After 26 years of being cooped up in storage my first car/truck is back on the road.  Me and my late dad built this pickup together when I was 14.5 year old.  I took it to the first annual F100 Nationals in Reno, NV back in the early 1980's.  It was in Truckin' Magazine in Sept issue of 1983 with my dad's big window 1956 F100 at that time.  My brother now has that big window '56.

I was driving it up a long and not so steep grade one day when the engine made the most horrible banging and clanging racket I ever heard.  I immediatley pulled over and parked the truck.  I had it towed home.  I fired it up and home and it would run but made the same terrible noises.  I pulled the pan and to my untrained eyes nothing looked out of place.  I did find a small piece of "sheet metal" in the pan took it to a couple a people who had a lot more knowledge that I and they weren't sure but surmised it was some sort of splash guard or something that came loose.  I knew this was not the source of the noises and figured the engine "skipped time" and the valves were bouncing off the pistons.

I was about to put myself through college so the truck was put in storage because my savings was going to pay for school.  Shortly after I graduated college I married a woman with two young children and began raising a family.  (Time and $ was scarce)  Well after the girls were grown and on their own and me having better job I finally had some more time and a little more money.  A few years ago I inherited a different big window 1956 f100 of my dads's and it gave me the motivation to get working on Hot Rods again.

So, after nearly 26 years I crawled under the truck to see If I could figure out what went wrong.  After short examination, there it was.  How I missed it way back when I dont' know.  I spotted tiny bit of rod bearing babbit squirting out the side.  I took it apart and found some barley tights rod nuts but journal looked pretty good, the rod looked pretty good.

I measured the journal ok and the cleaned up the rod and journal with some ultra fine emery cloth.  I bought a new set of .20 rod bearings and replaced them all.  They all plastigauged in spec.  A new battery, some new gaskets on the carb, new fuel lines, new fluids and ...presto...running y-block!  Rebuilt the master cylinder and put in new brakes and wheel cylinders, changed all the fluids (trans, overdrive, rearend and of course brake fluid)...presto... rolling down the road under it own power!  Thanks for listening to my long winded story.  I'm just excited!  Below are a couple recent photos and an old photo of the photo shoot with Truckin' Mag.

   

1956 F100 Big Window 309ci Y-block,  1956 F100 small window 272ci Y-block

Greg.  Mountains of North Eastern CA