1973 Chevy C10 – Eddie B.

This was my 1st truck I owned back when I was about 19 years old. I never had money to fix it up. I drove the truck everywhere making small repairs as needed to keep it on the road. I sold the truck to a friend and always had wished I would of kept it. He had the truck for many years. Every time I would see him in the truck I would ask if I could buy it back and it was a quick “No”. So about 7 years had gone by and he was getting separated from his wife. I received a call out of the blue asking if I wanted the truck back. He was asking $4,000. I only could come up with about $1,500 at the time and he said he couldn’t let it go for that price. A few days later he called again and ask if I could borrow some money from someone to get a bit closer to the asking price. I had got paid and had a few hundred more and offered $1,700 for the truck knowing he would turn the offer down. I wasn’t trying to lowball, I just don’t like to borrow money from people. He said if I had the cash he would bring it to my house the next night if he could get a ride home.

The next night he was to arrive around 7:00 pm. Well 8 o’clock came, 9 o’clock passed. About 9:30 I get a call that he got a flat on the freeway and was getting towed to a shop and would have to meet the next night. The next day we met at my house and made the deal.

I have had the truck for about 4 years now and just used it to go to the dumps and Home Depot. It’s still primed and in rough shape. Last summer my son was 15 years old and got a part-time job at a local auto body shop. I asked the shop owner how much it would cost to put the truck in the shop and get it painted because I wanted to fix it up for my son for his 16th birthday. He quoted $15,000 to $17,000. I was shocked at the price!!!! I could not do that. After summer I ran into the shop owner. He said my son was a hard worker and hopes he comes back to work next summer. He asked if I was still interested in painting the truck. I said yes, but I can’t even come close to what he had quoted. He had an idea. He said if my son and I stripped the truck at our own house he would get it done for just over cost. He said he would stop by and check in whenever needed to give updates on what to do next. So we have been stripping the truck down and doing a lot of cleaning. I have made a few orders from LMC and have a ton of boxes piled up in the garage. Last week we soda blasted a bunch of small part and the painted them down at the paint booth. Then we sent the doors, fenders, inner fenders, radiator support, and other big parts to get blasted.

We received the parts back from being blasted and coated. We stacked the parts on top of the boxes of new parts that are stacked in the bed of the truck. I was hoping to finish the project by my sons 16th birthday which is this weekend March 13th. We had many rainy weekends here in CA and didn’t get to work on the truck. The plan now is to have it finally completed by summer so he can drive it around.

Here is a photo of my son cleaning the engine. The plan is to paint everything under the hook satin black then start the fit all the parts together and then have my son paint his first vehicle with the shop owners guidance.

I am sure we will be having many more LMC boxes delivered to our house.

Eddie & Josh