55.2-59 7 years progress on my ‘58

[NWA58]

Hello all, it has been a long road since dragging a complete truck off a farm, with many lessons learned in the process. For years I wanted an AD 5 window or 57 big window, but never found the right one. So when I got a call from Dad on Thanksgiving day 7 years ago asking if I was still looking for a truck, I was immediately interested. He didn’t know what it was, but said it was available and sitting on a family farm. The next day, I went to take a look and ended up bringing home a 58 GMC deluxe cab long bed with a small back window.

The truck was rough, but had unique features and the price was right. In less than a week, I had the entire truck disassembled to the last nuts and bolts. I discovered that I am really good at deconstruction… it is the everything else that is hard. I ended up with piles of Save, Trash, and Sell. Even some of what I saved would have been better off scrapped, but this began as more of a truck rescue operation.

The original Pontiac V8 motor was locked up and not worth rebuilding (per Butler performance), so that changed this from a restoration to a full custom. This was going to be converted to a short bed one way or the other, so with a bare cab and a few other parts to keep, I decided to sell the original long wheelbase chassis and running gear all together. Thinking I could do this faster with new parts, I ordered a full TCI chassis and farmed out welding the cab corners, door hinge pockets, steps, and other rust patches. A few weeks later, I had a new bare chassis and quickly had it assembled as a roller. I installed an LS2 and 4L60E, and picked up a truckload of new sheet metal. The original truck had a hard life and I was only able to save the cab, inner fenders, right fender, core support, hood, and some other small parts. With new repop doors and left fender installed, I had serious gap issues and found the cab was slightly twisted from an impact earlier in life. This also revealed a poorly replaced roof skin from many years ago. Realizing it was time for pro assistance, I got it to the right metal fab guy for roof replacement, squaring the cab, and perfecting gaps. It has not been fast, but it is done well. The work was so nice that my plans to do a home spray of Hot Rod Flatz changed to letting them do the paint and final assembly also. It is painted, assembled, running, and close to first test drive!

Unfortunately, I have not done as much of the work myself as I had originally planned. Since this project began 7 years ago, I have coached baseball, graduated 2 kids from high school, got them into college, lost Dad, paid for a wedding, had 3 granddaughters, and travelled a lot for work. Rather than let the project stall through all of the life events, the entrusted shop has kept it moving along. I have certainly overspent, but have a much higher quality finished truck as a result. I am hoping to retire within the next five years and do it again with more of my own handy work. Looking forward to getting to breaking it in with some miles around town in the new year. I already have ideas on what to do differently on the next build!