With the help of a few side jobs and little investments here and there, I worked up $1300 to put toward a truck. I really wanted a Slick, but up where I'm at, I just couldn't find one in my price range that I could justify paying for. All too often, people wanted way too much money for way too little of truck. It was actually a 1:24 scale die-cast Bumpside truck that I purchased to add to my die-cast collection that got me thinking of these trucks. I started looking for Bumps and found one in the local classifieds for $900 obo. I met up with the seller, test drove it, and haggled him down to $800. Two days later when the banks opened again, I handed the money over and drove my sweet new truck home.
Overall, the amount of maintenance that it has required up to this point has been reasonable. Most of the repairs were during the first couple months. The truck sat for a long time (9 years before it was pulled out of the weeds and had a new carb installed). All of the sudden usage was bound to bring out a few weaknesses. One of the first things that had to be addressed were brakes. After blowing out a couple rusty sections of hardline going out to the rear of the truck and bending, flaring, and installing new lines, the master cylinder decided to kick the bucket. After replacing that, the battery and alternator puttered out. I replaced them as well as the voltage regulator (after getting stranded on the side of the road a couple times and completely drenched in rain that day, of course). That was the last major expense for a while. Everything afterward was a matter of adjusting, tightening, and tinkering to get everything going as smoothly as possible.
The factory bench seat was worn out. Badly. I happened to have a 1992 F-150 bench seat sitting in my spare bedroom acting as a loveseat so it came out of the house and got mounted to the F250's seat rails and bolted in place. The difference in comfort was night and day, although admittedly, it does make me sit just a tad bit too high. At 6'3”, my eye level is almost too high to see the speedometer. I did find that the added visibility over the hood is nice when it comes to navigating tight spots in parking lots and what not. As much as I'd love to sit an inch or two lower, the extra comfort makes the seat swap well worth my time.
Since this is a low budget work truck, I bribed a few friends with BBQ and beer and got them to help me pull all of the A/C stuff off of the truck last weekend. I'm hoping to sell it for more truck part $$ or trade it to someone with a Bump for parts I need. I also installed an inline fuel filter, new rotor, points, and vacuum advance on the distributor last weekend. Turns out it, it was well overdue for all of those parts because after getting everything installed and set, this old girl has started running better than she ever has!
So what's next? I've got a really bad exhaust leak right at the header that needs some attention. I'd really like to install new gaskets at the headers, valve covers, and oil pan. I also have a pretty significant tranny fluid leak (that I'm really not excited about). I'm keeping it topped off for now but I know I need to buckle down and see what it needs. It could use an oil change and a new air filter. My headlight switch used to be finicky as far as making the dash lights come on. Now it won't make them come on whatsoever, so that should be replaced soon.
Don't get me wrong, this has been a process. It's been low budget all along and the truck has spent a lot of time parked in the driveway between daily driving stints. When I first got the truck, every evening was spent wrenching, adjusting, and tuning in the dark after work until it was semi-drivable. It's still beat up, rusty, and in desperate need of floors but when I factor in all the time and effort that I've put into it just to get it to this point, I think it's a pretty sweet truck! Here are a few pics:
A day or two after I got her home, right before I accidentally broke the passenger side fuel door of its hinges (by accident
). The only tank left is the one in the cab, though, so no harm, no foul.
The driver side floors. The previous owner said he POR-15'd what was left of them and put a plasticized sealer on them to keep them from getting worse. Not too bad, right?
It's the passenger side that makes me call it's need for floors "desperate!"
The 360 FE motor got some paint somewhat recently
Seat swap results. The seat will eventually get reupholstered
). The big aluminum spacer required to mount it was $28 so all in all, I kept with the "low budget" approach with that. I also installed a new air filter. I just need to play with the timing and carb tuning a little bit and she'll be a happer camper (well, a happy Camper Special