1969 Chevy C10 – Charles H.

In 2005, I had a perfectly good running ’69 C10 I spent months repairing it putting it in one piece I purchased many of the parts from LMC. The very day I was about to have it painted I made the mistake of driving it to the bank to cash a check. After that stop, I was in a hurry to get the truck to the shop, I accidentally slammed it into 1st gear thinking I was in reverse the truck lunged forward and smashed into a telephone poles and destroyed the entire form of the truck and collapsed the wheels. I’ve never seen anything like it. I was furious for weeks after that and was forced to buy a cst 4×4 to replace it. I hated that new truck it just was nothing like the old one, so I sold it and spent since 2006 looking for another truck I could build I never found anything I could afford. Well, here it is 2024 in January, I bought a bunch of junk JBL speakers i.e L100, I personally restored them all, finished value about 12,000.00 bucks. They were very nice so I put a ad on Craigslist for a barter trade for a 1969 anything old car, old truck, old motorcycle. Well as hate has it, a man sent me a message he had a complete 1969 C10 he would like to trade he told me he had the entire truck except the radiator support. I nearly fell out of my chair with excitement, this was the exact truck I crashed a decade ago and he want to trade,  so I said yes as fast as I could. The downfall to this story is this truck was nowhere near complete. This man new this garbage so he delayed me all day. The very day he was supposed to deliver the truck, this man arrived at 9pm in the dark, he did this deliberately so I could not inspect the vehicle to see it was actually missing parts, lots of them. The truck appeared to be complete but just in pieces at that time of night, I did not inspect everything which was a serious mistake. In my ad, I posted I don’t care if the vehicle runs or not, I just want a complete shell to work with a 100%, car or truck, what I got was a 30% truck instead. This man stripped every single part from this truck and I mean everything, to the point I have a frame with wheels and a rear end, the entire steering system is missing, the brakes in the rear are completely gone, the wiring ripped out, the gas tank gone, the brake line gone, the glass and interior gone, or in boxes, there are no bolts for this truck, everything gone, transmission gone, all the peddles and assembly linkages gone. The entire truck needs to be rebuilt, every inch. As a result of this strip down of parts, basically I need the entire truck’s inner components to put it back together, also there were no inner fenders. I called the guy the next day and he told me he stripped the truck to its frame to restore it and he threw away all the old parts????? What the hell is wrong with this guy’s brains? – HE LIED TO ME. When we did the barter and basically ripped us off, I was very clear what I wanted in my ad, what was delivered was nothing I actually wanted. Why? I’m 100% disabled and very poor as a result living on a measly ssi check each month. I am very good at rebuilding things, all sorts of things, and took on one of these trucks just to keep me busy, why? I have a thing called pad that is killing me to stay alive, I can’t sit around, I need to keep moving daily. This truck was going to help me achieve these goals, it’s why I did the trade in the first place. However, I was not completely dumb in this trade, I kept a few pairs of these speakers, this man saw what I had left and offered $900 cash and a few other items to get the rest of the speakers, so I did the deal. Part of that deal was he was suppose to deliver another engine and the inner fenders and radiator cross section of fender. When he arrived 4 hours later, I knew I was about to get scammed again so I hid one pair of those speakers. I was correct, he did not bring the fender section claiming they belonged to his ’55 Chevy, not one part of this deal played out in our favor and now, I’m stuffed with a truck with no parts to fix it, no running motor or trans, no brakes, no wiring, just a cab on a frame with front brakes. There is no steering at all, this sucks, what do I do now? I will never barter a deal again. I got majorly screwed out of my JBL’s. At this point in time, it will take another decade, maybe two, to reassemble this truck correctly with no parts. I have maybe two years to live I wanted to leave this truck to my girl, now it may end up in a wrecking yard. You know what? I’m happy I found one of these trucks, yes it can be repaired, however, at the same time I’m very upset how this deal turned out as I cannot afford this truck’s restoration in its current condition. I don’t know what to do now – I have a great truck right in front of me and god says you are not fixing it in this lifetime. It’s as if someone is just waving it in my face. This sucks bad. Someone come get this thing off our property.