Love the truck! What's the story?
Well, aside from me having automotive ADD? I sold my quad cab dually Chevy 3500 last fall because I rarely used the truck and couldn't see paying $100 a month in insurance to let it sit. Still its nice to have a truck around for certain things so I had planned on finding a vintage pickup that I could put collectors insurance on. As you all may know I've played with Studebakers a bit in the past having had a 63 Lark and a 50 Champion and my neighbor is the president of the SJ Studebaker club. So in my daily browsing of eBay I ran across this one up in North Jersey. Didn't really need a truck this big but I also knew where there was a 19ft ramp bed for cheap so my though was to make it a car hauler. I showed it to the wife who displayed her usual disinterest. Well the next day a friend of her's shared an article about a business that was based out of an old Diamond REO truck. She and I have talked about starting our own business for awhile but never could find something which utilized both our skill sets and sufficiently interested us. This idea ticked all the boxes so she was suddenly reminded of the "ugly truck" and on board with it's purchase. I won't get into the business details, its still a few years off but the plan will be to fully restore the truck and build a new rear box specially equipped for the venture. It will just be a part time thing for us and the plan is to pay for all the setup and build out in cash as we go so we start out without any debt and can just try to make a run at it without needing it to survive. If it takes off then the wife may run it full time but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
The truck itself was owned by an orchard out in PA and spent its whole life as a field to farm truck, never saw the salted roads and it shows. Only 20,000 original miles, no rot anywhere and not a single dent or ding in the body. I need to flush the fuel system and go through the brakes and then I'll just be using her as is to haul some stuff for house projects this summer and then start the build out over the winter. Eventually the truck and the VW Thing will be painted to match (or similar) and the VW can be used as a "support" vehicle when we take the truck on site for work.
And yes, before the restoration I will be trying to locate a replacement door so I can save one or both of the hand painted doors as garage art.
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Topic: What did you do to your VW today? (Read 1164207 times)