New member from England

[Cadaver]

Hi everyone,

I'm Matt and I'm from a town called Woking in England (The town is known for producing both McLaren cars and the Spice Girls!). I'm the proud owner of a 1968 GMC C15 long bed which I bought in August last year and have spent almost all of my ownership trying to fix up.

It turns out that I bought a bit of a lemon! Lots of rust, and a tranny which randomly decided to change into first at 60mph turning the engine into a parts can. The Chevy 250ci has been chucked in the garbage and a nice 350 is going in it's place with a t56 manual gearbox.

Everything for US import vehicles is expensive and hard to get hold of in England, so it's a bit of a slow project of love where I've been buying what I can when I can. Used parts are almost impossible to buy, so new is the best way to go.

Anyway, some pictures! Shortly before I got it:





Some of the hidden rust:


How she looks at the moment:


Next on the list is a complete re-wire as what was there previously was junk. Hopefully I'll have some positive updates soon!

Anyway, thanks for reading and I look forward to using the forum

Matt

[lumpy63]

Great progress Matt! Looks like you ditched gmc grill and switched to 67-8 chevy grill and lowered it . what rear diff are you going to use?

[boynton]

Awesome. You should start a thread in the projects/builds section.

[Cadaver]

Originally Posted by lumpy63

Great progress Matt! Looks like you ditched gmc grill and switched to 67-8 chevy grill and lowered it . what rear diff are you going to use?

Unfortunately the GMC grill was bent and rusty so needed to be replaced, I was quoted around $1,000 for a replacement landed into the UK as they are so large. I found the Chevy grill about 2 hours from my house with all the bits except a core support for roughly $128. My core support needed to be replaced anyway, and the Chevy one was the same price from LMC, so I bit the bullet and bought that in.

For the suspension, I've got in a Jaguar independent rear suspension system which has disc brakes and a limited slip diff. It's pretty popular over here as Jags are so cheap to break.

Originally Posted by boynton

Awesome. You should start a thread in the projects/builds section.

Good idea, will head over shortly and do that

It turns out that the truck was bought into England in the 80's by the US Armed Forces, I don't know much department or why, but that might explain why the bed isn't the factory correct one.