A moment of silence please....

[Fordum]

hey fordum, you know this guys owns a full fab shop right? Trust me, he has spares, but sadly i liked this truck as well.



Makes me want to change the valve cover gaskets on the 83, i know they leak (As does the front cover seal pretty bad).

Yeah, I did. I was planning on letting him get over the shock and then suggest he might contact a fab shop or two..........

And I am going to try ONE MORE TIME to throw in a reference here from my days and just hope that at least ONE of you children get it. GOD you make me feel old sometimes.
Here goes....


We can rebuild it.......We have the technology. We can make it faster, better, stronger.....

 

[KansasTwister]

They had that line on family guy didnt they? It ended with "But we dont want to spend alot of money"



























(6 million dollar man)

 

[mikey_d05]

I obviously can't speak for him, but I think the biggest issue here is lack of hours in the day. It can be rebuilt, but by the time you take on a project of this magnitude it might be faster and easier to find another 'tonner in need of a little love and strip this one for what's left.

I'm sad to see what happened, as that truck was a big reason I bought and modified my current '84. But, sometimes you just have to drive on in lieu of resurrecting an old girl that's too damaged to be worth repairing.

BTW Fordum - I could probably be your kid, but I still get the reference.

 

[blowedupmotor87]

Sorry to hear about the truck. Sounds like it was a really good rig, hopefully it'll be at least somewhat salvageable, good luck!

Makes me wonder how we didn't burn a (used to be) friend of mine's truck to the ground about 6 years ago. We picked it up from a shop that was "fixing" it for her down in TX and started the journey back to NC and we were wondering why it was going through more than a quart of oil every 100 miles. Figured the motor was just bad (after all, it had been sitting unprotected in the bed of the truck for years up until a few days before we picked it up (had a mouse nest in the carb, LOL!)

Well, middle of the night and middle of nowhere between Houston and Austin the alternator goes out and we have to halt the trip for the night. Next morning we hunted up the parts we needed (new alt, new fuel filter (was already clogged from junk in the tank), new air filter (the shop had put a used one in!!!)). We got to changing things out and noticed you could stick your fingers between the the valve covers and the heads because the valve covers were so beat up and bent! No wonder it was going through so much oil, it was flowing right out! (Also explains why it smoked so much and why the undercarriage was soaked in oil, LOL!) I never thought about it until now but, it's a wonder it didn't catch fire! We replaced the valve covers with new and continued on our way (still with many other problems though, to this day I can't figure out how that truck survived the drive from TX to NC. Nor can I figure out how I survived driving that truck from TX to NC, LOL!).

 

[Smokinthehippies]

kurt did you ever figure out what happend to this thing?

 

[cybrfire]

kurt did you ever figure out what happend to this thing?

Nope I sure didn't. i've looked everything over many times. Fact of the matter is, whatever evidence was burnt away. The electrical was entirely burnt out of the engine bay. Oil lines to the cooler were burnt away.

Only real clue I have from looking at it, the heat was from the heads on up. Lower radiator hose is probably usable still. Oil filter still has all the paint and the oil cooler lines are intact at the oil filter. Fan blades are good from the center of the fan down.

From the heads up, its a totally different story. The carb melted into a pile of aluminum. Upper hose is nonexistant. Cab got burnt out pretty good to.

Currently the cab and box have been crushed. Engine trans and tcase are out by themselves. Axles have been pulled and saved. Frame is all by itself with all the crossmembers removed and was used to R and D the 1 ton boxing kit.

I was almost ready to put the frame in storage when a customer reminded me of a project I need to do. Once that's done, it'll go in the warehouse.

I'm slowly building a collection of bare frames. I guess the next build will be a frame off.