1964 C60 Rebuilt

all right so this is my 1964 uh chevrolet c60 um it started life in 64 the lumber company on the iliana state line um and it it had a hard life there when the lumber company went out of business and ended up at the family farm uh from there it was picked up uh in the late uh 2010s by a classic car store not too far from me here but uh as with much of us too many irons in the fire he never got around to it and so that's when i found it i bought this farm in 2018 i've been slowly building it up into what i want and uh not too long ago i came to the conclusion that uh my my one ton and my halftime weren't going to do it anymore i needed something a little bit bigger and so i started looking around and the goal was not actually to get something of this vintage was to get something that hopefully wasn't going to take too much work that i could just run as is but the more i looked at it the more i liked it i showed up it was running when i checked it but it had no no breaks anywhere on it so the buyer and i or the seller and i worked out a deal a couple weeks later i had it on the lowboy we hauled it back to the farm back east um and that's pretty much where the saga begins um it it was bought as a runner but very quickly it was it was a not runner um it would not start to get off the lowboy couldn't get it moved so i managed to get it pushed into the shop there and as i was grabbing spark plug wires they just fell apart in my hand um so it took me about a week week and a half working with the old 292 so it's a 292 with an sm-420 it's got a two-speed rear axle um but the spark plug wires were falling apart uh the distributor was shot i mean it was it was just a laundry list of problems so um i worked i patched up the brake line that was uh blown out got the engine running got her on the road and the goal was to basically just rip the bed off put a new bed on it and call it good um but it was eating a quart of oil every 20 miles and when i crawled up under i saw the oil leaking out of the bell housing which told me the rear main is bad and so at that point with all the other laundry list of problems with the engine i figured we might as well just pull it and so over the winter of 2019 into early 2020 is when i started on it had the engine and trans pulled out pretty much in no time and as i had the engine on the stand after we split them uh you could spin the balancer by hand and there was basically no compression in in the engine anymore and that was verified when i popped cylinder head off and sure enough uh you know typically there's a wear ring if it's a well used engine and you can just kind of nick the wear ring with your fingernail well the wearing on this engine was every bit of two thousands so um that indicates that the odometer only reads about fifty thousand miles on her but that indicates that this truck has definitely turned over that odometer at least twice if not more so at that point uh that was pretty much up a creek the only option was to rebuild so i bit the bullet and started just buying all the parts that i needed the engine or rather the crank and the block in the head went off to the local machine shop they got done i dropped the trans off at the local big rig shop and they had to bring the uh the old guy out of the back who knew how to work on these so while those were off getting freshened up i ripped out every last bit of brake line everywhere in here i bought uh uh just uh reels of of stainless steel line and started bending and flaring all of my own brake lines every square inch of this is 100 stainless steel all custom bent and fabbed up so i don't have to worry about brake lines rotting or having any kind of problems these old trucks are single line master so if any point in your system your brake system fails you no longer have brakes so i figured with the amount of weight that's going to be on this i might as well just go ahead and redo it all you can see stainless brake lines so the difference on this truck is that it has a specialty brake system that would typically only came on c80s and so typical master only has a single line out down the bottom this is actually a return line and it's a high pressure return the hydrovac that this truck uses it's a larger diaphragm hydrovac so it uses a lot more fluid and in doing so it has to have a way to push some of that excess fluid back during operation um also technically the master cylinder it that it's supposed to be on here is a bigger bore master cylinder uh you cannot find those um at all period uh they don't exist anymore so i have the original one that came off the truck it's fired out it's getting rebuilt right now this is a slightly smaller diameter that bigger hydrovac requires a lot more fluid in order to operate so because this is a little bit smaller it doesn't push as much fluid to it so you got to kind of double pump the brakes right now it's not that it can't stop it just takes a little bit more brake pedal travel for it to stop with the original master on here even though it was leaking a mouse fart would bring this truck to a grinding halt and i'm not exaggerating at all so it's a it's a really heavy duty brake system but that's what this line is it's a high pressure return to make this master cylinder work i had to drill a hole tap it and do this whole system so that our high pressure return could get back into the reservoir there we built the entire vacuum system uh specifically for the rear axle it's got a diaphragm operated uh or rather vacuum operated diaphragm that is your high low actuator and so i rebuilt that and then the vacuum lines all the way forward all the way to the engine completely redone rebuilt the entire front axle you know bearings seals breaks the whole nine yards all new hydraulic lines on it the rear axle um has all new brakes all new uh cylinders i mean the whole nine yards the only thing i haven't done yet on the rear axle is um uh wheel bearings wheel bearings and seals and that'll that'll happen probably this summer i really haven't touched anything body wise the only thing i've done was was clean up and repaint the engine bay um because putting a nice shiny beautiful fresh engine inside of a really crusty looking engine bay just seemed weird so i went ahead and cleaned her all up and got it taken care of um when the when i got the engine back i fully dressed her up got her set in the engine had to be bored uh forty thousands over that was the smallest bore overboard we could do um with the amount of wear that was on it so it's punched 40 over on the 292. um brand new pistons brand new uh rings brand new seals brand new bearings on the bottom end brand new valves valve seats push rods rockers the whole nine yards i i was already in it so i figured why not we'll just completely redo all of it the uh transmission was just completely shot how it was still on the road i have no idea um but the big truck shop did there or rather the old guy at the truck shop did his job right um and so she's good she still whines but it's a 420 it always winds so everything there is fresh brand new i finished rebuilding the entire fuel system from the filler neck all the way down to the fuel pump and all the way up through fuel lines into the carb the carb was the hard part uh it's a rochester bee and anybody who knows anything about a rochester bee they're just an absolute pain in the ass for lack of a better term they are the most finicky carb out there it's a single barrel carb and they just they over time the air horn warps and the bowl warps from being over tightened and going through uh heating and cooling cycles and so everybody tries to throw two gaskets in there but two gaskets is not the right way to do it because then that makes your float level off and it's it's just it's horrible i got everything put together i'm still not the biggest fan of it but hey it runs and it actually runs surprisingly very well for what it is um the ignition it's a brand new distributor um the only problem is that the points slip on it so i'm resetting the points about every 500 miles which is not quite right i got to go in there with a drift punch and see if i can get some kind of [Music] friction between the points and and what they sit on in the distributor but other than that um it's it's brand new distributor brand new coil brand new everything in there thing i did inside at least the front as far as the rebuild is concerned is rewiring so when i got the truck there was no electronics on it working whatsoever at one point in time it had an electrical fire and it burned down most of the electronics on it and so at some point in time it shorted out and it it melted everything and once it got melted uh one of the previous owners tried to fix it tried to convert it from six volts over into 12 volts uh didn't do it proper it was missing all kinds of stuff and so i just ripped everything out and i started fresh every single light was pulled off and completely rebuilt every single light is on its own wired ground so instead of grounding to the body which is what the trucks normally came as you know 60 years of rust and rot on the body means that your ground on the body is not that great so every single light has its own individual ground wire as well as primary power wire so that i don't have to worry about lights coming and going with bumps on the road things like that all the wiring goes to all new fuse panel inside the uh the cab down at your uh your foot the original was the the old school bullet fuses and i hate those those glass fuses so i bought blue sea systems blade fuse panels which i use on all my other pickups here on the farm this is what i was talking about and so you know mind my mess right now it's it's not super pretty at the moment because of all the work i have been having to do specifically with regards to the heater but this up here is your primary fuse panel and anything being pulled off of this is automatically always 12 volt hot this one is your secondary fuse panel and it is only hot when the ignition is on and that's what this feeder wire is and then everything out off of this is either on with the ignition or inline fusing for dome light gas tank and dash lights so but that is the whole new setup every bit of wire here is all new and unlike a lot of people that rewire their stuff i followed the exact factory color code so technically you can still use the factory manual to trace out whatever you need to on this truck because i didn't really feel like swapping it i figured if i'm going to do it you might as well do it right from the start right it's all fresh obviously that runs down to starter this is our main feed off the battery and then through a 50 amp fuse all the way around and in through the firewall and that's where the original pigtail was the original pigtail is shot so right now we're just running straight through and calling it good uh the wheels it took me six months and uh four different states to find six ring split wheels brand new steer tires because on a truck this size you don't screw around with used steer tires you put brand new on so brand new rubber there still reusing the old rubber on the back because it's a farm truck i don't really care that much all right so the cab is still pretty much all original uh believe it or not every single thing on the dash still works the only thing that doesn't is our charge indicator here um that's because it's converted over 12 volt and i haven't bothered to wire in uh the necessary resistors and stuff to actually make that work um so to curb that problem i have another blue c system set up here which is a whole station basically you click it on and you can monitor your voltage here which you know it's charging because that'll spike up into the 14 range when you're running and then we've got all our charging ports here these right now are his accessory switches this one is wired up for the blower motor for the heater because this whole system up here is just buggered beyond belief and a lot of the cables that are attached to these levers that control the stuff are seized up and i haven't had a chance to get those unseized yet so the bypass is that we just have the blower motor rigged to a switch here and it's either all on or all off for that this one is not yet hooked up this is the accessory night lighting so that i can see out on bed at night because i've been doing a lot of work after dark out here because it's just that time of the year this is the pto cable that is currently seized and won't go anywhere i'm still working on fixing it it will turn the pump on or off and then this is the one that will actually engage the pto with the transmission this one works fine that one's still seized and so you get out you throw the lever by hand you hop back in the truck push in the clutch pull this out let your bed up push in the clutch push it all the way in and then let the bed down you go back out and release the lever manually so not that big of a deal it just is what it is and believe it or not i'll be damned the uh the windshield wipers all original still work so that's pretty slick just obviously new wiper blades and then you know you don't go anywhere without some kind of fire suppression system on a classic vehicle like this because well old vehicles tend to catch fire sometimes as has already happened to this truck at least once so but it's all original glass everywhere believe it or not it's original door seals and i mean testament to the way they used to make rubber and everything else it's still good and it still seals pretty gosh darn well uh the only other problem with the truck so again this is not a restored truck and it's never going to be this door handle is quite a bit worn out and loose and so every time you shut this door right here is the door closed latched position right there is the lock position so every time and you can see it just kind of falls so every time you shut this door it automatically locks itself and the only way to unlock it because this isn't the same lock that's controlled from the outside with the key the only way to unlock it is to pull up the handle from the inside basically just have to leave this open at all times unlatched so that you can come in here and just open it reach your hand through grab that that will get fixed eventually i do have a new striker on the door but that didn't really fix it it's just the whole mechanism in here i already had to reassemble and re-weld because it was all shot to um but it just needs replaced so that's on the short list as well as a whole there's you know there's a little bit of rust bubbles here but there's no holes it's not like the cab is going bad um same with the floor pans it's all original floor pans in here which is just i mean this kind of thing is unheard of on a truck this age especially one that rolled the miles that it did i haven't touched the body i don't have any plans to touch the body there are only two rust through holes and believe it or not it's on the tops of the fenders one here and one in the corresponding spot on the other side of the body so the whole point of buying this truck was i needed a way to haul logs i've been clearing land out at the farm back east i've been doing a little bit of it around here for some of my local neighbors as well and we heat with wood here at the farm and so i needed a good way to haul firewood as well as all of the logs that i was cutting down so i can mill into lumber since i do have sawmill and so the initial bed that was on it was built in 1964 and it was rotted and it was done it was held together with some chains and some zip ties and all kinds of nastiness so the very first thing i did was just rip it all off um and throw it away it actually went to the burn pile so um next thing i did so it is a dump bed it's got a twin lift cylinder system down there uh all pto pump engaged off the trans and so the actual frame that dumps was tweaked from years of use and abuse and all of that so the first thing i had to do was go in and with come alongs and ratchets i got everything straightened out and welded in all new cross bracing inside the actual dump frame to keep it rigid then the next thing was to build the headache rack and so knowing that i was going to haul logs i wanted to ensure that i had an overkill headache rack so if i ever had to come to a stop nothing would get me inside the cab so it's actually six inch c-channel beam up from the actual dump frame and then it's 45 with three inch square tubing and then this whole three inch square tubing system is all welded up solid and attached directly to it and it's a little bit beyond overkill but i don't care when safety is concerned overkill is is is plenty fine with me next was log bunks and so it is four inch uprights here four inch tubing and it is six inch i-beam down here and the corners are 45 with additional six inch i-beam all of it is attached directly to the actual dump body frame itself and we've got two of them and they are spaced just forward of the rear axle so that you get a little bit better load distribution when you got logs um additionally we've got more six inch c channel directly in front of and behind the axle back here and that makes up the remainder of the subframe down here and so any load that is put onto this bed transfers all of its force directly between the i-beam log box and the c-channel cross braces here all of it is finished off with angle iron between my log bunks here and this specifically is to keep it rigid between all of our cross bracing on the subframe as well as give you your strapping point for ratchet straps or whatever load you've got there's no need to ratchet strap in front of or behind the log box because there's really no point at which you will ever put a load in front of or behind that's not directly between them so all of it is directly welded to the frame itself down there and solid as a rock so through the process the initial plan was just throw log bunks on it and call it good um but with the engine and all of that taking over a lot of my work it gave me a little bit more time to plan out the bed and i realized that really i didn't just need a log truck i needed a proper farm truck that i could haul logs with and so that necessitated a little bit of a design change so attached to each log bunk and each cross brace support is 4x6 beam post and then there's an additional one up front and one more in the back so the sole purpose of these is that they are attached directly to the subframe itself and it is what the bed floor actually connects to so the bed floor floats on top of our subframe but it's directly attached to our cross bracing beams which are then attached to the subframe itself then within that i was able to cut stake pockets all the way down each side and across the back and so the design here is that we have our bed sides which will actually sit right on the inside of our log bunks and sit inside the stake pockets the stake pockets purely just keep them centered any kind of load that goes against the actual bedsides pushes against my uprights here which with the 45 here is more than capable of supporting any kind of load that you put in here additionally rather than having one massive bedside which would take two or three people to get on and off i wanted to be able to convert this truck from log position here to complete bedside by myself within five minutes so it's a two piece bedside setup each piece being uh 22 and a half inches tall so roughly we'll call it two feet for ease of you know understanding so you can run the first layer of bedsides which will give you a two foot bedside which is perfect for hauling gravel stone manure any kind of earth or dirt or anything like that or you can add your additional level up which will turn you into a four foot bedside and that you can haul trash you can haul wood you can haul all kinds of other stuff that's a little bit more lightweight so you can haul a larger quantity of it so each one of them is on the low side each bedside and this is our this is our front that goes against the headache rack each one has groove pockets here and the design of it is that this sits on the low side and then the high side will actually sit on top of this and it has posts that will slide directly into these slip pockets and that's how the uppers and the lowers attach to one another and then the uppers and lowers additionally if it's needed in case you're rolling around empty you don't want to just put your bedside in and then just drive down the road and let it kind of flap against this because i don't want to get beat up that's what these tabs are they've got holes machined in them that correspond to holes on the actual bed sides so you can just real quick drop the cotter pin through tighten the bolt on it with the wing nut and it'll push against and it'll keep it nice and steady so that you're not flapping your bedsides down the road all in all with this then it allows me to haul pretty much anything for the farm i have hauled at this point logs we've hauled wood we've hauled gravel manure dirt trash i've been taking down a neighbor's barn for him and so this is what i'm using to haul most of the materials to and from as well as all the stuff that isn't burnable that needs thrown away we haul that out to the scrap yard or to the uh the transfer station for trash so the last thing for the bed to wrap it up was i needed tool storage specifically for chainsaws as well as everything else that i need when i'm out and about wherever i'm at and so i welded up the brackets that were necessary to actually attach it to the frame and hold this and then just machine the holes into the frame that uh needed to actually mount it so we've got a four foot box on this side and three foot on the other side that pretty much wraps it up yeah obviously it's all custom lighting all the way around it so it's dot uh certified so that you know i can't get in trouble wrapped it up obviously with mud flaps put some nice chrome weights on the back make it look cool these are the original mounting brackets here and these two up here and the original mirror sat between here and there these are adjustable the problem is they haven't been adjusted since they left the factory and so uh these pipes there was no way i i loosened them i soaked them for weeks on end there was no way to get these suckers loose so rather than risking damaging these things all i did was go to the junkyard find an extension off of an old pete and grab a brand new mirror off an old kenworth and get all of it hooked up the bed is wider than your stereotypical bed that's on one of these trucks because i wanted to ensure that i had you know plenty of width to haul what i want to haul it's still within dot regs but because of that the original mirror location right here could not see beyond that headache rack or the uprights behind it so i had to get this extension set up so that it can actually see out and around she's on the road um quite a bit now um she sees uh more road time right now than both of my pickups arguably both of them combined she's rolling 75 miles one way between both of our farms she is out to and from the neighbors properties she's rolling between the quarry and uh the mill in my place um i mean she she sees a lot of work right now and so all i cared about was basically making it reliable and making it safe which is exactly what i did between the engine and the trans and the drivetrain and then the brake system um you know i didn't really have touch of steering most of the kingpins were still good things like that but the goal was never to restore um i doubt she will ever truly be restored because she's going to spend the rest of her life working as she was meant to do you know that's what she was born for and that's what i'm going to keep pushing her to do you know at the end of the day she's farm truck she's a work trip probably the only one of its kind now on the road and the condition that it is with new engine new brake lines all of it um so i can take a little bit of pride in that um and i'll also take pride in the fact that unlike a lot of people who buy these trucks and then immediately yank the cab to use on a c10 through c30 lineup since it is the same cab and then scrap the rest of it or all the other people that have this style truck but it's just in an absolute rot condition from sitting in the barns or sitting in the field things like that um you know i i take pride in that this one is on the road and that it's not a gym um per se it's not a pavement princess or or a beauty queen or anything like that um i i take pride in the fact that she is still doing exactly what she was born to do um just albeit a little bit more reliably now but yeah she's gonna keep rolling the road and um keep keep hauling the loads and having a great time

Channel: The Rocket Farmer

Views: 58,052

Keywords:

Id: CdMuGb_uclg

Length: 24min 32sec (1472 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021