My Grandfather Sold His Truck 40 Years Ago... I Bought It Back

now my grandfather was a tough old dude he served in germany during world war ii came back home married my grandmother built his own house and raised five kids in it including my dad now he had to work two jobs to support the family as well as live off the land had a farm and to raise honey bees had to do all sorts of stuff he could fix anything you wanted to fix because he had to out of necessity that's just what he had to do now he had to have a tough truck to make that happen and that's what i'm sitting in right now this was his daily driver before he sold it nearly 40 years ago this is a 1970 gmc one ton and i bought it back i finally got to bring it back to the family and what i want to do is see if we can make it run so stick around to the end of the video watch us bring this thing home after all this time [Music] [Music] so today we're working on a 1970 gmc one ton 354 speed and this truck it's been sitting for quite a while but the cool thing about it it's got some sentimental attachment to the family and it's been sitting here but you know it the story goes way back further than that well when i was a kid dad had this old truck uh probably in the 70s um we used it for a little everything hauling and he drove daily drove it um but i remember one particular story uh during the gas crunch y'all probably don't know nothing about that but uh you couldn't buy gas with like 10 gallon at a time so we had the bright idea to put a 55-gallon drum in the bed of the truck and me in the back with it to guard it in case somebody want to stay with a guest but uh you get in trouble for that nowadays but uh we we rode around all saturday and filled up uh the 55-gallon drum and the tank behind the truck where he'd have enough gas to dry for a few weeks so we'd siphon it out in case any shortages happen so really fun to drive especially when he wasn't looking well you said something about the the long bed it's got like a you see right here it's got this little extra piece of length added to it and this is from what i understand called the longhorn edition and you said that there was a refrigeration unit yeah y'all bought it when we got it in the family uh it had a refrigeration unit on it i guess all produce or meat or something i don't know and they decommissioned it and when we acquired it it had that unit still on it so we'd take it off but that's one of the first things i noticed as a kid is extension in the bed and when i loaded the bait got the bed empty with the unit off we realized the truck is a fleet side but it's got a wood bed in it and i guess they did that because they didn't make a stamped steel bed for that length i don't know i never seen another one with kind of cool so it's eight and a half foot right it's a it's a really solid truck i mean it's not as bad as you would expect for a truck sitting this long i mean you check out inside we had a little bit of rust here in this rocker but nothing too bad looks like a bag of feed or something that was in there and eventually over time it just spilt and kind of rotted out that rocker but you know from what we can tell it looks pretty good inside i mean it's got the original white on the doors and i guess what he was planning on doing was making kind of a restoration at one point he was he was wanting to fix the truck up you can kind of see where he he shaved the the mirrors off of it primed it sanded on it so i think if we can get this thing to run and drive we might actually paint this thing make a sweet old shop truck out of it i think that'd be pretty cool but i think what we want to do today is uh get this thing loaded get it on the truck get it on the trailer and uh take it home and see if we can actually get this old truck to run again but it's pretty neat to have a family heirloom back in the mix again you know just uh just to see it once again i'd always heard stories about it as a kid but um to actually see a story that you hear personified i guess or visualize in reality is is totally different it's it's awesome to kind of be able to put a a truck to a story i guess you could say so it's a small block you think it was a 305 or 350. it had a 350 anything bad obviously it's got a full bar added to it an electronic condition or something and the distributor i think he did i think it has that energy put into it um it had a real good 350 in back in the valley of course that was 80 82 or 83s but you can remember that it for sure had points on it because oh yeah i saw it yeah i remember watching my dad put this at the points in it uh and justin justin um he get it get it running pretty good and yeah neat thing about this old truck when i get it down by myself you can easing down the road in fourth gear and just smash the clutch in the river run the motor a little bit and snap the clutch out and it's a low geared it would yellow tires i thought i was i thought it was cool doing that so you you remember it have you think it had a two barrel on it originally had a tube rail on i'm pretty sure well if if that's the case i don't know when the quadrajet came out but probably later than 70 you think i really don't know to be honest this is kind of our first gm product on the channel so you're going to learn a lot that i don't know what i'm doing at this point but got a quadrijet here the good thing is it's not locked up so that's a pretty telltale sign that you know a good chance of this thing is not locked up as well i try it but it's got a clutch fan here and it's been converted back here you can see it has the hei distributor on there so it's got some good parts on it good stuff um but we're gonna load it up take it home before we try to make it run just because that's where all the tools are i wish this had a quarter jet on when i was driving it would be easier you hear it moon suck a hole through the hood i have to remove the tree drill a little bit that'll de-root itself it's a pretty significant tree ain't it yeah that tells you how long it's been sitting here there's a tree up in the middle of it nowhere else to charge yeah i didn't bring anything to cut it with i i think she should have been sitting before 24th 20-plus years i believe it i do believe it she said everything in the bed goes with it of course so we got to do something with the funny thing is it don't really look a lot worse it just kind of looked the same yeah it didn't look good either luckily he had the foresight to actually jack the truck up and put it up on center blocks to keep it kind of from uh rusting away basically because whenever you get moisture coming up from the ground it's really hard on an old truck like this but thankfully it's up on blocks the rockers still look pretty good so that's a that's a good sign so now that we have the ability to we can over there not locked up or anything so that's handy wonderful yeah that'll make it easy so we got lucky and actually was able to find a set of 15s that are the same bolt pattern i guess he was saving these for put on the truck because right now it's got 16.5 on it and finding a set of tires for those not that fun so what i did i got some master craft avenger gts these are 295 50s so they're pretty wide they look pretty good i think the section width is like i don't know 11 inches it's a lot of tire tires still look really good under the wheel wells in this truck [Applause] one of 300. [Applause] that's not stuck either that ain't hollywood tv magic either some tiny little drums ain't it yeah there's a little comparison of what we had and what we're going to yeah i mean it's uh it's more better it ain't flat yeah could be worse so [Applause] so [Applause] this thing has four wheel drums on all four corners so that means we run the chance of having stuck wheels but thankfully so far the front two want to go if the fronts go the rears are going to follow one more [Applause] oh there we go that one was still some well no i thought it was holding there look how much the tire was stretched to get that on there that's a 950 15. 10 inches i'm a 10 inch is it a 10 or is it a that's probably a 10. but that's red whip and it's it's pretty small a little side note it's about what do you say 30 something degrees outside right now it's pretty cold i don't know why we do this to ourselves but here we are we did it for the fans wow it's sitting on the ground on its own suspension for the first time in a long time those fires look pretty good on it look how much they stick out it's right on the edge of the wheel wheel there [Applause] the truck is buried itself so bad the rear end like the center section is touching the ground so you can't get a jack under it so we're having to do a little bit of jenga blocks here stack a few pieces of wood and center blocks to get it to where we can lift the truck kind of jack's gonna be in the ground that's gonna be real fun to take these brakes apart [Applause] oh that ain't gonna work so much buried in mud that's how the home will break if you want to sponsor us you know where to find me yeah i don't know about that what do you think i don't like it at all i definitely want to spend the tires in it now i think we can make that happen it was a it was white wasn't it wasn't it originally white or do you know what yeah so i think we need to repaint this truck it's close enough to it come on now i mean i don't paint anything i got but i think this one deserves it all right and do the honors lay it down here we go three think so far i think it's cool didn't look at this good back in the day well it might have looked a little better but you know it's aged better than i have but uh it's it's cool it's not a super rare truck or a road runner or super bird or nothing like that but it's cool everybody can have her have fun whatever they gotta hold them i think they'll have some fun with this tow truck shop truck and it's ours burnout trucks we gotta do something about this tree [Applause] i thought that's gonna be a problem yeah i got a pocket now i don't know if i can break it back i like this old truck's got a three-piece driveshaft i can't tell how we're doing that's close i'm gonna i can i think that might be good enough i'm afraid the rears are stuck i heard water in that one [Music] oh yeah those aren't moving well i say roll it that way it doesn't roll kind of just fumbles around [Music] oh perfect it's on the ground for the first time with good tires and what 20 something years well i don't know how long it's been since he put it up on blocks but it's been a while wow they really don't look like it no just a set of wheels and tires it makes a difference doesn't it didn't you say you hauled a load of bricks in it yeah my dad poor chimney had failed and uh somebody gave him the brick so we we put him around to the bed up with brig i don't know how much weight that was with way more we should have put on he moved it but it started [Music] this thing's loaded down with a bunch of trash in it and the back wheels are pretty much non-existently moving oh let me get out of the way see if i get low here go over here [Music] perfect [Music] pretty good at gardening that's two now it'll come out guaranteed i think it'd be easier if we come in this way cut it like facing this angle here and i can back the truck up to it so we got three wheels unlocked but uh this back one doesn't want to so we're gonna try and pull it this direction now and get it straight up with the trailer hey keep on going [Music] so well sorry about your yard now both the rears didn't move at all [Applause] that's good it's almost [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so we're going to do a little combination here a little bit of dish soap and some water it's going to slip it up real good make it to where we can hopefully slide these rear tires without having any issues [Music] [Music] well [Applause] keep going there we go see if you can pull it over okay we're on it now [Music] what's up it's like an old friend [Applause] [Music] well the truck's full of a lot of trash and metal parts that we're gonna have to deal with so i'm gonna take this thing to the local dump real fast and well i guess i should say recycling center and dispose of some of the stuff in the back i don't know what else to do with it except that so we're going to head that way right now thank you so now that we have the truck home i want to see if we can make it run now i have pretty good hopes about the old small block in here because you really can't kill a chevrolet but first i want to dig around and see what we got so inside the truck i know that i mean overall it's solid the worst part about it is the rockers right here which i think these rockers have been replaced so you can see this is the worst rust that we have in the entire truck so i really can't complain about that what happened here there's a bag of feed that was laying here it got busted open and it just covered everything and i think that was the culprit but these rockers were added in after the fact so i think it wouldn't be too hard to just cut those back out put some new ones in it and uh at some point it's had like a s10 steering wheel looks like or later model chevy truck this door does not like to open but it did that time so one of the door panels just check out how beautiful those are that beautiful blue gm metallic i mean you can't beat that and inside here we've got of course the old cassette tapes and the zz top eliminator you can't not have that we've got some old tsx7 pioneer speakers got two of those under the seat inside here we had some paperwork looks like you can see there's the original color for the interior as well that's oh wow is that like this is like the options that the truck came with we'll have to try and let it's got like ammeter gauge blue vinyl trim that's pretty cool and then inside here just some paperwork looks like it's been attacked by some rats an old pipe unfortunately there's just not a whole lot left in here so i hate to see that but at least the glove box liner is still intact we'll throw that back in there to keep it from blowing away we might look at that later no cassette player uh heat and that's about it that's all you really need okay so here's how this is how long the truck's been sitting i believe that right there is the wheel tax so what that tells us is this thing was last registered in january of 1995. so we it's safe to assume this truck's been off the road since then so 26 years at that point going on what 27 right now so been off the road for a while but i'm amazed by how nice the truck really is i mean that rocker is pretty good it's not as rusty down here it's it's still got some spots but i mean overall the bedside it's not beat up uh looks like that he was starting like sand on it to get it to paint and uh of course with the extended bed they put a wood floor in it so it still has all the strips in it we cleaned out everything out of the back of the truck and it looks so much better now i mean it really kind of gives you an idea of how nice the truck is so at this point um what i want to do is make this thing run i want to drive it out of here i really want to see dad's face whenever we pull this thing up to the house so that's kind of my goal right now uh we can't do that until we at least unlock one wheel but we can at least make it run today so let's go ahead and do that and under the hood we determine you know it we believe it's a 350 chevrolet it's obviously a small block i don't know if it's the original engine or not but uh what i want to do is do a couple things just to check to see what we've got going on now dad says he believes that this was a two barrel from the factory it's got a quadrajet on it so if this is an intake swap carburetor swap don't really know but the good news is we've got an hei distributor so that should be fairly easy to uh to get going nothing fancy up front we've got an alternator down here we've got a power steering pump down here so not a whole lot of options i'll tell you what's really cool though power brakes that's not something you really see at least i don't think you would see uh very often on a truck like this but uh we've gotta get over here and get this old battery out of here see if we can unhook it these terminals are dug in there oh man that's bad okay well we'll do a couple things let's check for fluids get a hot battery a little bit of gas and go from there i don't know if you can tell but i'm really cold oh okay well that'll do it that's one way to take your battery cables off oh okay i've never seen it before this one's okay we might have to go get a new battery cable in but i'm gonna try it maybe i can get some vice grips or something just clamp it back down there we go [Applause] i'm getting old guys i'm starting to grunt if i bend over pick something up let's try headlights want to play around tell me if you see anything come on you ready headlights see what we got oh we got high beams on this side but nothing over there let me try i bet you the dimmer switch is shot yeah it's rusted look look at this we had a light right here come on the turn signal at least so that's working could be any lights in the back no which is okay i mean it could very well be a blown bulb we've seen that many many times or the wiring could be completely gone we've got a light up here as well that's a pretty good sign i'm going to check for oil and make sure that we actually have some in here and it is above capacity so that's a good sign can't really smell it because i'm really congested because of how cold it is right now but it's safe enough to at least start and we'll change it once if if this thing actually runs and i would try to make sure it's not stuck and typically you can do that but the problem is we've got a clutch fan you can see this clutch it just kind of does whatever it feels like that's not a good sound our starter might be bad let's go find a large stick and hit it i think that our starter is jammed up and the bendix is not engaging so i'm going to try and just see if we can tap on it with this piece of metal here and maybe it'll engage the starter it's working it doesn't get any power from the ignition switch but i can cross it over and get power from the battery terminal over to the starter at least a positive terminal but i'm going to try and tap on it with this if that doesn't fix it i might have to get a starter for it [Music] let me get down here oh god it's welding [Music] i think she's done for that kind of sucks you know it i was a little bit worried that the starter could not be working because the engine is stuck watch the crank pulley way down there at the very bottom whenever i spin over the alternator ready it just did it it made me a liar see that i think spin it over it moved enough to make me feel at least a little bit uh more confident in our abilities here i was a little bit worried but like i said guys can't kill a gm oh hey we got back got an old starter out got the new starter in well in my hands at least got to put in the truck uh this is a remand and throw it back in place i'm thinking that i'm really hoping that the wiring is not bad i do think that it's something internal to the starter so we're gonna try and see if this new starter can work wish me luck i'll be honest with you i really wish i knew more about these old gm vehicles i just don't know a whole lot i mean a lot of the things as far as basic principles apply for all different brands but there's just unique factors about each engine in each vehicle that you really got to kind of be well versed in it to know the the differences so for instance i bought that starter and i went to bolt it on and it wouldn't fit i don't know why took it apart the snout on the starter is like maybe a half an inch or less longer and uh the bolt spacing is slightly different so it's the kind that bolts the bell housing and i didn't realize that there were different kinds as far as like the bolt spacing i tried for probably an hour laying under here to bolt that starter up and i could i could only get one bolt started and the other two just wouldn't do it so i went to put the old one back in bench tested it to make sure that it did work the problem that i was having when i crossed it over i was going from the hot post to directly to the starter motor so the bendix wasn't engaging because i didn't have the ignition uh post basically crossing over and open or closing up the circuit to engage the bendix as well as spin the starter so all i was doing was spinning the starter it sounds terrible but it does work and our engine is not locked up just like we had hoped let's pull that number one spark plug see if we can get any kind of spark going to it wow wow okay hmm it's a healthy looking spark plug i don't know about that we'll try it though [Music] let's try and get some fuel to it yes i think it'll run on this gas jug here ready so uh [Music] [Music] uh if you know a thing or two about carburetors or at least can read a book i'm sure you've heard about the mighty spread bore now what this is is a quadrajet and it's called a spread bore because the front barrels are narrow they're real small and the back barrels are really wide in comparison so they call it a spread bore now a lot of your carburetors like hollies uh edelbrocks those are what's called a square board because the front and rear barrels are the same size so the fun thing about these spread bore carburetors is the fact that when you open up the the secondaries they moan and they sound really good when you get after one so if you've ever heard the trick of flipping the air cleaner lid upside down so you can hear it sucking a hole through the hood that's what they're talking about gm was real prominent with these quadrajets mopars had thermaquads so really fun carburetors all around as a mopar guy i feel like i'm obligated to like the thermaquad better but the quadrijet holds a special place in my heart just because my very first car that i ever owned 74 dart sport whenever i got it running it had a spread bore intake on it and a good friend of dads knew that i was working on it and he had a quadrijet that he gave me and allowed me to use on that car so i mean i was mean to it and when i say that i heard the secondaries open i did here's what i'm talking about see those secondaries how big they are through all the extra hp now the the theory was that these small primaries would keep it from uh you know using so much gas but as soon as you got into this thing why did it sound loud now the carburetor's replacement is another quadrajet except this is a mopar quadrajet from the late 80s this is kind of a oddball unit because you know mopar they had their thermoquads so this one's kind of a fun little find it came off of a late 80s dodge truck and you know it's got the electric choke provisions all sorts of little small goodies so we're gonna pop this thing back on here and i know that it ran at least it did maybe four years ago so hopefully it does have a little bit more accelerator pump than the the last carburetor did and then we'll try and run it [Music] wow hmm well that's weird it'll run as long as i keep the key turned on so it'll sit there and idle but it just won't stay running so i'm wondering if it's less a carburetor issue and maybe an ignition problem now i gotta admit it i'm not an expert when it comes to gm hei it hurts to say but there i said it here's the thing i do know that it's not that hard to make it run so the thing is the coil sits on top of the distributor here and it's pretty much the same function as a regular external coil setup so you do have to have a ground and you have to have a 12 volt positive on the other side so i familiarize myself with a wiring diagram figured out how hei works really simple and what i figured out is that whenever i cross the starter over it's sending 12 volts to the hot side of the coil which means whenever i was sitting there cranking on it that's why i would stay running until i let off of the starter so what i'm going to do here is attempt this okay so i made it stop whenever i let off of that so um what's happening is whatever wire is down there one of them goes directly to the hei distributor because at that point whenever i was actually sending 12 volts to the distributor it's still engaging the starter but when i let off it stops so that's our problem we need to run a jumper wire to the distributor itself and disconnect this wire here so i'm kind of wondering if that's why it was actually parked in the first place i have officially found the wire that powers the hei as soon as i start to crank it i'm going to send 12 volts with the power probe to that wire now we're going to try it we ran out of gas but that's okay [Applause] i'm going to turn off the power probe that's all it was well i'm having a bit of a hard time not smiling after that one that was uh pretty cool i mean my grandfather was a pretty tough old dude i mean he was he was something else so i guess his truck kind of reminds me of the way he was i mean tough and didn't give up right up until he couldn't you know he just he did everything he could and uh this truck is pretty cool i mean to see this thing come back after not running for who knows how long it's awesome you know it's it's pretty cool i'm ready to see this thing back on the road again and that's what i want to do i legit want to make this truck a good truck i want to drive it and use it just like my grandfather did just like my dad did and see it back on the road so i don't know it's it's weird you know the these things are just vehicles they're nothing more than just a bunch of metal plastic wood i mean there's not a whole lot to it but whenever you start throwing in the history of something you know the things that remind you of what they mean and combine that with you know spending time with friends and family i mean it just it doesn't get any better than that that's what all these vehicles are for is the memories that you make working on them i mean it i wouldn't buy this truck if it wasn't for the history of it i mean it's still a nice truck but the fact that my grandfather owned it and the fact that my dad told that story of filling up that 55 gallon drum you know when the gas crisis hit it's it's kind of weird you know it's really cool to like i said put a truck to a story because my dad he's so good at telling stories he loves to tell stories of like growing up and what it was like and cars that he had and very rarely do i get to see a car that's associated with that so you know you always hear stories of like your family members your aunts uncles dad mom whatever just talking about vehicles that they used to have and not everybody gets to own a vehicle that their parents can remember in their childhood you know they always talk about having something back then but you don't really get to experience that but here i do i get to this time and that's amazing that's that's kind of what's really cool about it is i can say that this this is a third generation truck right here you know my grandfather had it my dad we used to work on it and now here i am working on it again with my dad so it's it's kind of repeating history repeats itself that's that's really what's going on so and i really hope to keep this truck hand it down and pass it down to my son or my daughter whatever the case may be i'd really like to see this thing stay in the family now so a lot of emotions right now a whole lot of emotions really excited really just cannot wait to see the future of this truck that means there is going to be a future of course it has to be a future of this truck i'm going to make it run and drive i want to put it back on the road that engine is way healthier than i'd imagine it looks pretty rough under the hood but man does it run nice so i really think we need to go through this truck and make it nice once again and that's not going to include just you know brakes and doing the whole usual get it running park it after doing so much work to it that means we're going to actually fix it use it as a truck just like my grandfather did use it for what it was a tool a piece an implement implementation of what it was for to haul stuff around to be uh the family hauler you know it's that's what it's all about so i don't know where i'm going with this i'm just kind of like overwhelmed right now i don't know it's i've seen this truck for years and i'm just excited so i think that's all i got for today guys thank you so much for watching and don't forget subscribe like this video if you want to see more of this truck turn on those notifications because it's coming back i can guarantee you that a cool auto get your t-shirts shops going up it's almost done guys i mean we're this close to being done and we're gonna do a big reveal and this truck's going in there i guarantee you that anyway thank you so much and i'll see you the next one [Music]

Channel: Dylan McCool

Views: 169,533

Keywords: dodge, ford, chevy, plymouth, motor trend, roadkill, hot rod, revival, abndoned, rescued, restoration, rebuild, first start, old start, cold start, 1320, cleetus macfarland, drag race, ls swap, ls1, challenger, charger, dart, demon, hellcat, redeye, helephant, d100, d150, ram, chevelle, nova, c10, camaro, mustang, f100, f150, car, truck, dodge charger, dodge challenger, dodge demon, dodge ram

Id: vOECXP7jKXA

Length: 51min 6sec (3066 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 03 2021