THE CHASSIS

So, as you might recall from our first post on this project (1950 Chevy 3100 Vintage Truck Restore/Rebuild_1: Committing to the Project), we acquired this lovely hunka junka 1989 Chevy S10 for it’s chassis . . .

This is the same truck, stripped of the worst part of the truck . . .

. . . or so we thought.

Surprise!

And here was our first surprise . . .

Errrrr . . . those two big bars that look shifted to the right isn’t a trick of the camera. This baby withstood significant impact and the result was a seriously misaligned front end. Still, Mark decided he was willing to keep working with it.

There, that’s better . . .

Now for a bit of cleanup . . .

. . . and a few restored parts (cleaned and painted) from a variety of trucks that have now been added to the mix . . .

. . . and we have ourselves a half-decent looking, rolling chassis, ready for an engine .

THE ENGINE

Seems we were destined to put this demolished 2004 Chevy Silverado Extended Cab to good re-use. We were happy to pull from it the LS 4.8 engine we would use for our vintage truck restoration project.

The Silverado had seen better days, but her engine only had 112,000 miles on it. Plenty more to go, as far as we were concerned.

The engine looked a might frightful at first . . .

. . . but not so bad after we stripped her of her wiring harness and computer, and gave her a good cleaning. Next, we used a forklift to lower the chassis over the engine (rather than trying to precariously dangle the engine over the chassis) . . .

. . . and checked her for proper fit before we committed to the rest of the project.

She now looks good to go.

Next, we’ll install the truck bed, cab, engine, and transmission. And then we’ll trailer her back home where we can tackle the rest of the project in the comfort of our own garage.  Definitely something we’re looking forward to.

You may have noticed we’re pulling parts from a variety of vehicles for this project. Part of that is out of necessity. We were limited in our choice of chassis to match the 1950 Chevy 3100. Part of that is out of Mark’s desire for certain performance and reliability features. We will continue to walk that line and, in the meantime, have assembled a detailed spreadsheet, tracking where in the heck all the parts came from (especially VIN# of donor vehicles). Otherwise, fixing anything mechanical on this baby down the road (getting the right parts, in particular) would be a nightmare.

At the moment, our truck is in good company at the aircraft junkyard among several impressive rat rods (rusty on the outside, radically wicked power on the inside!).

And by the time we’re done with our 1950 Chevy 3100 Vintage Truck Restoration & Rebuild  project, we’ll have a hybrid truck that is retro and highly functional . . . a truck Dr. Frankenstein himself would be happy to ride in!

Stay tuned for updates!

Happy Restoring, Re-using, and Re-purposing to all you builders and restorers out there!

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Related Articles in this 1950 Chevy Restore/Rebuild series:

1950 Chevy 3100 Vintage Truck Restore/Rebuild_1: Committing to the Project

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