Originally Posted by vwgreg
Thanks. I’ve been doing this thing with cars and trucks since 1975 and I prefer dealing with older stuff than I do the new junk. The GMC V6 world is new to me, why I reach out here, I learned a heck of a lot that helps me.
As much as I think SBC is a good engine, it is overrated for some things, not everything. In this case, this truck may be a good fit for the purpose but compared to other engines, to me, it is the cheapest and easiest to work on for most which makes it attractive to them. A lot of people don’t put much thought into actual repairs but just are parts changers.
Agree, I am a purest at heart, if it comes with a factory drive train, it should have that drive train unless there is a real reason to replace it. The body is in very good shape and I am going to just clean it up, maybe stripping the crappy paint off of it and returning it to the original blue (it is flat green now).
The only mechanical modification I can see doing to this truck is to put a Brownie in it to make it more highway-usable. The other mods I may be going to do are period mods like transistor ignition (which I think I have a couple of GM conversions in my collection from the ‘60s. Oh and better fuel filtering, but that’s it.
Just to be clear, the truck I am buying has a factory 360 in it, not a V6, I wish it was. I looked forward to having a V6 in the next truck, but alas, it didn’t happen. However I am going to buy the 351 near here that is complete from fan to the trans, it is a mid-60s engine and has the air compressor I want, which of course the engine is priced for at the same price as a replacement air compressor.
I have seen perfectly good cars be hacked up by someone and seen them try to sell them for outrageous amounts of money. I looked at a local 1967 Imperial 2 door last spring, I saw it a couple of times up close. It was all original, the paint was in great shape, and very clean, 43,000 miles on the clock with almost every option you could get. It was priced at $4500, but it didn’t sell. It stood on the edge of the road for at least three months, then vanished. It came back, the wheels were these junk urban 22-inch things on it and lowered, which made it very ugly. It has tinted windows now, the fender skirts were missing, it was dechromed and it looked like the guy replaced the seats with modern seats out of a truck. I stopped to look at it, the price of it was now $11,000. It sat out at the edge of the road until October and then pushed back to the garage where it sits today covered up.
I’ve seen this happen a lot of times with a lot of rare cars. The saddest was a single owner 1936 Packard 120 sport coupe which was an absolutely beautiful and rare car. The guy bought it for $8k, drove it to his garage and chopped, channeled it, lowered the car, and stuck a BBC in it. Then he painted it with a god-awful purple. Everyone seems to think what was done was art, but seeing the original car, it was so sad to see someone hack it up so badly.
|