Pictures of the truck

Here are some pictures of the truck the day after I brought it home. All of the pictures can be seen here

Finally found a truck - August 2007

At this point I was getting frustrated. Cristy and I had been searching for five months. There were no decent trucks in the Austin area. We were down to doing Google searches for '1964 fleet-side'. Cristy found some obscure truck website that had classified ads. On that site there was a posting for the truck I was looking for but the ad was several months old. I called the guy and it was still for sale. The truck was located near Dallas in the city of Mesquite, TX. I arranged to go see the truck on Saturday August 18th, 2007. The whole family drove three hours up to Mesquite and the truck turned out to be pretty nice. It is a 1964 Chevy C-10 short bed fleet-side. The engine had be swapped with small block 350 and the 3 three on the tree trans with a 3 speed TH-350 automatic. I liked what I saw so I plunked down the cash.

The drive home was quite an adventure. After about an hour and half of driving the oil pressure gauge started dropping. We immediately pulled into a gas station to check it out. Turns out the engine is leaking oil like a crazy. I put four quarts of oil in it and we were back on the road. It was a hot humid day and with no air conditioning and windows that wouldn't roll down, I nearly passed out driving home. We had to stop two more times to put oil in the truck. I ended up having to put in a total of seven quarts of oil during the three hour drive.

Searching for a project truck - April 2007

So I have decided I want a 1960's Chevy C-10 truck. I looked at the different body styles and decided I didn't like the early 1962-1963 windshield. Here is an example of a 1962 Step side:



The 1967-1969 models were a bit to plain for my taste. Here is an example of a nice 1968:



So I have narrowed it down to a 1964-1966 Chevy C-10. I don't like the step-side style so fleet-side it is. So basically I am back to the truck I saw at the Lonestar Roundup.

Now that I had narrowed down my choice Cristy and I started searching craigslist for trucks. I was surprised how few fleet-side trucks were out there. We went a looked at a 1965 long bed that was in rough shape. After seeing the long bed in person I decided I wanted a short bed. I didn't know it at the time but short bed fleet-sides are the most difficult to find. Cristy and I searched for the next for the next five months to find one in decent shape.

Deciding on a project car - March 2007

I have been wanting to build a project car/truck for a long time. Now that the family and I have moved to Austin, I have a less demanding job and space to work on a project. Initially I wanted to build a '49 Merc or Ford kustom. Something like this:

but those cars are tough to find and I think a bit beyond my skill level right now. I went to the to the Lonestar Roundup car show in March 2007 and found an I found an idea for a project. I saw this truck while I was there

So now that I have decided on what I wanted to build it was time to try and find one.