Over 25 Years Later, Finally My 71 C-10 Truck Build

[hgs_notes]

I've only got about 19 days to get my truck ready for the power tour. I haven't been working on it because I've been busy with other things higher on the priority list. Girlfriends birthday was a couple weeks ago, I restored a bike for her...








She is gorgeous. People see her and ask me what she sees in me. I've got a paycheck and my own house. And I treat her well.

When we have been out and about she had mentioned a few times that she had this trike to beat around her old farm with. She no longer has the farm, but with the help of her daughter, I got the bike. I got her dad to do the paint. She has a white caddy she calls pearl. It's her second one and the nicest car she has ever had. So I had her dad spray it the same color. Her favorite color is pink, so I used that for the accents. I got the seat recovered by my daughters boyfriends mom who does upholstery. I went through a pack of steel wool cleaning up the chrome, replaced and rebuilt everything else. Even hammered the dents out of the chrome fenders. I had a custom plate made for it "pearl 3" and she says its the best birthday gift she ever got.

And just before that was my daughters prom. Her boyfriend asked to use my truck. I made him polish the wheels...




And I've been working too many hours on too many days.

Another reason for a lack of garage time was my daughters graduation...


Anyway, enough *****ing, I ordered the last part I need to swap radiators. A new fan control. I went with the Ron Francis AR99. There are cheaper ones, but the reviews weren't great and I don't need the hassle somewhere along the road.

I've been driving the truck regularly, which reminds me, I had a little mechanical issue a few weeks back. Story time...

I bought the crewcab, still have some issues to fix on it, but a friend of mine up north has some parts I can use. And I have parts to get rid of, so we made a trade. I had a weekend off (finally) so loaded the truck and hit the road. He lives about 170 miles north. I stopped for lunch about 2/3 of the way up, no issues. Then I got on the freeway and I passed a car, which immediately slowed down and fell back. I'm thinking that's pretty odd, but noticed some grey smoke when I looked out the rearview mirror. Nothing odd on my gauges but I took the next exit to check things out. Tranny fluid was pouring out of it and burning on the exhaust. There was a trail of it following me and it was pooling under it fast.

My uncle lives about 6 miles from where I'm at so I wanna try to go there. No dice. It dumped too much fluid and wasn't going anywhere. I was lucky to get off the freeway.

I couldn't get under enough to see where the leak was. So I stuck my phone under and took a couple pics...




Well that aint right!

Never one to panic, I made a couple phone calls. One to Mike, who I was heading to see. He had his car trailer already hooked up to his truck and hit the road for the rescue. And to a local parts store on the off chance they had a new governor cover. No dice, but the kid was smart. He knew I was broke down on the road, asked where I was and said he knows a guy. He would call him and one of them would get back to me. A few minutes later another guy calls me and asks the pertinent questions. Whats broke, where am I. I've never had that cover off so I really didn't know what all was supposed to be under it, so I sent him the pics from my phone. He said he had the parts, just needed to get it to his shop, a few miles south of me.

A short time later, Mike pulls up, we load the truck, a few minutes later we are rolling it off the trailer into Tim's Repair shop. Up on the lift it goes, Tim has the part ready with a new O-ring and wire clip retainer and and in about 1 minute the repair is done. I had him keep it up on the lift a few minutes so I could check a few things and tighten up some exhaust clamps and wipe some of the tranny fluid off. Dropped it down, refilled the fluid and he charged me $30.


We could have hit the road back to Mikes place right away, but we ended up sticking around for a couple hours BSing and looking around Tim's shop. If you're broke down around the Sauk Centre, MN area and need some help, give him a call, 320-352-3602 (shop), 320-492-7220 (cell) or timsrepair.net

I'm hoping I get enough time this next weekend to finally swap the radiator and maybe fix a couple other things I have had parts sitting around here for. That gives me a week or more to put some miles on it before power tour.