1966 Chevrolet K20 | Old Blue

[87Warrior]

This is my K20 project, Old Blue.

 

Wait, what? Blue? The dang truck is orange! The project name is sentimental, so let's start there.

 

I was introduced to the most stylish Chevrolet pickup at birth. My father had just completed his '66 K10 show truck when I came along and some of my earliest memories are of rides we took in that truck. The truck was known as 'Big Blue', primarily because it was rolling on 38" mud tires. Below is my father tinkering with the big truck in the early 80's:

 

He ended up selling the K10 and bought a worn out, multicolored, rusty '66 K20 that had a giant '01' painted on each door. This K20 was known as 'Old Blue' because a faded blue was the dominant color on the truck. The truck was primarily used as a wood hauling truck where we made many more memories. Over the years we collected rust free body parts (including NOS fenders) in preparation for a rebuild. The truck was stripped and put in the garage as a rolling chassis with a good cab. Time slipped away and the truck (or rather the parts to make a truck) was sold to a family friend. It was reassembled by our family friend, painted orange, new wheels and tires installed and a local flatbed was dropped on. Our friend unexpectedly passed away and the truck was stuck in the estate's mess for many years. I was able to buy it back in May 2018. It may not be blue any more, but it will always be Old Blue to me.

 

Here it is in all of it's glory. It is a pretty original truck despite all of the replacement metal. Original 292 with the SM420 and Rockwell T221 with 56k miles. 

 

It worked great to unload a big pallet from ARB

 

[87Warrior]

Had to rebuild the gauge cluster because the speedometer and odometer locked up

 

One thing I have missed driving the truck was the lack of a radio. Even if the terrestrial radio stations don't play your preferred tunes, the sound is nice to have. So, I set out to install a non intrusive radio.

 

There was a metal plate riveted over the radio opening in the dash. I didn't think there was any damage to the dash behind the plate so I bought a factory AM radio to install. Unfortunately when I removed the plate I was greeted with a 70's era dash cut out. Since it will be some time before I am ready to weld/paint on the interior (I plan to go back to fawn), I went to eBay to find a radio and scored big time. Picked up a Medallion AM/FM/CB radio manufactured in 1976 that looked like new. It included 2 sets of knobs, owners manual and the stripped ends of the wires were straight. To top it off, the radio fit the hole in the dash perfect and would drive two 4Ω speakers!

 

The speaker gave me trouble. This cab had none of the factory speaker brackets under the dash and I did not want to do anything extreme, so I studied the factory speaker configuration and those silly aftermarket speaker brackets and built my own. The speakers are two 4" Rockford Fosgates mounted on a left over piece of work bench top with foam cups, some bent up metal and FatMat left over from my MJ project. I styled the design off the factory set up utilizing two rubber stoppers that fit into the dash lip and a j-hook/wing nut under the windshield. I finished it off with some weather stripping around the edges for a tight fit against the dash. 

I won't win any audio competitions with this set up, but it doesn't sound half bad... especially being centered in a tin can, er cab.

 

[87Warrior]

Towards the end of 2018, the truck started running terrible. It was constantly miss firing and struggling to start. I jumped into a carburetor rebuild with parts from Mike's Carburetor Parts. I also replaced the aftermarket inline fuel filter, swapped out the spark plugs, replaced the rotor and cap and replaced the condenser and breaker. Set the points and timing and now the truck fires right up and runs great!

 

 

I also had to put a radiator in it:

 

[fiatslug87]

Pics are not showing up, I get this:

 

 

Edit: Now I see them

[Pete M]

interesting.  I see them.  

 

it's a bummer too, as that truck is glorious!  

[87Warrior]

1 hour ago, fiatslug87 said:

Pics are not showing up, I get this:

 

Edit: Now I see them

I think I got it fixed. 

 

58 minutes ago, Pete M said:

interesting.  I see them.  

 

it's a bummer too, as that truck is glorious!  

Thanks Pete!

 

For some reason when I originally posted, the pictures were linking to my private Google photos album. I uploaded them directly to CC now.

[High2by]

This is a beautiful truck. I'm glad you were able to get it back. It sounds like a truck anyone would like to have, along with the memories.