The organ donor: a 74 C10 454

(01/24/04) So it's cold (averaging around 20F for highs), snowy, hazy and generally not conducive to hotrodding. So what to do? Go buy another Chevy, of course.

I was lookin for a set of stock wheels and maybe someone who was parting out a truck that I could get disk brakes from. I found an ad that said, "74 C10. $2000 in new parts. Blown motor. $550 firm. As is."

I went to see it and it wasn't all that bad. Around here something like that (with a good motor) usually sells for a couple thousand at least.

Then I looked under the hood. Holy smokes! There's a rat motor in there!.

It's a factory 454 and the seller claims that the TH400 transmission only has a few thousand miles on it. He also claims that the whole front suspension, radiator, exhaust and front sheet metal was recently replaced because of an accident. He claims the insurance coverage paid for it all, so it didn't come out of his pocket.

Not all that bad from the rear end, either. And it has a nice JVC CD player/stereo in it, too.

I'm not sure what wheels are on it, but the seller claims to have paid $600 for the set. Funny, I was lookin for stock wheels.

The evening I bought it, I worked for about 90 minutes (with the seller) tryin to get it to run. We got it started a few times, but it didn't want to stay running. So we towed it home behind his other truck on Saturday when it was light. We weren't about to try towing across town in the dark with no lights (electrical problems) and snowy, hazy conditions. But finally we got it here.

Ahh....there are the wheels I was looking for all along!

It didn't quite make it into the driveway, but as soon as I thaw out a bit I'll go try to get it started or pushed all the way in.

More to come.

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