In 1975, for the first time in his life, my grandfather, who was a Great Depression era child, splurged and ordered a brand-new vehicle from the factory. It was a 1976 Chevrolet Silverado K20 4×4. (Aside from the color, it looks a lot like the one pictured above.) This piece of machinery was his pride and joy until the day he passed away. Shortly after he picked it up from the dealership, he had a dump bed installed. He wanted it to look stock, and still have the usefulness and functionality of a standard bed, so he hired a fabricator to design, build and install the hydraulic lift, then re-installed the factory bed. Simply looking at the truck, you would never know it had been altered. One of my grandfather’s favorite past times was going to the gas station to fill up. He would lift the bed up to access the saddle tanks, and within a few seconds, he had an audience observing his truck.
The dump bed feature was extremely handy when hauling lumber, cutting firewood, which he loved to do, or developing his little ranch in the mountains. He built his home in the using this truck, bringing lumber from the yard he owned, and going down to the river and picking out rocks and boulders to build a forty-foot-tall chimney with. The inside of the bed is bowed from all the years of heavy stuff being tossed into it.
Several of his grandchildren learned to drive in that truck, and most of us had our first wreck in it on the ranch. After my grandfather passed away, the truck sat untouched for several years, succumbing to the elements, until my mother signed the pink slip (title) over to me, three months before I got married. My goal, along with my fiancé, was to get it running and make it a reliable daily driver. We would sell the newer truck I had, which had large monthly payment and a high interest rate, and use my grandfather’s truck until we saved enough money to buy a newer truck outright with cash.
Even though the truck had sat for several years, it did not take much work to get it “running”. After checking the oil, installing a fresh battery and pouring a little chainsaw-mixed gas down the Quadrajet carburetor, and some fresh gas in the tank, I had it idling. The idle was rough, but it was running, nonetheless. The engine and transmission only had eighty-one thousand original miles, most of which were from the late 1970s and 1980s, so in my opinion, it was equivalent to a lightly used car. But I would learn how incorrect that thought was, as time went on. After selling my newer truck and driving it daily for about a year, I was offered the job as a federal trapper. Where my wife and I had to relocate to was in a very busy city and it did not make sense economically or practically to drive that old truck daily. The apartment we lived in wouldn’t allow you to back your car into a parking spot, let alone change your oil or work on the engine.
I took the old truck back to the family ranch and parked it, leaving it untouched until I moved back to the area a few years later. Once my family and I moved back to the area, I brought the truck to my new little farm, where we still live, and now use it solely as a work truck and as a firewood hauler. I keep it serviced and maintained it to ensure if there was ever an emergency, such as an EMP and/or a solar flare, this truck would still function, when all of our other vehicles, which are all newer and computerized, would become yard art. The only non-mechanical part in the old truck that would be impacted by an EMP/solar flare is the coil/distributor, which I keep a spare of on hand for such a time.
Throughout my adult life, I have always had an old car in some capacity. My high school car was a mid-1950’s Ford sedan, followed by a mid-1960s F100 Ford truck. I learned basic mechanics and car care mostly through trial and error, but also from the original hot rodders and classic car enthusiast while attending classic car shows. Nothing made the “old guys” happier than seeing a high school kid in his teens building a car similar to what they had when they were in high school. They invited me to their garages, car club meetings and to other car shows trying to keep their passion and history alive for future generations to enjoy. The knowledge and skills they passed on to me would serve me well, and now I am passing the same lessons on to my children. One of the biggest lessons I am trying to teach my children about with these old cars, are the basic mechanics because those skills transfer over to many other things in life. Diagnosing a problem on a car and fixing the problem makes them not only solve problems, but it makes them use their hands. We all see too many kids today who cannot/will not dig a hole with a shovel, let alone be willing to change their oil, or replace a water pump.
Older vehicles, pre-computer system cars, are exceptionally simple to work on, repair, and operate because, in comparison to modern vehicles, they are very rudimentary. Most parts are mechanical, meaning one part has to be working for another to work properly. There’s no computer system telling a coil when to fire, or telling your smog system when to clean itself, or braking for you because the car a quarter mile ahead of you is slowing down. The more convenient cars get, the more possibilities there are for things to go wrong. Modern cars, vs. older vehicle where you can perform most of the maintenance and repairs yourself, cost a small fortune to diagnose and repair. Older vehicles, something built before computer systems came standard, do not have any type of onboard diagnostic (OBD) systems. OBDs are handy, but they can also be a headache. If your check engine light comes on in a modern vehicle, you can plug in a code reader into your OBD system and it will give you a code as to what the issue might be.
Unfortunately, I have seen several possible codes come up, which did not help diagnose the issue. Once, I had a check engine light come on and when I plugged the code reader in, about six codes came up that might be the problem. After going through each code, a friend of mine, who’s a mechanic, asked if I had recently put fuel in the gas tank. When I said yes, he told me to tighten the cap, drive for twenty minutes and the light should go off. Sure enough, the code went away. If I had taken the car to a mechanic to diagnose the check engine light, I could have spent a small fortune only to discover my gas cap was loose. CRAZY!
The following describes how/what I fixed on my grandfather’s truck to make it a reliable daily driver, and what I still do to keep in maintained. Of course, using more modern parts and/or installing a modern engine, with a computer system, would make it extremely reliable, but that was not the purpose of this build. Again, I wanted something that could withstand an EMP/Solar flare and still get me around town on a daily basis without drawing too much attention.
Engine
My grandfather ordered the truck equipped with a 400 cubic inch displacement (CID) small block engine with a four-barrel quadrajet carburetor. The 400 cubic inch CID engine is a powerful, proven, reliable engine. I did not want to tear too much off the engine since it was running. I removed the valve covers to repaint and replace the gaskets with fresh cork ones. I also replaced the water pump, power steering pump and thermostat while everything was apart. Once all those parts were reinstalled, I replaced the distributor cap, rotor and coil, which was part of the distributor that year. Lastly, I installed new spark plugs, with the proper gapping, and new sparkplug wires. I also replaced the old, bulky air cleaner with a newer, cleaner one. Modern air cleaner filters are readily available and relatively inexpensive. I have found them at yard sales, or on extreme sale at auto parts stores.
Once the engine was running and idling smoothing, I drove it around town for about two hours. When I got back home, the engine was running extremely rough, and seemed like it was going to die. I parked the truck, opened the hood and could hear a whistle, which told me there was a vacuum leak somewhere. I grabbed a can of starter fluid and began spraying small bursts of starter fluid around the carburetor and intake manifold. When the spray hit a vacuum line at the back of the engine, near the distributor, which plugged into the carburetor, the engine revved and idled normally. I turned the engine off, and grabbed the vacuum line. As I touched the old rubber line, it fell apart and crumbled in my hand. A few minutes later, after replacing the old line with a fresh piece of new rubber line, the engine was idling perfectly at 900 revolutions per minute (RPM).
(To be continued tomorrow, in Part 2.)
Read the full article here