New guy from NC with a 59 Fleet Option

[dirty deeds]

Hello everyone, I'm Darren and I came accross this site after buying a 59 GMC and decided to sign up. This is my first old truck so I'm excited to get to work on it although I'm in the middle of a drag car build so while I'll do a few small things here and there I don't plan to dig into the truck until my car is done. The truck is a 1959 GMC 100 series fleet option truck with a 270 I-6 and a column shift 3spd. The truck is completely stock aside from an electric fuel pump. The previous owner put in a new stock fuel tank, electric fuel pump, soft brake lines, and rebuilt the carb to get it on the road. It still needs new tires before I go too far from home. The truck has 60k miles on it and cranks up and runs just fine. Only real driving issue is a lot of steering play and the shocks are shot. Every light, guage, and switch on the truck works but the parking brake is seized up and will not engage. No big deal for now. The seat still has the original covering in good shape. I thought the grille, bumpers, and single headlights were some backyard fab work until I started looking for info online and found that these parts were part of the fleet option package along with the chevy cab and dash/gauge layout even though it's a GMC. I had planned on putting a mustang II front suspension and linked rear under the truck on air bags, then swapping out the drivetrain for an LS/4l60E set up and a newer model rear. My new issue is that after reading up on how rare surviving examples of these fleet option trucks are I'm hesitant to pull those parts off to update it. Now I'm torn between a restoration with the complete original drivetrain, keep the outside original and update the drivetrain, or sell/trade the truck to someone who wants a fleet option and just buy a regular 47-59 truck to hack on. I'm planning to drive it as is for a few years while I think about it. I'd at least like to put disc brakes on the front, but it's a slippery slope and hard to draw a line on how far to go with it. Here's a few pics of the truck. I'm looking forward to getting to work on this thing in the next year or two. There's lots of good tech on this site and I'll start a build thread once the work begins. If anyone has any advice or reccommendations for which direction I should go with this truck or any info on how rare or valuable these things are in near stock condition please chime in. I'd like to build the truck a wanted to but not if it means destroying a rare classic to do it.

Thanks for taking the time to read my drawn out first post.

Darren