Worst PO repair?

[Chevyman680063]

Originally Posted by Longhorn Man

!!!!
I don't win... it could ALWAYS be worse;





Photos pirated off another board years ago.

Something about that makes me think of KITT's dash from Knight Rider, only uglier.

[67slammer]

my 67 stepside came with pressure treated 4x4 bucket seat mounts and 6x9 speaker boxes to hold up the center seat, and i cant forget the custom splater painted interior.

[bcbasketball11]

my friend bought his truck in incredible shape. . .we thought .. .it was very nice except for ONE small problem. . .the rear/left inner fender well wasN'T very sturdy, at all. i was sittin on it one day while we were cruisin about a half mile to the convenience store. . .hit a bump pulling in and the fender well caved in.. . we found an interestin thing. . .it was almost completely rusted away. . .the PO had molded compressed cardboard to fit and lined it think on bothe sides with mucho bondo. . .disgusted. . .i was almost as pissed as my friend, I SAT ON A TIRE IN MOTION!!!

[SufferInTruth]

White rear bumpers!

[jwn1975]

I wish I had a pic. My 1970 SWB had CRUSHED inner wheel wells in the bed. the PO said he did that so he could fit his slide in camper in there. He said he massaged them a bit with a sledge hammer. NICE!

[tommypic]

Originally Posted by streetstar

LOL -- he's trying to convert it into an airplane

what the was that Po thinking much have had to many

[jayharrell]

So no spray foam?? I ve thought about using it in the cab corners and in the rockers for a little sound damping. Guess i did know any better.

[heavy71chevy]

mine had oily rags stuffed into the cab corners..pop riveted aluminum on the rockers and then he used porch screen covered in bondo to form new rockers...I didnt really know much about the rust these trucks have when i bought it but at least i only gave five hundred for it

[berencam]

the p.o. of my 69 took yarn and rubber bands to hold the spark wires off the manifolds. He used a different piece of yarn for each wire and in the middle of the yarn was anywhere from 1-4 rubber bands. Why where there rubber bands in between the yarn? Well he tied it off to the hood supports that are in the middle of the underside of the hood. so you could open the hood without breaking the yarn then when you closed it the rubber bands took up the slack

then i get to work on the front end linkage and find that they had the entire adjusting sleeve missing and a piece of random metal welded in place.

At some point the guy took heavy duty metal tape and taped the muffler closed because it had wide open at some point, so as im driving home i see all these pieces of shiny metal flying out the back of the truck, pull it over to find the muffler blown open and gobs of tape on it lol.


my new 70 has foamed cab corners also. The auto trans linkage was held together with zip ties, oh and the best one, the shifter handle was held in place by a welding stick.

[Riveted1]

Longhorn, those pics crack me up every time I see them. Guess the lesson of the day is, don't buy a truck from a guy they call "The Dope Smokin' Old Man!"

[67ChevyRedneck]

Originally Posted by jayharrell

So no spray foam?? I ve thought about using it in the cab corners and in the rockers for a little sound damping. Guess i did know any better.

Probably not a good idea. It holds in moisture.

My pops bought what we thought was a nice '69 but it turned out the rockers, cab corners, and other areas of the truck (lower front fenders) were the expandable spray foam covered in bondo. Only paid $900 for the truck, but still!

[Kivey]

oh man this thread is great, I don't personally own a old truck yet (I am going to be buying the one I am helping working on when my buddy leaves for the military) but I think his truck can compete with the crack smoking old mans.

First I should state he bought it for 500 from a dude who said he bought it from some tweakers, who put the poor thing through hell. I personally think the dude my friend bought it from did all the "repairs" on it, but thats just my theroy.

Anyways on to some pics, first I will start with the shifter, it looks as though the PO got a universal shifter kit, but got half way into the installation and just didn't know what they were doing anymore so they put these in.


Also I didn't take pictures but the radiator was more jb weld and bondo than it was radiator. When we replaced it with a 4 core radiator the old one weighed SO much more than the larger one, my guess is that there was about 20lbs of jb weld and bondo on it.

The PO also put a volts wagon luggage rack on top of the cab



there is more, tons more but I have to get back to work.

[oldsmobilekindofguy]

I know a guy that had a duster with the passenger floor pan pretty well gone, he used to his advantage and ate spit his sunflower seeds through the hole, It would make a easy way to get rid of pop cans and stuff LOL

[Longhorn Man]

that's just being a teen in the midwest. We did that all the time.

[89 crew]

Years ago my brother bought a 79 k30 400,400, 205, dana front and back! Sounds sweet right?? The engine was a fresh rebuild with Chinese pistons. with 4k miles, 6 of 8 were cracked and the skirt had collapsed between .03" -.06" on all of them. The lift kit on the front apparently sat too high for the P.O. so he took a torch and cut off the second and third leaves from a 4 spring pack and then heated the top leaf and bent it over backwards at almost a 90 degree angle. Also the u bolts were all thread, and the straight bolt was too small and the threads were stripped! The truck came as a duel tank system but the switcher valve went bad so he removed it and only hooked up the suction line. soon as you start the engine gas sprayed out the return line. the automatic adjusters were trashed! left was on right and right was replaced with a left. for the rear suspension he bent all thread to use as U bolts, and set the factory springs on 4" blocks. In 2 places he used brass compression fittings on brake lines.

[CG]

Sorry this isn't a truck, but it was an amazingly dangerous fix. I picked up a 69 AMX through a trade. An AMX is a two seater (shortened Javlin) for you younger guys that have never heard of one. Behind the buckets is a space to small to sit in, but lots of room you could toss your junk. It stops with a slightly angled flat area not quite as high as the buckets with the trunk space behind that. This has been quite awhile ago, so I hope Ive described this correctly...lol...old guy, what can I say. =)

The previous owner had broken the drivers side bucket so it wouldn't stay upright. It would just fold down flat. To remedy this he took an old style ratcheting jack, just the metal bar part with the little cut outs down the side and wedged it against the back of the seat dead center and the flat area behind the seats. A rear ender would have been fatal.

First thing I bought for that car was a nice new set of buckets.

[eastcoastcivil]

Take a look at this.....the pics speak for themselves. Thanl god for the new one peice floor... Where did he expect to mount the cab????

[Billett]

Thread revival! I almost started another of these but assumed you guys would already have one. I am not disappointed. At least we can all hate the PO together.

Foam insulation everywhere


Riveted hood instead of finding a new bolt


Instead of replacing the speaker he screwed in computer speakers and removed the glove box


Plug connections on every wire


and Rosy the riveter here even decided to do the rockers this way


Who are these people and why are they anywhere near cars and tools!!!!

[OSM 70 C20]

Solid spray foam under both side of cab

[92sierraslx]

my cab corners had fiberglass mat shoved in and then short strand bondo with no hardner smeared over that and the door corners and a kind close rattle can mist job over the whole thing and i spray foamed the roof for now till i can buy a different cab

[blackdawn]

so it turned out that the first truck i bought (was a great lesson) was owned at some point by some real pro's.
1. the truck was lowered by cutting all of the springs in half and removing the shocks completely because they no longer fit. it rode on the front bump stops for so long that they had compacted to about 1/4 of an inch tall.
2. well apparently the truck was too low as they managed to smash one of the lower a arms into something causing a massive dent in the arm and tweaking the frame a bit.
3. as if that wasn't enough, at some point they must have decided to try and pull a stump or something entirely too heavy for the rear bumper as the back corner of the frame was ripped apart, bent the frame some more, and tweaked the bed in the process.
4. either they bondoed over rust or they put the bondo on so thick that is cracked and then rusted, there are a bunch of places all over the truck where the bondo is cracked and rust is pouring out of it.
5. this is the winner in my book as i just don't get it. they bondoed over the dome light in the cab. its no longer there, so there are no lights to see at night in the cab.

unfortunately i spent way too much money on this truck not realizing 95% of what was wrong with it as it was so low to the ground i couldn't get under it. i have since been lucky and found a complete parts truck for $50, and a lot of sweat equity, so i'm back to about par on that project. ugh

[54belair]

Im glad I didnt read this thread before I bought my truck!!! Actually I did know about rust issues and "all of the things" to look for.

Hmmm, missed a few! My biggest issue has been the upper firewall corners-----had filled up with trash at one time and the rust took over. To handle this, a PO filled in the left air box with steel wool pads, then covered the vent hole with cardboard and covered that with a coating of silicon putty--and that covered by a generous helping of testure paint. The passenger air box was filled with sprayfoam---cardboard covered, etc. He decided to install new gauges in the dash, ripped out everything behind the dash and installed the new gauges with sprayfoam!
The only saving grace on all this is that the front clip was new and the stepbed was all rust free. I finally had to buy another cab to cut pieces out of.
What looked like a simple job of replacing the rockers has grown into : inner/outer rockers, floor extensions, left and right floor floor sections, kick panels/toeboards, lower door post extensions (where fenders attach)----then we cut both firewall corners out of the other cab and are welding them in.

Didnt mind the rust probs. as much as I did the effort on his part to hide rust probs.
(nothing that $2000. of shop time couldnt cure)

Excuse me now while I go find my crying towel!!!!!!!!

[chevy72blu]

Wow!!

I've always felt horrible about some of my "rigs" (hey, my truck was a DD for a long time and sometimes you have to get to work the next morning) but this thread makes me feel a lot better.


I will admit that I've used speaker wire when I wasnt supposed to, changed wiring stuff like I've changed pants, and left a rats nest there behind . Im strongly considering going to a Painless harness and just starting over... lol. In the mean time I'll make sure the extinguisher is charged to spec

[sir_talk_alot]

Originally Posted by Longhorn Man

!!!!
I don't win... it could ALWAYS be worse;





Photos pirated off another board years ago.

DUDE!! do you have that roof console still? i want it!!!
and yea i got my truck and found the trans tail shaft was supported with several sections of coat hangers.

[pritch]

I will admit it. I welded my pitman arm to my power steering box. Not very well, though. I had to re-weld it every so often. What can I say-I was young and dumb.