Previous Owner Funtime

[pimpston65]

Originally Posted by jimbosprint

Previous owner left me this: a bunch of abandoned spare fuel tank lines, a piece of wood that was wired to the frame with coat hangers, and some Romex house wire going from under the driver side of the cab through the fender and across the radiator to the battery.

your looking and it wrong. thats a power distribution panel with a fuel rail system, KaBoom!!!

[66pnl]

The po of my 68 installed a fuel tank from a square body in the bed to bypass a non existant problem with the in cab tank - which apparently he didn't know was brand new. I removed that tank replaced the 5/16, 3/8 fuel line mess and rebuilt the toilet edelbrock calls a carburetor and problem solved.

[Jasons65]

The previous owner of mine replaced the rockers and cab corners with generic pieces losing the lower body line...at the moment a rust free cab is the easiest and quickest fix.

[rustbucket66]

Some good stories in here. I worked as a mechanic for 20 years and have seen some pretty crazy things. We used to say "he knows enough to be dangerous". Lots of the fixes were safety hazards, and potential fires or accidents. One of my biggest peeves is those little square blue wiring connectors that snap together with no splicing needed. They are an invitation for corrosion. I bought a NEW enclosed car trailer a while back, and the whole thing was wired with those connectors. I had a couple of inches of an ice cream pail full of those connectors that I had to remove. I had to solder and shrink tube every single connection. Lots of panels to take off to get access. A couple years down the road the whole thing would have to be rewired. Whoever invented those connectors should be lined up against a wall and shot with a ball of his own s#*&. I see lots of them under the dashes of old vehicles. Drilling holes in dashes really drives me too.

[suzq044]

I suppose a beat to [bleep] body that had a 400 block with a 283 intake, and inflate-it-yourself air-shocks in back, isn't so bad after all that I've read. xD

[66Submarine]

Here are a few pictures. I wanted to get some of the truck with the firewall hole and torched engine mount perch, but all the wasp nests and poison ivy deterred me. I think you guys will still appreciate the ones I got.

[66Submarine]

A few more from the collection.

[rustbucket66]

Wow. 66submarine you have the best bad examples I have ever seen. I can't decide which picture is the worst, there is some really scary stuff there. Makes you wonder what else you are going to find. My god.

[66Submarine]

Thanks. The scary part is that is a very small fraction of the stuff I have like that! I'll have to post some more examples up, I guess.

I have an 11" brake drum that measured out @ something like 11.250-11.300" that always amuses me--not a lot of meat left on that one!

[Dillon Rock]

One of my PO's tried to bondo the famous A-pillar problem and failed. Put flame decals on it when it was still white and then painted it green with a white top (house paint mind you and did a very s****y job of laying the paint.) and never removed the decals, you can still see the driver's side flames through the paint and i found a set on the rear right fender 2 weeks ago under the grime while washing my truck. Also broke a heater control lever off in the dash. Also they bent a connector pin on the firewall connector for the lights when i tested my bright to find out they didn't work.

[Anthony Fremont]

66Submarine wins, I never seen anything like some of that stuff. My truck was in pretty good shape, only had the wrong motor mounts (I think they were the original V6 mounts so they added some 1/4" steel plate, drilled some new holes and viola custom fit mounts for a small block V8. All it needed then was a couple of pieces of chain and the engine was in solid. They put a 4' x 8' 1/4" steel plate to cover the small hole in the wood floor. Only weighs an additional 400 pounds over stock. There's a toggle switch and a push button on the dash. I have no idea what they were for, maybe the horn and backup lights. The wiring was pretty decent except for 50 years of neglect. I only had to replace the wiring from the cab back. One of the starter bolts was broken off in the block somehow. That's about it aside from all the puke burns on the driver's door, inside and out. Oh yeah, I had to make a new harness for the turn/parking lights in the hood.

[Jgowin]

I feel everyone's pain, electrical issues just seem bring out the best of the worst hacks, but bodywork is right there too. On my 51 GMC the PO did some awesome work on the floors. He pop riveted a bunch of sheet metal on the floor pans, left the original battery in the floor under all this crap, and the icing on the cake was to take a large carpet mat and turn it rubber side up and rivet it down for a "factory looking" rubber floor mat. The problem with this the carpet held water on the floors and turned what was most likely a small rust problem at the time into a complete floor replacement.