I built this truck over the winter and finished it in February 2020. I think a lot of us have that old story of “the gas station I hung out at when I was a kid”. That’s where mine begins. I’m from northeast pa near Scranton. There was this place called Taylor auto exchange. Run by the two guys who started it in 1958. They had about 11 acres and they hadn’t crushed anything since 1970ish so there was cars as old as the 1920s back there. It was amazing I would go back there every single day after school and look at the same cars over and over again. All my fathers cars were there, my uncles cars. Basically a majority of the cars that were junked in Taylor old Forge and moosic since 1958. They finally sold the cars for iron and crushed everything in between 1999 and 2000. I was 13. Out back is all just woods now. The Texaco building and the gas pumps remain ready to be leased They opened in 58. So in 1958 they bought a 51 Chevy with a weld built wrecker body. They ran that truck until the 51 Chassis had enough of the northeast Pennsylvania winters. My uncle tells me sometime in the 60s they swapped the body over to 1957 Chevy cab and chassis. Lather rinse and repeat it rotted away again and the wrecker body ended up on a 1964 chassis. Where it remains. In the early 80s the 292 quit and they dropped in a 68 camaro 327. Then Roy and John decided to sell the truck as the junkyard was closed and the sling was obsolete. I was too young and my father would not let me buy the truck. They wanted $1500. John Santioni actually talked my father out of it. He said something like “come on Dan. The kid is 13. What are you going to do with it”? It was sold to a local hoarder for $400. He drove it a mile up the road to his unofficial junkyard where it remains as it has since 2001. I never forgot about that truck. I stopped thinking about it everyday. Maybe I didn’t think about it for a whole year sometimes. But it always stayed in my mind. I tried, unsuccessfully, many times to buy it over the years. Big Ted always sends me packing. I would sneak onto his property at night. The paths through the culm dumps would take you right to it. I would just stare at it and think of my next attempt to buy it. Last fall I was looking on Facebook marketplace and there was a green 1964C 50. The exact truck I needed. I tried to stifle my excitement and tell myself forget about it. A few days went by, But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I showed my father the truck and he said Bran you’ve been dreaming about this truck for 20 years why don’t you just do it. Buy it and build your own. Forget about that other one. So there we were driving to Binghamton at midnight on a Sunday to pick up the truck. So then I went down to see the original and I took a few pages of notes and I drew the bed out and wrote down all the measurements the best I could. Took a bunch of pictures of areas of important detail. So here’s the build thread showing my version of the 1964 Taylor auto Chevy with late 40s early 50s weldbuilt B5 boom and streamline body. Here is the original in 2000 2008 2019
Original sales pamphlet and some more banana booms. There’s not much out there as far as info or history. They seem to be most commonly mistaken for a Marquette. People always send me pictures of a Marquette thinking it’s what I have. . Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
First I needed a donor truck. I bought a 64 Chevy flat bed dumper i found on marketplace. It needed a lot of work. Mostly sheetmetal work. These cabs have 5 pieces that all meet at the bottom of the a pillar and they hold 80% of the cab weight. Basic stuff though. Cut, fit and weld. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Plastic king pin bushings. Had to install oversized bushings. The plastic was gone so the hard steel wore into the cast spindles. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
I had no way to bend angle iron. So I worked around it and made mine look like bent angle iron. The sides are cut out of a full sheet on a plasma table Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Subscribed! I love your project. This is going to be great. What engine are you going to use? Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Subscribed. Always had a soft spot for 50’s and 60’s wreckers, especially Chevys. Your vision and plan is right on. Is the wheel base on your truck correct for duplicating the original subject? Great project, keep at it
Thank you. I’m sorry I forgot to mention in the write up that the truck has been done since February. I recently discovered the H.A.M.B. app which makes posting the pictures relatively easy compared to any other method on a smart phone. So I’m just now posting build thread even though the truck has been done for months. I will have to correct that. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
They had this swinging Sheave kind of thing that would allow some side pulling Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
This was a proud day. Backed it out to get an idea of how close I got on the dimensions Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
I bought this cheap snatch block from tractor supply just to get the pulley. All I really did was bore out the inner hole a quarter inch so that I could install a bronze bushing. This guide may appear over built. But the original was under built and had been repaired. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Here I decided to bolt my boom onto the bed floor. The original was welded right to the floor. I thought it would be easier to paint in pieces. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
The original truck had a different style winch. It had no transmission. It relies on a reversible pto. I suppose I could have searched for one but I thought it would be easier to just use the winch from a holmes 440. It requires only one lever as it has its own transmission. Here I disassembled it to reverse everything. They are built so that everything can be turned around depending on which side of the truck you want your free spool lever. I also changed all the seals and cleaned everything. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Cutting the sides out of 3/16. Controls. Passenger side and suicide(when your loading a car on the highway) Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
I had no way to roll a pice of 3/16 x 4’. So I got the idea to just use a quarter of a piece of pipe. You wouldn’t think there was so much stress in a pipe. When I got to the end she went POP and opened up. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Last thing I had to do before wrapping up the front was finish the winch control. Too he’d to get in there once the front was on. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Repaired and squared. Had to cut off the frame and add plate. Originally the sling pulled right off the body but I thought it would be stronger to have it actually pull off the frame. Nice and flat and perfect engagement with frame plates. Which will make more sense as I go. Now the back plate sees no stress and this is actually bolted to the frame. I robbed these off one of my jerrDan bodies and it took me days of starting at them to figure out how to make them look like they belong. I was not copying the original style sling mount because I was using a different style sling. Another part I robbed from an old spare truck. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Time for fenders and wheel wells. I killed myself putting the first one in. Got smart on the second one and used a come along to wrap it around the tires.
Holy Toledo! You do such nice work. The truck shop where I work had an old wrecker when I started there 22 years ago. They sold it about 15 years ago, but I’m very appreciative of the experience driving a wrecker. Ours was a slightly O/T 1971 Mack RS700L with a Holmes 650 wrecker. It was too short for very big trucks, but for tractors and medium duty stuff, it was fine. I’m guessing yours is a C-60, with a Small Block? Very nice work. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
This was tough. Trying to figure out where I wanted these and how to make the mounts look like original. I’ve seen a lot of variations but I didn’t like any including the original. Originally the spot lights were up here and the brake lights were down low. Didn’t make sense to me. I wanted brakes up high and flood lights pointing at the work. Original for reference This was a 5” stainless exhaust pipe. I slit it and squeezed it down to 4”.
What luck! Found the exact pan dollies that were on the original. They were in sad shape. Bad tires and bearings frozen solid. Gotta love eBay and Amazon. I got spindles, bearings, wheels and tires and rebuilt my dollies. I mounted mine a little lower than original so it was easier to see out the back window. Hardly noticeable difference. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
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