I just about got a story like that...also really long
When I was 17 I bought a 1977 Ford f100 and had this huge dream to convert it to 4x4 even thought I didnt' know crap about 4x4's. I knew a little mechanics at the time but not enough to pull that off. Anyways I found a free 1979 ford f150 4x4 complete sans motor and decided that it's chassis would be perfect. About a year later decided it wouldn't happen and sold the 4x4 and decided to buy one already running. I had 3000 saved up (by this time i'm 19) and started looking around. A friend of my dad's had an old blazer sitting in front of his mom's house that he told me about and said I should go have a look at it. When I got there it was unlike any blazer i'd ever seen. Come to find out it was a 1971 1st gen blazer. It looked pretty cool and it was complete and ran (supposedly). On the window was a sticker that read: 1971 chevy blazer for sale, 350, sm465, np205 $4500. I already knew what all that meant cuz i'd been doing research and I thought it was sooo damn cool that this blazer was a 4 speed since all the ones i'd seen previous were autos. The price wasn't cool however. I told him it was too much and said he'd go 3500 because he knew me and worked with my dad (they were each other's police partners). He told me he would go put a new battery in it and get it started and then I could go drive it and see what I thought. The next weekend I went over to find him under the hood trying to mess with the battery. Turns out that his brother had replaced the battery cables a while back and made the positive black and the negative red and he didn't check before hooking it up and fried some wires, not real bad but enough to burn off the plastic on the wires. I wasn't feeling so good about this but he told me to come back the next day and take all the time in the world to mess with it and get it started (i was working at a machine shop now so I was a little better than before with mechanics). I came back the next day with a roll of electrical tape a 5 gallons of gas as well as some other tools and got the blue bastard started. It ran okay and idled on it's own but had some hellacious exhaust leaks but other than that it was alright. Now here come's the fun part, driving it. I took it around the block and thought it was the coolest thing ever. Put it in 4x4 and messed around in a ditch and I just had to have it. It was the first 4x4 i'd ever been in so I was just amazed at what it would do. I called him and said i'd give him 3000 cuz he f'd up the wiring and he said that was fine. I drove it home and a week later the rear end took a dumb on me, even put a small hole in the housing so I ordered new gears and bearings and an install kit and redid it myself with the occassional help of my boss. I replaced the limited slip that was in mine with another used one and it works fine. Couple days later I was driving down my street and smoke started bellowing from under the hood and this weird smell over took the entire cab. I pulled over and my entire wiring harness was melting before my very eyes. I yanked off the negative cable on the battery and made a call to lmc an our later for a new engine wiring harness. Got it going again and realized one reason the engine ran so poorly, the mechanical advance was seized up in the dizzy so a phone call to summit landed me a new MSD pro billet dizzy, 6al box, coil, and wires. The truck ran better but still wasn't good enough so i removed the air horn on the edelbrock carb to see that it was pretty nasty and decided I wan't a new carb anyways so another call to summit got me a new 625 demon road kind jr (i think that's what it was). I drove it this way for two months til one day I was cruising home and had a little loss in power, that little loss in power led to a big loss in power and before I knew it I was coasting down IH35 trying to get as close to home as I could. After a year of saving I now have a gm crate motor, dual friction clutch, aftermarket billet steel flywheel(can't remember the brand), HEI dizzy, etc etc. It runs great now just cost me a ton of money to get here, now maybe I can mess with the suspension and tires and all that fun stuff.
When I was 17 I bought a 1977 Ford f100 and had this huge dream to convert it to 4x4 even thought I didnt' know crap about 4x4's. I knew a little mechanics at the time but not enough to pull that off. Anyways I found a free 1979 ford f150 4x4 complete sans motor and decided that it's chassis would be perfect. About a year later decided it wouldn't happen and sold the 4x4 and decided to buy one already running. I had 3000 saved up (by this time i'm 19) and started looking around. A friend of my dad's had an old blazer sitting in front of his mom's house that he told me about and said I should go have a look at it. When I got there it was unlike any blazer i'd ever seen. Come to find out it was a 1971 1st gen blazer. It looked pretty cool and it was complete and ran (supposedly). On the window was a sticker that read: 1971 chevy blazer for sale, 350, sm465, np205 $4500. I already knew what all that meant cuz i'd been doing research and I thought it was sooo damn cool that this blazer was a 4 speed since all the ones i'd seen previous were autos. The price wasn't cool however. I told him it was too much and said he'd go 3500 because he knew me and worked with my dad (they were each other's police partners). He told me he would go put a new battery in it and get it started and then I could go drive it and see what I thought. The next weekend I went over to find him under the hood trying to mess with the battery. Turns out that his brother had replaced the battery cables a while back and made the positive black and the negative red and he didn't check before hooking it up and fried some wires, not real bad but enough to burn off the plastic on the wires. I wasn't feeling so good about this but he told me to come back the next day and take all the time in the world to mess with it and get it started (i was working at a machine shop now so I was a little better than before with mechanics). I came back the next day with a roll of electrical tape a 5 gallons of gas as well as some other tools and got the blue bastard started. It ran okay and idled on it's own but had some hellacious exhaust leaks but other than that it was alright. Now here come's the fun part, driving it. I took it around the block and thought it was the coolest thing ever. Put it in 4x4 and messed around in a ditch and I just had to have it. It was the first 4x4 i'd ever been in so I was just amazed at what it would do. I called him and said i'd give him 3000 cuz he f'd up the wiring and he said that was fine. I drove it home and a week later the rear end took a dumb on me, even put a small hole in the housing so I ordered new gears and bearings and an install kit and redid it myself with the occassional help of my boss. I replaced the limited slip that was in mine with another used one and it works fine. Couple days later I was driving down my street and smoke started bellowing from under the hood and this weird smell over took the entire cab. I pulled over and my entire wiring harness was melting before my very eyes. I yanked off the negative cable on the battery and made a call to lmc an our later for a new engine wiring harness. Got it going again and realized one reason the engine ran so poorly, the mechanical advance was seized up in the dizzy so a phone call to summit landed me a new MSD pro billet dizzy, 6al box, coil, and wires. The truck ran better but still wasn't good enough so i removed the air horn on the edelbrock carb to see that it was pretty nasty and decided I wan't a new carb anyways so another call to summit got me a new 625 demon road kind jr (i think that's what it was). I drove it this way for two months til one day I was cruising home and had a little loss in power, that little loss in power led to a big loss in power and before I knew it I was coasting down IH35 trying to get as close to home as I could. After a year of saving I now have a gm crate motor, dual friction clutch, aftermarket billet steel flywheel(can't remember the brand), HEI dizzy, etc etc. It runs great now just cost me a ton of money to get here, now maybe I can mess with the suspension and tires and all that fun stuff.
