Wade's 52 5 window

[cotsi95]

Let me start this off with a little background on the truck. The truck was bought by my uncle in 1984 in Wyoming. He bought the truck and trailered it back to Fort Collins, Colorado. It then was put in my grandma's pasture where it sat until this year. My uncle passed away in 2010 and I inherited this truck. The truck had been sitting for so long without moving that a sapling grew into a full size tree through the spare frame that was sitting in front of it. I had to cut down the tree and then cut the stump out between the rear passenger side wheel and the frame. Now that the truck is free i'm finally getting this project going. The goal of the project for right now is to put a full pressure 235 in it and get it running and get the interior clean and put together. Later I will put a 292 HD-TD in it with a Holset H35x or H40x turbo on it and fuel inject it with a 5 speed or maybe even a t56 as well as a new rear end along with bags. The truck is in surprisingly great shape considering the passenger window is missing. The only rust I have found so far is a hole about 3 inches long where the floor pan meets the toe board. I plan on keeping the paint exactly how it is and only lowering it about 5 inches for now. So with that said ON TO THE PICTURES!

Heres the truck how is sat when I first started working on it.








As you can see something was probably living in it at one point. So far I have found probably around 50 or so wasp's nest and I keep killing and finding more.

Here is how big this "sapling" that grew between the frame infront of the truck was.





And here is where it grew around and into the leaf spring.



But it had to go in order to get the truck out.







Here you can see the marks from the leaf spring in the trunk of the tree.



Now that the tree was gone I could finally move the truck and see what was missing. So far the only thing that's missing from what I can tell is the 4speed u joint assembly. Judging by the marks on the inside of the ball assembly it looks like there was a u joint failer and that's why the truck was taken off the road. The torque tube was disconnected from the trans when it was brought home and a lot of the parts were inside the cab under that huge mess.







Luckily I have all of the fenders as well as the running boards so the trucks patina matches.

From here I took the head off the truck to try and get the motor to turn over and to my surprise it turned over just by moving the fan belt. So far I have not come across one bolt that has been seized *fingers crossed*.

The only thing that I have found that I need to fix to get the truck on the road again is the passenger side rear shackle hanger. The bushing is it has torn trough the bracket so i'll need to find a replacement and weld them on.





I tore down the truck a pretty good amount today. I took the bed off the frame, The grill and front fenders off. the gas tank out along with the gauges and everything that was inside the truck.











I also have a pretty rare piece on this truck. This is a Trico Electro-Vac. It's a vacuum pump so when the motor is under load the wipers still work. The guys over at stovebolt said they have never seen one on a 1/2 ton cause they were pretty expensive (50$+ install in '52)



I also found some goodies for the truck in my uncles shop. I found this stainless steel visor that is missing the center clamps and one end bracket. And also a fulton which was white, I sanded it down to the other layers of paint/ primer to give it the same look as the truck.



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Well that's about all for now. I hope to get the cab off the frame this weekend and possible the motor and trans out as well. Sorry for the long first post the other ones won't be nearly this long.