Thank You

[FLDave]

A little over a year ago my Son and I purchased a 67 SWB Fleetside for him to drive to high school from a member in SC. It’s a typical 250, three speed plain Jane work truck that had been sitting for 20 years. At the time it had no bed and the interior was in rough shape. But, the metal was good and overall it was pretty original.

We did minimal body work to it. We found a wood bed from a guy here in West Palm. We replaced the wood and gave it a rattle can paint job to match the rest of the patina. We replaced the rockers, patched a hole in the floor and painted the grill. We painted the interior, replaced the missing parts. We kept the seat. It was still in decent shape! So, we just covered it.

The 250 seemed to run well enough. We fixed the leaks (including rear seal), tuned and timed it. We converted the front drum brakes to disk and rebuilt the back drums. Replaced the exhaust, u-joints, tranny seals and rear end seal.

We completed it about four months ago and my son drives it every day! He and his friends take it to school and all over town.

I am not a mechanic by any means. Reading the information posted here made this project possible for us. I restored a Boston Whaler a while back and had similar help from another website. I have learned that these sites are not just made up of servers and code. It’s the people that really make the difference. I want to sincerely thank the website owners, administrators and everyone that post on here with answers to questions, parts for sale or just pictures of your trucks.

I wanted to post some of the lessons I learned from this project that might be helpful to others. Sort a post mortem. Again, I am no expert so keep that in mind when reading through these:

- The old Rochester B carburetors have leak problems. The base sections warp. I bought a refurbished Carter YF and it really helped make this engine run smooth.
- The rubber sections of the break lines do get old and swell. They can block the fluid and make it impossible to bleed the brakes.
- A great link for learning drum brakes - http://www.pbase.com/nufsed/drumbrake
- When separating the ball joints on these old trucks you have to REALLY hit the pickle fork hard.
- The Harbor Freight ball joint press works. But it is difficult to get them to go in straight. Freezing the ball joint helps.
- Brake Calipers can go on backwards. They won’t bleed properly if they are on wrong. Ask me how I know.
- Wet sanding can remove some types of spray paint.
- There are a lot of great parts places out there but nothing beats original. A lot of good folks on here selling fantastic original parts.
- No matter how much time or money you think it will take, it is usually more.
- Don’t always expect to get a return on your investment like they do on TV. I kept track of the money spent on this truck. I doubt we could get it back any time soon. But, it was still worth every dime to us.
- There is something to be said for restoring to original. I’m sure a lowered, big block, leather seat truck would be a lot of fun. But, it is also cool to drive these truck the way they were made from the factory. And it’s a lot cheaper…