Project

It was a long year but the orphaned ’50 Chevy 3100 is finally going home to it’s owner. Here are a few photos as we bid adieu…

We’re down to the final details on this ’50 Chevy Truck project. It’s no longer looking like the orphan it was when it came to the shop about a year ago. We actually (test) drove it to the exhaust shop to get the side exit tail pipe fabbed and installed. Ran great with the ‘new’…

It’s the final countdown on the ’50 Chevy pickup. Our last post ended with hanging the front clip sheet metal. Guys that work on these trucks will tell you aligning everything in the front clip can be a real challenge. They’re not kidding. I spent the better part of three days pushing, prodding, and coaxing…

With the wood bed floor of the ’50 Chevy truck finished and assembled we can get on with the broader ‘brushstrokes’ of assembly and the fine details within. The fenders, running boards, and tail gate are next in line and require lots of nuts, bolts, and washers. I employed a combination of plain and stainless…

In our last post I’d started sealing the oak boards with epoxy. The biggest issue during that process was most of the boards expelled air during the cure and blew little bubbles into the sealer. Some boards were worse than others, depending on the grain. I tried everything I could think of to reduce or…

In part 1 of “Make Your Bed…!” I mentioned that the filler neck on the fuel tank was going to have to be relocated. That’s because with the bed floor and stainless strips in place the fill neck on the tank was going to interfere with a strip where it needs to come up through…

The beds on these old trucks are made of steel, wood, and a couple hundred fasteners. The fenders bolt to the bed sides and the running boards which reside, more or less, in a fixed position. And it’s all got to come together on a frame that was bent way out of shape in a…

In our last post we removed the dual carbs and intake to swap them out and began fitting the wonky-sided bed. The first steps were to fit the new stainless steel angle brackets to the inner bed sides. The edge of the bed wood floor attach to them and they also help strengthen the sheet…

After our excursion to the muffler shop (on and off a trailer) it was clear the front brakes were dragging. The 2 lb. residual pressure valves plumbed into our brake lines shouldn’t be an issue. So, I pulled the brake master cylinder to look for clues. There’s a push rod inside the vacuum brake booster…

With the engine now running we can begin to see areas or systems that need some ‘adjustment’. One of the first things noticed is that the transmission would not go into first or second gear while idling. Remember, we’re adapting the original clutch pedal, linkage, and clutch assembly to work with the T-5 transmission from…