Yeah...I think we might have to get out
the wet noodle for 40 lashes. :) Here's my take on it:
It's a 1-ton which makes it undesirable as a street rod...mostly.
There are more and more "farm trucks" or commercial vehicles being
rodded, cuz the half-tons are pretty rare, especially 30s Chevys cuz
they used so much wood in their construction that a huge percentage
of 'em rotted away and they were scrapped. Having said that, I
think it'd make a WAY kool hot rod hauler, the other option (which I
see frequently enough at car shows) is to do a full restoration on
it...which would be much harder than makin a hot rod.
But picture this: A big block motor, truck gearbox and rear end,
duallies in the rear and a tilting bed to drive the hauled vehicle
on and then add A/C and all the comfort goodies...and haul your car
to the salt flats. :)
The photo above is a 39 COE (Cab Over Engine) but it's been given
the treatment I had in mind for the 29.
Now...there is a HELL of a lotta work to be done on it. Complete
frame off, replace frond & rear suspension, steering, drive
train...and then you could start on the rollback bed. It would be a
LONG-term project and you'd have to replace just about everything on
it. You'd pretty much have the frame (which might need
rebuilding...grinding out rivets, replacing any badly-rusted pieces,
squaring it up and welding it back together) and the body (second
verse, same as the first) with everything else
bought/adapted/fabricated.
There's the middle of the road approach, tho. That would be to make
it roadworthy, then maybe use a 292 sicks and a B/W SM420
transmission (the granny 4-speed from 60s /70s pickups) and make it
a "fun truck," more or less a "traditional rat" if you can say
something like that. Not the current Goth or "suicide rat" that
seems to have taken rat rods over the top, but a "traditional hot
rod," using whatcha got to make it run and enjoy. You could make a
flat bed outta 2x12s and add the tilt feature later if ya wanted.
But that's still a lotta work.
Is it worth it? My take on that is that it's worth whatever someone
is willing to pay for it. If you're considering buyin, doing a
cosmetic "fixer-upper" on it and then selling to turn a profit, I
don't think you'd make money on it. This is a terrible time to be
selling anything. Bleeve me, I've been trying to sell a whole lotta
stuff and I'm coming up empty on everything. Nobody's buying. It's
a buyer's market, not a seller's.
There are a coupla trucks of that vintage on eBay and for a
fully-restored flatbed, the asking price seems to be somewhere
between $10 and 16k. I'd bet a rather large sum that there's more
money invested in the resto process than that if they're recently
done.
So there ya have it...for what it's worth.
r
On 9/25/2011 7:46 PM, Saul Marsh wrote:
Oops it's a Chevy truck. I might have just forfeited
my elkylist membership :)