72 Chevy K20 Wrecker restoration

[sameyeam]

Hey all, welcome to my thread covering my journey on restoring my 1972 Chevy Custom 20 4x4 sporting a Holmes 440 wrecker bed. This is going to be a long process but we got going on it as of about a week ago and I've followed/read some really cool and thorough threads on full restorations and I think its a really cool way not only to share our journey in restoring this truck but also a good way to document it.

Lets start with some history........the truck was actually ordered new by my grandfather from Gibson's Chevrolet in Appleton, WI. It was ordered as a chassis cab then shipped to Chattanooga, TN to have the Holmes 440 wrecker unit installed. Grandpa then flew to TN and drove it home to start making money and bringing cars back to his shop for service. The truck was ordered in this configuration so the guys operating it could get into parking garages and pull out dead cars. Grandpa said it worked great for alot of years and he even bragged a bit saying he doesnt remember ever not being able to get a car out of where it didnt belong. Even big Lincolns that slid off the roads in the winter which is when this truck saw most of its use (as evidence by the rust). Grandpa retired and the truck sold with the business. Grandpa stayed in touch with the new shop owners and even went back to help out as vacation relief. He knew the truck was old so it was no surprise to him that the new shop owner sold the truck to a towing company in Appleton where it was likely a backup. From then the truck was sold again to a salvage yard where it was used to pull junk cars around for a while and there was a snowplow installed at some point and the push bumper was removed and left in the weeds somewhere which bums grandpa out. The truck was then sold again to a guy who remembered it towing cars around Appleton. He had plans to restore it and shoved it into a shed in Mackville, WI. Summer of 2012 comes and grandpa has a part time job delivering parts and the owner of the truck at the time is a mechanic at a shop grandpa delivers to. The guy recognizes grandpa and tells he has his old tow truck! So all through my childhood grandpa talked about his truck and how much he loved it so naturally i had an interest in this truck. Not to mention i also had a liking for the 67-72 body style anyway. Grandpa sets up a date for us to go look at the truck. At this point we think we are just going to see the truck and see how it has weathered since grandpa left it when selling his shop. We get and see the truck stuffed in the shed with other car parts all over it and have a good talk with the owner about how it was in its service days. Towards the end of the visit i asked the guy if he would consider selling it. After a long pause he says, "i know who you are and i know the story behind this truck, so if you wanna buy it, its for sale to you" WOW so we came to a price and i got to work finding a trailer to get the truck home. Winter came and we decided to wait till spring. Spring came and i got a buddy with a trailer to help me bring her home in late april of 2013. A few weeks of work getting brakes functional, rust out of the gas tank and a very basic tune up and i had it rolling, not really road worthy but drivable. Fathers day that year grandpa came over and we were able to drive down the road in his truck for the first time in almost 20 years. His smile was huge. We played with the truck pulling logs up the hill and bushes out for neighbors and the truck actually ran pretty good. Well life kinda caught up with me and I bought a house of my own and started a family and the truck went back into storage near my house in Stockbridge, WI. Well this summer I decided it was time to make room in the garage for the old truck to come home. About 2 weeks ago we went to the barn where it had been for the last 3 years and once we got enough juice to the battery she fired right up. My 12 year old son and I drove it the 4 miles home and cleaned the barn dust off of it. He had stars in his eyes as he has been hearing about this truck for quite some time as well. That brings us to today, we have started taking the truck apart, hence my want to start documenting the restoration. As i said its gonna be slow but I am happy to get started and bring my boy along for the journey. Also glad grandpa is still around so at least see the start and maybe hopefully the finish.