thanx guys.......

[finebammer]

for motivating me to get this truck running.

this is my granddad's '62. nothing special, just a family thing. it originally had a 235 in it. i rebuilt it in the early '90's. inevitably, i got too busy to drive the truck much so it stayed parked in the shed most of the time. i felt guilty about not running it so i would crank it on saturdays and let it run while i cut grass or something. when i rebuilt it i bought a set of sun pro gauges so i could see what it was doing. well, a rat got in my cab and chewed a hole in the plastic oil line at the firewall and while running it one weekend i unknowingly pumped all the oil on the ground ruining my hard work.

i was depressed about the whole thing and didn't want to look at it for a while. well, a while turned in to about 12 years. but reading and looking at what you guys do on this site motivated me to get it going again for it's fiftieth birthday.

the transplant is out of a '76 nova. one unusual challenge (to me anyway) was the hydraulic clutch. i wanted to keep that setup but could not use the original bell housing as it wouldn't bolt up to my 250. the bell housing with the 250 also had the clutch arm on the driver's side rather than the original set up on the passenger side. after a lot of thought i fabricated a bracket from mild steel plate to bolt on to the bell housing on the driver's side, drilled and tapped it to accommodate the slave cylinder. had to do a lot of bending on the linkage arms to clear but finally got it right. shifts good. as a matter of fact it shifts better now than it ever has!

i really don't know what i want to do with it. granddad would want me to paint it back factory, i know. (even thought he brush painted it in the early seventies because he didn't want to come off $300 to paint it)' i'd like to rat it (no pun, please!) out a bit. chop it, drop it. i was gonna wash it today but it's just so beautiful like it is, you know??? is that crazy or what?

anyway, thanks for the motivation to get me off my dead azz and get old granddad running again.

(and granddad was a 'bama man so roll crimson tide roll!)