Just wanted to say Hi to everyone ! I'm an old school motorhead, started turning wrenches when I was 14 years old, pulled an old 55 Ford Victoria up the hill from my grandfathers junk yard and with help from my Dad, got it running and drove it around the farm for a while until one day, out of the blue, Pop pulls up in a 67 Chevelle and said "take care of it, it's yours ! " That's when it all started, big cams, chrome and all the goodies a kid could afford. I'm now 59 and have had a bunch of cars / trucks, after selling my 65 convertible Corvette last year, I was on the hunt again ! I really had my heart set on a first generation shoe-box Nova, but every time I found one I was interested in, I got the "nose wrinkle" from my wife. Being the nice person I think I am, I wanted to buy something she liked as well, and the Nova just didn't do it for her. OK, so the search continues, Chevelles, early GTO's ( 65 was my fav), 66-67 Barracuda's which I really liked, even the '70 ElCamino's, all got the nose wrinkle. Well crap, I was just about to just go ahead and get serious about an early Nova despite the fact she didn't really care for it. She told me, it's your toy, get what you want ! So, I began looking hard with full intentions of buying a 62-64 Nova. Emails, questions, searching every night looking nation wide. Then, something happened; we went to eat breakfast one Saturday morning at Perkins ( pancakes are freaking awesome!). So we finished eating and I really needed to go buy a size up pair of jeans, we are walking out of the restaurant and here drives up a couple in a 47 Dodge truck, my wife lit up like a kid in a candy store. She takes off across the parking lot to see it and the fella steps out of the truck and introduces his self to us. My wife, Sheila, is smiling ear to ear. The gentleman says to my wife, jump up in there and see if you like it, which she did. She turns to me with the biggest smile I've ever seen and says, I love it, can we get a truck ! You guys all know what my response was, "we sure can " ! So the search began and about 6 months later, we found our truck, drove nearly all the way across the U. S. to get it and pulled it home in an enclosed trailer ( good thing the trailer was enclosed, we went through a hell of a hail storm, the truck would have been beat to death). I got about as close as I could have to finding what I wanted, a 53 Ford already restored and pretty dang slick. All it needed was a Big Iron BBC and another rear end. The truck still had the original 8" rear end sitting on leaf springs and that suited me fine because I wanted to do the rear end swap myself by swapping it to a narrowed Dana 60 by way of a 4 bar Art Morrison rear suspension with coil overs. Concerning the engine, it already had a FI Ford 302 with an amazing 290 Hp. Well, that just ain't gonna cut it. I started the search for an engine and within a month, found a pretty good deal on one of the most well liked power house engines of all time, a GM LS-6 454/450Hp direct replacement engine for the 1970 SS Chevelle, still in the crate, new, unfired. Yep, I'm a GM guy ! As of now, the truck is sitting snug in the garage just as it was the day we brought it home. I'm accumulating parts and waiting until the time is right to tear into it. Hope I didn't over step my boundaries with the newbie introduction ! JC
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