v pedal masher starter as well as a spare, two spare generators, a "tune up kit", various spare belts, The remains of arm rests for a 47 ford. three spare distributors complete with vaccuum advance. Sitting on the floor next to the 'burb I found the orginal 216 engine. I also found various wrenches screw drivers and bolts in various pockets and cubby holes. Tucked away deep inside a bucket in the 'burb was the orginal warranty card and the original owners manual...
Oh, I also found about 3 bushels of grain stored in the headliner

Rob C