In the early spring of 1999 we needed a truck. My husband and I were both in college, and short on funds, so we went to the junk yard. Neither of us was sure if we would find anything suitable. We paid at the gate, walked in and there it was. A primer grey GMC half ton pickup, a bit beaten up but it had tons of potential.

After a closer look, it looked to be road worthy enough to at least get it home if it started. We found and asked the manager if the early ‘80s GMC truck ran.  He said “We don’t have an early ‘80s GMC.” When we pointed it out to him, he said “That’s a 76’ GMC. At least that’s what the paperwork says! We bought it anyway for $1,500 and left once we got it started. After barely getting it home, we parked it and let it cool down. Soon after we started looking closer at the front end, we found more than expected. The entire front end was shot. The tie rod ends were bent, bushings shot, and the wheel bearings were melted to the spindles!

 

We had all that fixed in no time, plus added a break booster to go with that straight six motor. We put a fresh coat of grey primer and drove it just like that for a while, even going cross country that summer with no A/C. Going through the desert was hot, I wished we had A/C the whole way!

The straight six finally had a big problem, a spun main bearing, but it was fixable. My husband had been telling me for sometime that he wanted to replace the straight six with a 350, and after a little thinking I said “Honey, if you paint the truck that dark purple I want, you can build your motor.” His eyes lit up like a green light and he agreed, “So that means I can make it a hot rod” he said. I looked at him “No that’s not what I said” and he just stood there. Then it hit me that the other day he had been telling me that that was exactly what he wanted to do. 

And so it started. We bought a used block with heads, had the block bored fourty over and had the heads shaved. We ordered almost everything else we needed to build the engine. While we awaited the arrival of the internal motor parts he painted our truck my beloved deep purple.  It turned out he liked the color too once it was done.

When the parts arrived it only took him a few days to get everything put together and ready to put in the truck. He was rather proud of his accomplishment as this was the first time he had ever done this.  

Just a few days after completing the motor install he told me he was not done, he wanted to put an after market muffler on the truck. A few hundred bucks and a day later and you could hear him about three blocks from our house! Hooker Headers and Flowmaster exhaust were the perfect addition. The neighbors did not like it at all, but he loved it. 

Things went really smooth for several months, and then the transmission started slipping. I guess we should have replaced it with the motor, but with money being tight we didn’t. I asked my mom and her husband, who own a mechanics shop for a little help. They got in contact with a guy that builds custom racing transmissions and we told him exactly what we had so he could build us a transmission. Just a short time later, our transmission was ready, paying just $600 for it. Now his 650 hp engine had a proper transmission; a turbo 350 SS.

Once the motor and transmission were complete he started working on the interior of our truck in his spare time.

 

He decided he wanted to refinish the dash, as it was still the original. We ended up just recovering the existing dash with an automotive grade vinyl material. That lasted for a few months, and then the decision was made to buy a complete new set of gauges. We had already bought an oil pressure gage since the original gage cluster did not have one. We decided on the PRO-COMP ULTRA-LITE Auto Meter brand sliver faced gages with a silver outer ring. At this point we designed a custom dash and crafted it out of wood. We were looking for something different and unique. You can’t get more unique than designing something yourself. Once we had a final design we found that it was going to be very difficult to cover. Ultimately we decided not to cover the dash, but to leave it in a raw wood state. 

As time went on we found that many people in our community knew of our truck. Our daughter loved it, saying “Faster daddy, faster!” anytime we went anywhere. She also loved to go in the parking garage at the mall and set off car alarms as they drove through. I think my husband did too. His favorite thing to do was to race the person who pulled up next to him at a light and thought they could beat him. He won most, and lost a few, but always in good fun. We all enjoyed having people ask us about our truck, and always drove it to the local car shows, but we never entered it in a show. Sometimes I think we really should have entered it in a few shows, but you know the old saying “Hind sight is 20 / 20”. 

In February 2002, he ended up killing the 350 engine too, as the cam bolts backed off and caused all kinds of things to go wrong. The block and most of the internal parts were ok and it could have been fixed, but we decided to buy a new Chevy Silverado instead. He was comminuting about 65 miles a day, five days a week for work, and the gas prices were killing us. As I think with most people who build a hot rod style car, we did not intend for it to be daily driver commuter. My little brothers’ 16^th birthday was coming up, and he was restoring a ‘64 C10 Chevy and he wanted to build his own engine. At this point he did not have a block to start with, so I talked to my husband and we decided to pull our engine and give it to him. My husband wanted to turn our truck into a drag only truck anyway. 

Our truck sat untouched for several months, but then we pulled the transmission out to put it into our next project, our daughters Camaro.  

My husband received a job offer in Texas that we could not pass up, so we moved. We could only take one of the project cars with us so we took the Camaro. We decided that the Camaro was more important because it was our daughters’ car, with which she had helped with every step of the way. The truck was left on my grandmother’s property in Southern California. Eventually we signed the truck over to my little brother so he could sell it. Keep in mind this is the same brother that we gave the engine to, so eventually he got the whole thing! Just a short time later my grandmother told me that our truck was gone.  

My car “loving” brother sold our truck, to a scrap yard! When I asked him why he would do such a thing, he told me it was in his way and he did not have the time to try and sell it. It still makes us mad when we think about what happened to our truck. We would have never signed it over to him had we had known that he would cut it up like that.  

We will always have good memories about our first project truck. It was a great and humbling experience that taught us just how much we enjoyed working on cars and trucks. I can’t wait until we have the room to start on another project.

By Mandy Edmondson

Mary is a freelance writer.

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