A few months ago I bought my buddies '76 Chinook. It was his first car, and he had been living out of it full time since he graduated college 6 years ago. He 'upgraded' to a Grumman box van with an Isuzu diesel and hasn't looked back.

Here it is behind the only other truck I've owned, '75 Courier.


This particular Chinook was the second one is his family, first one got rolled on the freeway. It's seen a varied life, including multiple trips per week to Crystal for skiing, and several trips to the Gorge in the summer for windsurfing. There was at least one overheat that stopped the motor, after which he revived it and drove it for a while more. Finally it gave it up, and he pulled the motor all the way apart and rebuilt it. Kinda.

0.5mm bore over, new pistons, rings, timing chain, blah blah blah. I don't think he did ANYTHING to the head other than a light shave to get it flat. I could keep going on about the truck and it's history, but it doesn't really matter.

I bought it with the intent of pulling the back, welding some steel over the hole in the back of the cab, and smashing a flatbed on there. PO had rebuilt the diff recently, wheel bearings not too long ago, and the rebuilt motor has 40k miles on it. My attitude at that point was 'WORK TRUCK, DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING THAT ISN'T BROKEN IN HALF'.







That feeling pretty quickly dissipated as I attempted to get the cab waterproof. Windshield leaked, roof leaked, doors leaked, heater box leaked. I've put up with a lot of crappy cars and considered selling my trusty Volvo 245 to drive this truck full time, so I wanted AT LEAST that level of comfort. The bar wasn't that high, but definitely out of reach with the truck as it was.



I had been browsing CL for Hilux parts for a while, and had seen a ratty sad '78 flatbed about an hour south of me for $500. Didn't run, had sat parked for at least 15 years. I thought 'well, I can pull the cab and stick it over the known functioning truck I already have!'. Rented an 18' split deck and drove southward. Here's a pic headed home.



Fake dually, 5 spd, spare 5 spd box sitting on flatbed, window wouldn't roll up, motor had oil but no coolant in it, brakes dragging, steering box nice and tight, UNTOUCHED OEM wiring throughout. Small rust holes in some important spots, but SO MUCH nicer than the salt-rust infected other truck. All told, it was almost exactly the missing half from the other truck. Everything that was broken or missing in the original Chinook was present in this truck.









The two project trucks immediately devolved into one gigantic heap of parts from both.








The plan being, take one of every good part from the pile and make one good truck. I'll update this thread soon with more pics of recent progress, but here's a teaser.

 

How is the progress going???