Everybody, meet Merle - '71 C10 longbed project

[JJorgensen52]

Bought another one

Picked this truck up over the weekend. It has been "on the road", but it was last serviced or had any work done in 2004 and I've no idea how old the tires are. So seemed like a good idea to drive 320 miles home

Side of the road:


And pulling it out of that field, the tire slid off the edge of the embankment and into the drainage ditch - WAY deeper than it looked. Figured this boded well for the rest of the trip.


It's a pretty plain jane truck, almost no options


As you can see from the photos, it was originally Olive, but the original owner (described to me as an "artist") decided at some point that painting it with house paint was a good idea. Working on getting that off quick!

So, we stopped at the local gas station and aired up the tires, cleaned out a whole pile of leaves and sticks etc, tossed on a CB so I could communicate with my support truck (the friend who drove up with me), fixed the choke and high idle linkage which was all aprt, lubricated the 3OTT so I could actually get it into first, and duct taped the tailgate shut (latch seized open), and away we went!




Sure drives nicely, though. Very pleased!

Made it almost home (less than 30 miles to go) when disaster struck

Which meant yours truly got to put on the spare, which was just as bad and goes flat about every other hour


Just glad this thing didn't come shooting off!


So there it is. The body is decent, needs the usual patches. So far all I've done is clean out all the crud that was in it, reset the timing (it was set to about 11*BTDC, and was pinging like crazy under load), fixed the tailgate latches.

This week, I'm getting the wheels cleaned up (my local tire place will blast and paint the wheels when they do tires for a small fee), new tires on, and then replacing a few bulbs and other things to put it back on the road so I can drive as I go. It's going to be a weekend chore type truck once I'm done.

Other than sheetmetal, paint and basic mechanicals, no fancy plans for this truck as yet. I do suspect there may be a diesel conversion in it's future, though. Stay tuned!