In the last post (1950 Chevy 3100 Vintage Truck Restore / Rebuild_4: Grilling on a Sunday Afternoon) you may recall that Mark had finished painting the grill for our 1950 Chevy 3100 Vintage Pickup Truck. Well, here’s how it looks on the truck . . .
Besides the grill, I have so much to show you. We’ve made tremendous progress with so many other features of the truck as well. She sure is looking pretty!
First, for the wheels, we went with baby moons on shiny black rims with chrome beauty rings. Nice, huh?
Then Mark refurbished the wood planks and metal separators in the truck bed. Both really pop now . . .
Mark was able to make use of the rear bumper that came with the truck but did some cutting and welding to add a nice curve to the ends and, of course, painted it the same shiny black we used on the grill. An update to the rear lights and the tailgate chain helps pull it together. . . .
We did our best to carry the wood color of the truck bed into the front cab with entirely custom woodwork for the floor and the center console that Mark designed and built (with my input and thumbs up, of course, because he’s good like that!). We managed to score a nice radio and speakers from the junkyard that sound great and look quite fab with the truck . . . kinda old school.
We have lots of places to stow various nitnoids. For instance, we can store stuff in the console, in the glove box, and Mark even custom built an extra box under the passenger seat. There’s also a shelf behind the seat we can make use of if needed.
Besides painting the dash and steering wheel shiny black, Mark also painted the doors in the same color. We decided on the best balance between silver and black on the doors to complement the rest of the dash. Mark custom cut and bent the metal for the upper part of the doors. He also had to replace the guides for the side windows . . . the original ones were much too trashed to continue using.
Somewhere along the way, we also ditched the original bench seat (it sure had seen better days!) . . .
We replaced the original with something we eventually found at a junkyard that cost us $30 or so. There are a few minor tears in the pleather on the passenger side, but other than that, the seat is super comfortable. We may do a custom cover on it some day, but are happy to live with it as is for a while. We also found seat belts that matched reasonably well. Junkyard picking is fun and often well worth the effort if you don’t mind taking the time. For us, its a scavenger hunt. We get a kick out of it.
The instrument panel came out great. It originally looked like this . . .
Mark was able to salvage the gas/battery/temp/oil gauge, only having to replace the display (which he easily found on the internet) . . .
But since he had transformed our three-on-the-tree manual transmission into an automatic transmission and had also changed up the original chassis, wheels, etc., he had to play around quite a bit with migrating everything that was affected by all those changes, which turned out to be a lot.
One of those things was the P-R-N-D markers for the steering column. Mark didn’t like any of the ones on the market, so decided to create his own. This turned out to be more of a pain in the ass than expected, mostly because there was limited space around the steering wheel for a pointer and for the actual lettering. He figured it out eventually, as you may have noted in the picture above.
The speedometer/odometer was also a pain. A brand new one would cost a couple hundred dollars, so Mark set to the task of using the original speedometer casing, but otherwise altering the thing to suit our needs. There was such minutia involved in getting the right display to line up properly with the speedometer needle that Mark eventually called upon my help in a graphics design program to just create our own and print it out. In the end, we created something that looks very nice. Don’t you think?
I swear the “Susan’s 50 Chevy” addition was HIS idea! 🙂
That’s all for now! As always, stay tuned for updates.
Happy Restoring, Re-using, and Re-purposing to all you builders and restorers out there!
And HAPPY FATHER’S DAY to all you amazing DADS!
I don’t know what we’d do without you!
Related Articles in this 1950 Chevy Restore/Rebuild series:
1950 Chevy 3100 Vintage Truck Restore/Rebuild_1: Committing to the Project
1950 Chevy 3100 Vintage Truck Restore / Rebuild_2: Prepping Chassis and Engine
1950 Chevy 3100 Vintage Truck Restore/Rebuild_3: Hard Body Meets Firm Foundation
1950 Chevy 3100 Vintage Truck Restore / Rebuild_4: Grilling on a Sunday Afternoon
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Teardrop Adventures 
HEY SUE LOVE THE TRUCK , I HAVE A 50 ALSO AND ITS STILL UNDER THE RESTO-STAGE, ENJOY YOUR TOY. MIKE B.
Thanks, Mike. Very cool that you have one too! This one strayed from the original target (I dreamed of the extra, curved rear/side windows and a forest green body), but a restore allows for changing one’s mind. This one also has A LOT more power than I could’ve imagined. It’s all good, and it’s all fun, ’cause it’s all YOU. Have a blast with that!