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1974 Dodge club cab, 1990’s transmission, 1980’s engine, left-over flashing for floor boards, rubber bedliner keeps stuff from falling through the bed. Milage ? ? It still goes 50mph tops loaded w/ 6x6s or completely empty. It was a farm truck in the 70s and 80s (still smells like horses in wet weather) before Lady GC and I got it for construction.
Color: rust, white, and original green. 2Wheel-drive and one original hubcap, street tires. It won’t go in mud or snow. It had a nice radio until the heater motor blew and messed up all the wiring on that fuse. Can’t forget the broken gas gauge and the need to put in $10 every 100 miles. But it still works hard.
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I have a '79 F350 1 ton dump w/ virtually no rust! Which is totally amazing for Buffalo, what with our reputation for winter and all.
The 460 was rebuilt right before I bought it, and just purrs. A bit thirsty, though. As soon as I fill 'er up, I have to start looking for the next gas station!
I put a CD player in it, and now it rocks!!
Love my truck!
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A couple of years ago I went over to look around in Vietnam, and one of my favorite things I saw was in Saigon-- A guy on a Honda 50 carrying 5 five gallon buckets of genuine Sheetrock drywall mud. Three stacked up behind him on the seat and two between his knees. Right behind him came another scooter with two guys carrying a sheet of glass about 3'X 5'.
*1946 Chevy 5000 series 2 1/2 ton....mint condition...7000 miles total...Sunday ice cream trips...Starts nicely with the crank and purrs like a kitten.Not my work truck but it has pulled emergency service duties.J
*How'd ya end up with a rig like that?can it tow a bachoe?Blue
*BlueI've got one for ya. . .1955 Dodge 3/4 ton, straight 6, 4x4, 24 volt starter, 3,000 miles +/-. Korean War era Army surplus. . . looks like a Mash ambulance.Complete water proof engine system, gas heater in the van, 6 gal/mile fuel consumption b HEAVY METAL.
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HOW ABOUT A 1967 C-20 CHEVY 327 350 TURBO-HYDRA-MATIC IT IS NEARLY RESTORED, I WOULDNT TRADE IT FOR A NEW ONE
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Nearly restored? That could include a realll biggg range!
Blue
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HOW ABOUT A 1967 C-20 CHEVY 327 350 TURBO-HYDRA-MATIC IT IS NEARLY RESTORED, I WOULDNT TRADE IT FOR A NEW ONE
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"The 5 gallon can for radiator water will be expensive in freezing weather"
Not necessarily. I had an old '61 bronco for plowing with the same setup. The local garages were happy to get rid
of old gycol mix, I got 20 gal at a time. Thow a beer into the mix for good luck too.....
*We had a 1/2 ton Chevy truck named Johnny Cash, so named by a friend when he found out that it had a 67 cab on it, with a 66 box on the back and a 69 Camaro engine in it. Seems Johnny Cash had a song about an auto worker who kept taking home parts over the years to build a car. It was a delightful oxidized blue color, with a piece of masonite for the ventilation window on the passenger size. My wife loved it. It had a 327 in it and camper special rear end in it. Acceleration from zero to 50 was awesome. She loved to blow the rice grinders off the line at the stop lights. It had such nice touches, such as the aluminum plate attached with a door hinge for an accelerator pedal, and the door handle made out of 3/4 inch steel bar stock. It had at least five layers of paint on it and any number of dents. Most people cut you a wide swath as they figured anybody that drove something that ugly wouldn't care a great deal about another dent or scratch. Sometimes I wish I still had the beast just for that factor alone.
*Old vans are a sickness with me. I had a 76 dodge van, that I bought used. I got it cheap, and figured I'd just run in into the ground. I never changed the oil, the oil pressure started at 30, and dropped to 10 as it heated up. The gas guage didn;t work, the odometer quit, The radio never worked, and the heater was sporadic. The rear spring broke through, so i slipped a pice of plywood for the spring to bear against. The van had been in an sccident, and tracked crooked. Of course, the hinges had spikes in them, and the bottoms were glued together. I ran a 12" piece of brown aluminum coil stock for running boards. Well, I use to run out of gas so often, that I got tired of opening up the engine compartment to prime the carb. So I drilled a hole through the engind cover, and kept a funnel handy. I would justadribble an ounce of fuel onto the air cleaner lid, and it would dribbles into the carb, and fire the engine right up! Well, the carburator pump (or something) wnet bad, and I eventually had to pour a little in to start it every time! Since the boys had broken the key, I had to use a screwdriver to turn the ignition. It started well, ran good, and I just couldn't figure out how to kill it!Eventually, it became so rusty that, even I was embarassed, and you all know how low my standards are!I gave it to an old drunken carpenter employee, because he could use it for parts (he had a worse one!) Instead, he drove mine!Three years later, I saw him, and stopped to talk. I questioned him why he was still driving the old red van (he had plenty enough money to buy a new van)..His reply nearly floored me, he said "Well, as part of my VA alchoholic recovery program, I have to go downtown once a week at night to AA meetings. Since the building is in a bad part of Detroit, I wanted to make sure I was driving something dependable"!!!That old 360 (or whatever) Was a work horse!I think I'm going to buy a new one, after remembering that heap!Blue
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Now blue has made the bet of the worst work truck but I have you all beat. 1986 import 4x4 with tar paper floor boards custom wings(from rusting sheet metal) custom plywood box in back to hold your tools.
*1961 F-100 longbed w/292. Three ply rubber mat floor boards framed with resawn 2x4; old road signs riveted in place for engine hood, door skin, cab roof. Shift stick held in place with bailing wire. Radiator hoses wrapped so many times with duct tape that the original hose is no longer needed. Five gallon water can gravity feed into radiator. Rear axle held straight by welded on angle iron. Crack in pumpkin "fixed" with epoxy. Worth keeping 'cause with granny gear only truck I knew that could climb Pine Mtn. in the rain.
*Bill:Are you British, and really meant fenders when you said wings? Also, you didn't quote an odometer reading, I'm always curious. And is your import from overseas, or built here in America? The first digit of the vin tells the story: 1=USA J=Japan 2= Canada 3=Mexico.Rich:The 5 gallon can for radiator water will be expensive in freezing weather. You warm weather climate people can get away with so much more creative automotive engineering.Frank
*No I'm american made and the wings are the fenders at 60mph. As the air gets under the truck the fenders being so rusty they start to "float up" from the bottom giving the appearance of being wings. Truck was made in japan and has over 300,000 on it. Why do we keep it? It's a real four wheel drive. Limted slip front and rear. When it really muddy and I have to run tools up to a house this thing will do it with out getting stuck. Love to watch the new stuff getting stuck as I go around them Did I mention the PL400 that holds the radio in?????
*Some of the best/worse trucks are not even trucks.I once had four guys pick up ten or twelve 70lb. bags of mortar in a Trans Am. In order to even the load thay had me put four on the hood, two or four on the roof, and four on the trunk (the trunk was full of beer, I think). They sped off, fenders cutting the tires like spaghetti.But my winner is... the chubby guy who picked up nine 4" solid concrete block on a little scooter. He stacked them up holding them in with his knees, pulled back on the throttle, and putted of into the sunset.
*1974 Dodge club cab, 1990's transmission, 1980's engine, left-over flashing for floor boards, rubber bedliner keeps stuff from falling through the bed. Milage ? ? It still goes 50mph tops loaded w/ 6x6s or completely empty. It was a farm truck in the 70s and 80s (still smells like horses in wet weather) before Lady GC and I got it for construction. Color: rust, white, and original green. 2Wheel-drive and one original hubcap, street tires. It won't go in mud or snow. It had a nice radio until the heater motor blew and messed up all the wiring on that fuse. Can't forget the broken gas gauge and the need to put in $10 every 100 miles. But it still works hard.
*I have 2 that look the same...not so rough, but I'll win hands down for roughest ride. Half ton 83 fords with 1 ton springs in the front and 5 ton helpers in the back. If you're going to run heavy...I don't want to look like it. We called the first one "little bounce", and the second one is just "painful". Worse than a bobcat.
*You guys are sick! Get rid of that junk!Do I sound like anyone you know?Why do we drive beasts like these? Is it a sickness, or do we know something that others don't.Mine is a rather nice 89 dodge conversion van. Its starting to look old, and I'm looking for a "new" 93. I gotta have power windows though. That's the most important feature for a tradesman. It's too late to tell you about my winning beater. I'm almost embarassed. NOOOOOOTTTT!Blue
*Blue,
Joseph FuscoView Image
*sick........... get rid of my junk truck...... why?My favorite is a 1987 chevy one ton pick up with 454 and a gale banks turbo. Let's me blend into traffic quick.
*It's Ironic really that we for the most part drive junk. We all seem to have the computers and likely some of the more sucessful businesses in the field. My rationale...Guys with hammers scrapin up against my nice new truck, 23000 for a stripped down ford...they can't even make a washer pump that works. Aside from the cost of keeping these electronic nightmares on the road there's collision insurance which is a prerequisite if you have to borrow, (@$220/month up here). The last new one I had was a 96 with the new 4 speed automatic and the big v8, $2700 for a new tranny when I returned it off a lease...and I went easy on it. The old trucks take a helluva lot more abuse.
*. . . '85 Ford F150, 300 c.i. 6 cyl, 1/2ton, 4 speed, 2wd, a little rust, a lot of abuse, still goin strong!!!!! No duct tape, no baling wire, no holes in the floor boards,tail gate pretty dinged up. . . built in Windsor, On. I'm happy. . . with the truck at least.