Two owner flatbed

While shopping for a replacement motor for my son's dentside Ford, I stumbled across a one owner '74 C30 flatbed. I fell in love with the truck and the story, and became the second owner. The first guy had it for 50 years, and now it's my turn. The truck has just under 118,000 original miles. It last had an inspection sticker in 2013, and while it had new brake shoes, it also had rats nesting inside the brakes and the air box, among other problems. It was rough. Much worse than I thought at the time of purchase. The Virginia state inspection list was a handy guide to everything I had to fix on this truck. Brakes? Not really. Horn? Nope. Defroster? Yeah, right. Marker lights? Marker lights are for sissies. Seat belts? Puhleeeze!



I bit off a lot more work than I initially expected. After working on it every spare minute for 92 days, and spending far more than I wish to admit, I finally got it inspected and road legal. This truck was owned by a couple who had a race car, and it originally had a rollback bed for hauling their car to the track. They eventually moved the bed to a newer truck, and put a custom-fabricated flatbed on this one. It's basically a deck with some metal framing around it.

The original custom flatbed had a lot of issues, and I had to rip out a bunch of mangled nonsense, and create a whole new wiring harness and a whole new set of lights for the back, including a third reverse light right in the middle, so I can see to back the thing in the dark. I added an ICC-style bumper with some DOT tape too, because being conspicuous is good. Plus the mudflaps. I think the mudflaps are awesome. The guy selling the truck on behalf of the original owner had a hook up at Yokohama, so I got a set of tires as part of the deal. I put them on white letters out, gave them a good coating of Meguiar's hybrid ceramic tire shine, and I gave the old patina a shot of shine with some Turtle Wax Minute Wax. As the final touch, I installed the missing fender emblems using some barrel nuts.



Over the course of the build, I replaced the plugs, wires, front hubs/rotors, and calipers, brake hoses, front brake hard lines, right fender liner, battery tray, alternator, radiator, power steering pressure line, master cylinder, carburetor (went with a JET Performance Stage 1), all vacuum lines, brake booster check valve, all water hoses, all fuel hoses, all grease fittings, all bearings, rear wheel seals, axle seals, differential seal, gas tank, tank brackets and straps, sending unit, roof marker lights, front turn signals, front side markers, front fender emblems, grill, radiator, exhaust, multiple brake hard lines, rear brake hose, wheel cylinders, shoes, parking brake cables, parking brake release handle, seat belts, instrument cluster, bezel, crank handles, door knobs, driver side window, door weatherstripping, ignition switch, headlight switch, wiper switch, and the radio. Whew!

I also put in a Painless Performance harness and Dakota Digital RTX gauges with the GPS speed module and weather sensor. Ouch. My son thinks I'm completely insane for spending $2,000 on gauges, but they dropped right in, they look right, and they are chock full of goodies.



I kept the original points distributor. I set the dwell to 28° and the initial timing to 12°. I am presently working out why I only get 6.3 mpg out of this rig. I'm sure I can do better with more tuning.

Anyway, I'm extremely proud of how this old square body turned out, and I totally want to show off!

More pictures. Who doesn't love pictures?

Can't stop showing off.

6 qt. aftermarket washer fluid bottle wired to the original switch via the new harness:



The final touch. I love the '70s vibe:



The JET Performance Stage 1 Quadrajet had the throttle stud in the wrong hole. No easy way to deal with that. Shorter cable to the gas pedal? The stud couldn't be moved. I decided to deal with it by making a new stud:



The Painless square body harness had a lot of options for a lot of model years. To make it work with my points distributor, I had to add a ballast resistor in place of the original resistor wire:


Finally, and I'll shut up now, I fit the cedar sides to this thing using vintage woodworking tools, and forgotten skills:

Welcome from Austria. Nice Truck.

I like it. Welcome

Welcome from the Texas Panhandle.
That's a good lookin truck.

I think you're going to fit in just fine here.

Very nice work

Sweet truck!

Man, you REALLY know how to show up!! Beautiful work on a beautiful rig! Welcome from Wisco!

Welcome Ohio. Nice truck!

fofiddyfo said:

Man, you REALLY know how to show up!! Beautiful work on a beautiful rig! Welcome from Wisco!

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The best thing about this truck, other than looking totally cool going down the road, is that I have an 8' wide, 11' long bed sitting on top of a 14-bolt axle that was gently used. The springs are like brand new. I pulled the cover off to change the gear oil and check things out, and those gears looked fantastic. The oil was still kind of yellowish, so even though this thing sat in a corn field for 11 years, it was maintained. They even had an extended breather tube on it.



I kept the original brake drums, because they still had tons of life in them. I painted them with some brake caliper paint to make them pretty.



My blower housing was horrifying, but it's all better now.



The front shocks were impressively horrible, and original. Those are gone now.


Best of all, Phoebe approves of this build:

I painted the water pump Chevy Orange, to make the truck go faster:



I made all the yucky wiring go away:


I made the truck go 20% faster with 40% better MPG by turning a custom nut for the air cleaner:


Best of all, Daphne approves of this build:


I even scored an eBay owner's manual. I'm not sure where I find Unlead/2 or 91 Research Octane gas, but it's interesting to learn that the GL-5 and NLGI #2 standards already existed by 1974. This truck got Lucas Red'n'Tacky throughout.



Okay, I think I'm done spamming the internet with show off pics now. I am extremely proud of this build. I'm not an automotive restoration expert or whatever. I'm a truck driver with a liberal arts degree. I learned how to do all this stuff (including the machinist stuff) thanks in large measure to Youtube University, and, you know, being too cheap to pay anybody to do anything.