So.... a few months ago, the place/building/compound where I work was crazy busy. Our shop and the two others going full tilt boogie, 3x the number of personal vehicles parking, trucks being loaded, making deliveries, just a ton of traffic.
One day, as I was trying to pull my C10 out to go to lunch, I was so focused on the stakebed parked ~20' in front of me, and making sure some FNG didn't come flying around the blind corner to my left, that I cut it too hard and ... RIIIIPPPP! I hooked my passenger side rear fender on the rear bumper of the C1500 next to me! He had a scrape on his fiberglass; my right side was can-openered.
Fortunately nothing but the sheet metal was damaged, but it was not really repairable...
So I thought I woukd bite the bullet and get a replacement bed side from LMC or another vendor. Ummmm....or not. A Longbed, Fleetside, RH bed side was not available, Out Of Stock everywhere. one vendor did have one (1), but the price had climbed from $799.00 to $999.00, and truck freight would be $250. But wait! It could not be shipped to California, the manufacturer had not filed 2022 Prop 65 paperwork!
At this point I started to panic. What if this is the New Normal? No parts available, too small a market, govt bans on gasoline coming, shipping a 100lb slab of sheet metal isn't worth it to anybody, etc.
So I hit Craigslist. And there it was! A 1973 full long bed up in Bakersfield! But...I hemmed and hawed, and when I hit the seller up 3 days later, it was gone :-{
But I kept looking, and spotted a 1981 long bed closer to LA. Now, I do not have a shop here, but imagining I could use the loading dock and forklift at work to move whole truck beds around, I bombed out 45 mins West to get the 81 bed.
would have been way easier to take my bed off first then drop this on, but I didn't have the time/energy that week so I just had the seller drop it on top.
Since I was out in Santa Clarita, This was my version of a duallie:
Well, I got back to the shop and realized, there was no place to put the pieces, so I drove the bed around like that for a week until I got a friend to help me break it down to put in storage.
Now, My best truck buddy is in Vegas now, so the plan was always to drive there and do the bed surgery. Work suddenly was slow, so I was about to head there when the '73 bed in Bakersfield txt'ed me out of the blue! Actually it was a cool guy named Patrick, turns out he sold his 73 truck but buyer didn't want the bed, did I want it still?
So here is where maybe bad advice and judgement collided. L in Vegas said,
"Oh, yeah, an actual 73 would be better! Bring them both here and we could cut down the other into a shortbed to sell!"
So that is how this picture came about. My poor lowered '73, In Bakersfield, with the pieces of TWO OTHER FULLSIZE TRUCK BEDS, as the payload:
Well, driving up 3000 feet of desert elevation with an extra 8-900 lbs in the back was not the nicest thing to do to my Engine. Took almost 24 hrs as I kept stoppong to cool down my overheating engine. But I finally made it....
Upon inspection, the 81 was in better shape, so thst is what we swapped in. Appropriately, I drove back to LA on July 4th, with my truck sporting a patriotic color scheme:
Hmmmm .... this pic reminded me of something, what is it...?
Oh, Yeah:
BRetty