1953 Awakening

[1956cameo]

Last summer I was getting a little burned out on my 1972 Blazer project. I had been working on it for almost three years and needed a break. I didn't want a break from working on old trucks, just a break from working on that particular truck. As I walked up to my dads house from the shop I noticed that he had a lot of project vehicles in his storage sheds that just needed a little attention to become fully functional vehicles. They might not be the most beautiful old trucks but there was no reason why they couldn't be on the road after a few weekends of tinkering and a little bit of money.

I talked to my dad (Muleman100) about the idea of slowly pulling some of the future projects out of the sheds and doing just a little bit to them cosmetically, but doing whatever was necessary to get them operable and safe. That way they would stay in better shape, and we would have a break from the monotony of a total restoration. Up to that point we had been getting vehicles out of the shed one at a time, doing complete restorations on them over the course of 1-3 years and than going to the next project. The problem with this was that many vehicles that were waiting on restorations were starting to sit too long and trucks that were once quick fixes were starting to look like trucks that needed total overhauls.

After explaining the benefits of at least mechanically fixing up the "down the road" restorations my dad was on board. The first project that we pulled out was a 1957 Suburban. We bought it in 2003 out of a junkyard in Midland, TX. The junkyard owner said that it had come from Arizona. Unfortunately I did not document this project but below is a picture of it at the Austin Hot Rod Show earlier this year.




Since the Suburban is as finished as it is going to be for now it was time to turn our attention to the 1953. We found this in a small junkyard back in 1999 on the east side of Houston, Texas. We told the junkyard owner that if he could get the truck started we would buy it. After hot wiring the truck and hooking up a gas can to the truck it fired up and idled smoothly. We bought the old 53 and brought it home. It sat for a few years and than one boring summer day back in 2002 I fired the truck up again. It drove great, but since it didn't have any brakes I hit a pole and busted out the passenger side headlight (put another headlight in but the trim never went back on properly as seen in pics). It also died every time I took a sharp turn because the gas can would slide off of the fender. After that day it sat for over another decade until we pulled it back out of the shed last week.


Nothing fancy. A three window with painted bumper and grill. It is a factory black truck which I like.


Not sure what happened but the paint flaked off of the drivers side door real heavily a couple of years ago.