From monster truck to street-pride is expensive!

[the1ted]

I bought a monster truck in 1986 and campaigned it for about a year before shutting it down. You can view photos at

www.monsterphotos.com

and look under 'Mr. Bad' in the monster trucks. A few years after trying to compete with it I dismantled it and put it back on the street. The cab and bed were 1984, the frame was a heavy 1/2 ton 4x4 and the axles were 3/4 ton. The following 20 years it served as a work truck seeing lots of winter action with a snow plow attached. Somewhere in the last few years I forgot to wash off the under carriage and the salt ate thru the brake lines. I discovered that when I pulled out on the farm road I live on and attempted to slow for a turn and the brakes went to the floor-literally. No pressure whatsoever! I had disconnected the emergency brake set-up when we did the street build (bad idea) and never thought of it again until the emergency actually happened. I pulled into low gear on the column (automatic) and idled back home where I had it towed to the GMC dealer.
We replaced all the brake lines and while it was on the lift the mechanic took a ball point pen out of his front pocket and pushed it thru the crossmember support on the frame right behind the cab-YIKES! I took it home and rented a commercial sandblaster and proceeded to blast the rear of the frame after removing the bed, springs, brake lines and rear axle.
The more I blasted the rear, the more I saw rust problems throughout the front of the frame and cab-especially the body mounts which had dried and split. At this point I decided to tear it down to bare frame and replace the crossmember-not an easy process. I will post pictures later, but wanted to get this thread started.