A brief (and delayed) update

It has been a while since I last posted and I am happy to report.........the project is at a standstill.  We've gotten all of the front end taken off and have determined the engine is shit (not really surprised there).  I've been tossing around the idea of replacing the engine anyway because the one in there now is a straight 6, and i'd rather have a V6 or V8, so i've started my shopping.  There are so many engines out there for sale, some cheap, most not.  It's a lot of work since i'm not too knowledgeable on engines.  But i'm having fun with it, which is important.  

I have so much to learn.

Until next time.  

A New Home

After sitting in the backyard for 24 years, the truck has been moved!  With the help of a couple friends and their diesel truck the Chevy was pulled from the backyard, out the side gate, down the street, around the house and backed down the driveway into the garage.  Actually, I should say it was pushed down the driveway by three, and me behind the wheel steering it into the garage.  That was fun.  
The task went a lot smoother than I imagined.  The Chevy wasn't running under it's own power.  The brakes didn't even work!  But the E-Brake did. Oh and remember that ONE tire that would NOT inflate?  We tried it again and the tire held air this time.  We could not figure out why it decided to hold air now.  It made the job of moving the truck a lot easier though.  

As we were backing the truck down the driveway we were all kind of skeptical of the truck fitting in the garage in the first place.  The house was built sometime in the 40's or 50's, and the garage door is a lot smaller than standard garage doors today.  Add to that, the amount of stuff stored in our garage takes up a lot of space.  Did I mention we had to do a thorough deep cleaning of the garage before we could even THINK about moving the truck in there?  The garage was piled with stuff from years and years and years of storage.  But the truck fit!  With inches to spare.

New home!

Before truck

It was a great accomplishment, getting the truck out of the backyard.  Now the garage will be it's home for however many years.  

And now the real work begins. 

Until next time...

There's always one.

Our first official day of working on the truck consisted of jacking it up and seeing if the tires would inflate.  I was a little skeptical at first because each tire was a good 3-4 inches sunk into the dirt.  But to my surprise, the tires were filling.....until we get to the last one - the front passenger-side tire.  It was losing air as fast as it was going in.  There was no way it was going to stay inflated.  There's always one.

Next, we moved onto removing the camper shell.  There were only 4 bolts holding the camper shell to the bed of the truck and thankfully those came off without a hitch.  But that thing was heavy as hell!  And i'm not much help in the upper body strength department but my boyfriend is and we eventually got it pulled off.  And it looks so much better without it!

Our second day of working consisted of removing the bench seat. This thing was so ratty. And since mice had obviously gotten into it (remember the dead mouse I found?!) there was mouse poop everywhere! And it smelled really bad. Just like the camper, there were only 4 bolts holding the bench to the floor of the cab. Simple right?  Wrong.  One bolt head was completly stripped! And being that it's super old and a little rusted it would not budge for nothing. What finally got it was taking a flathead screwdriver and a mallet to it to try and get some space between the bolt head and the bottom. Then we could get a better grip with the vice scrips and unscrew it. There's always ONE!!

At this point there wasn't much left to really do until we moved the truck into the garage (the ultimate goal) so we decided to take off something small and unimportant - the front bumper guard. Again, only being held on by 4 bolts. 

Side note: I wish my 2006 Scion tC was this simple to work on; rust and age aside. I mean, this truck has no computer systems, and there's so much space unde the hood!  But more on that later. 

Back to the bumper guard. So 4 bolts and one has to give us problems. Of course. And it's one that's UNDER the truck. But with lots of man power (thanks boyfriend) we got it loose. 

There's. always. One. 

Until next time...

My first blog post.....ever

This is my dad.

 This is his 1960 Chevrolet Apache.



Passed down from my Nonni Joe (mom's dad), to my dad, and now to me.  Through this blog I will document the restoration process starting from dismantleing all the way to the very end.  I know it doesn't look too great right now;

it's been sitting in that exact spot for 24+ years sinking into the dirt, collecting leaves and various animals and insects (yes animals. I found a mouse carcass when cleaning out the cab, and yes, I screamed.  EW!), but it will look perfect one day.  That I know for sure.


This truck and I have a long, long journey ahead of us. It will be frustrating at times; I will want to quit and give up probably most of the time. But I won't. I will do it. I will do it for my Nonni Joe, for my Dad, and for me. Because in the end (in several years no doubt), it will be totally worth it.

Until next time...