My 1958 GMC 100 Stepside Budget Build

[Techie79]

Hello everyone, my name is Darcy. I have been silently lurking around the forums for a few months and have really enjoyed reading up on others builds and projects. Well it is finally time to start my own.

This is my 1958 GMC 100 stepside that I finally picked up in May of this year after about 20 years of watching this truck sit and wanting it so bad I couldn't stand it. I thought many times about asking the ower if he would part with her but I didn't really have the time or money for a project like this and I don't think the he was ready to sell her anyway. This year with a little coaxing and support from my beautiful fiancee I finally decided to hit the owner up about it and he sold it to me for a steal at $1200. So, I aired up the tires and towed it the 30 miles home.

Here are the pics from the day that I picked her up.









The day after I got her home I decided to see if she would run after so many years of sitting and the POs yearly ritual of pouring gas in the carb and running it for a few seconds. So I put a fresh battery on her, checked the oil which looked like it could use a changing but was clean, and ran a fuel line from the pump to a gas can. I could get her to start on carb cleaner but was not getting fuel through the carb, so after checking the fuel pump off came the carburetor for a good cleaning.

A couple of days later when that was finished it was time for attempt#2. This time she fired off and was running a little rough but would idle on her own. After a few minutes of idling I heard a clank in the motor and she sputtered and died. I was a little bummed at this point to say the least, but it was time to figure out what had happened so I broke out the compression tester and found that I didn't have any compression on cylinders 2,4, and 7.

So, time to tear the engine down and find out what happened. I pulled the valve covers off and what did I find.



A missing push rod on cylinder #2. Now it was time to go a little further. I pulled the intake and found this



I have been doing my own engine work and helping buddies rebuild engines my whole life and this is the first broken pushrod I have ever seen. Time to dig deeper, so off come the heads. I don't have any good pictures of this part but what I found were stuck valves on the 3 cylinders that didn't have compression caused by an unbelievable amount of carbon build up and sticky residue left over from the many years of dumping fuel down the carbs and firing it up for a few seconds. Up to this point I had thought what the PO was doing was a good idea. Boy was I wrong!

Since then the I have rebuilt the heads and replaced the stock intake and 2 bbl carburetor with an Edelbrock performer intake and an edelbrock 4 barrel carb. Now she purrs like a kitten. I wanted to get a little drive time in prior to tearing her down for a proper restore, so I Checked out the brakes, installed a salvage yard seat from a 1998 chevy pickup, replaced tires, and installed turn signals for safety. Here is a pic from our fist time out for a test drive.



After about 200 miles of driving and going to a car show and cruise near by I am finally ready to start the tear down.

Here is how she sits today and some of the issues that I am going to be dealing with.














I am looking forward to an comments or suggestions and want to thank everyone for looking.