1986 Chevy C20 – Kevin Z.
Dream Barn Find
In 2017, my wife was coming home from a friend’s house, when she saw the this old truck sitting on the side of the road. She like the look of the old Chevy, because it reminded her of her grandfather’s truck. When she got home, she told me about the truck and it was for sale. Her grandfather had a 1966 Chevy truck, but its just the type of truck her grandfather or someone of that age would have.
I was telling her of the old Chevy my father had for his carpet shop in the 1980s. He owned this 1977 Chevy C20 Scottsdale with a six cylinder engine with a four-speed manual transmission, with power steering and power brake. That’s all the luxuries the truck had except for the sliding glass window. Everything else was manual. This truck could be loaded with six rolls of carpet and handle the load with no problem, just a little slow pulling away from lights. It’s when I fell in love of Chevy trucks.
In the late ’80s I worked for a publishing company and the warehouse manager had a 1979 Chevy C20 four-wheel-drive with a 454cid with a four speed transmission, dark blue and chromed out. It was a gorgeous truck, and I again fell in love of old Chevys.
In the 1990s I worked for a towing company that only had four-wheel-drive one ton square body Chevy trucks. As a mechanic I had the opportunity to buy a 1972 Ford F250 and I completely restored it from the ground up, but it still was not a Chevy truck. After a few years the old Ford got stolen from in front of my house. So I was back without a truck for years.
But then the wife was telling me about this 1986 Chevy C20 and the next day we had to go an appointment, so we drove by the truck on the way home to stop and take a look at it. After one pump of the throttle and the truck started up and run smoothly, I was sold. Especially since it only had 32,000 original miles on it. It had be sold brand new in California and then moved to Colorado in the 1990s had been a Colorado truck since then. I paid $4,000 dollars for the truck. It’s a 1986 Chevy C20 Scottsdale with power steering and power brakes with A/C. No power windows or locks. The last luxury item was a sliding glass window. It has the 350cid engine and the 350 automatic.
It passed Colorado state emissions law the first year but would not pass it the second year, So I decided to upgrade the fuel system to a fuel injection system so I will get better fuel economy. Now, since I was in the process of doing that I might as well fix the truck up to. But I didn’t want a fancy truck. I just wanted something plain and simple that look original. So with the help from LMC Truck, it now has an all new interior and all new exterior lights and grille and bumpers. A friend of mine helped paint the truck so it’s the original color. Unfortunately I had to take out the dual tank system and go to a single tank so that the fuel injection system will work properly. I went with a sniper fuel injection system from Holly and it works the best. I had to change out the transmission to a 400 four speed to drive on the highway with lower engine RPMs.
I still have more things to do. I have a saddle blanket on the original vinyl seat to protect it but I want the cloth seat in the truck. Then the instrument cluster only has a speedometer that works and sometimes the voltage gauge, the oil pressure gauge and the water temperature gauge are both not working. I have mechanical gauges under the dash so I know what the oil and water gauges say. I want to replace the gauge cluster so everything works, but I don’t want to replace the speedometer because it shows the original mileage. I know that LMC Truck sells a kit to put a a tachometer and has a gauge set for the oil and water temperature, just I have to rewire under the dash as well as under the hood, the water temperature wire was melted to the exhaust manifold, oil pressure sending wire was pinched in the wiring harness when someone replace the power brake booster. So in time I well get everything done sooner or later.
Thanks LMC Truck for all the help. Kevin Z.
