Family Heirloom

[CryingJoker]

Decided to finally pull my old truck out of storage and start on it. Little backstory: This 1970 C10 was the last vehicle my Great grandfather ever bought. He left it to my older sister when he passed. Being she wasn't old enough to drive yet so dad took it over and when she was old enough he built her a 76 stepside as she would rather have a freshly done truck and he liked the older one. He parked the truck in 91. He gave me the truck around 05 as he was getting older and knew he wouldn't redo it. Being as at the time I was building a custom s-10 and would rather butcher that to learn on than a classic. It's been in storage until a few weeks ago.
20200609_142101 by James Williams, on Flickr
This is when we went to load the truck onto the trailer and found out the right rear wheel was locked up. We had to drag ruts the whole way out and onto the trailer. It ended up being the drum and shoe were so rusted they were essentially welded together. A 3 ft crowbar was flexing against the lugs.
20200611_181737 by James Williams, on Flickr
The bed is what I always found interesting. My great grandfather would haul yearlings in the bed of the truck and he needed something more sturdy than the wood floor. So he welded in a thick piece of steel. Upon attempting to remove I found out he welded it to the bolts on the edge rails. So far with disassembly it's the only area i'm GLAD was rotten so it was fairly easy to take apart.
20200613_104342 by James Williams, on Flickr
When i got the steel floor out I found out the wood floor was still there and had gotten a hole or two before the steel was welded in. And my great grandfather being the farmer and use what ya got mentality he nailed these old license plates in. I will figure out some way to tie in at least one of these to the build.
20200617_183503 by James Williams, on Flickr
20200617_183453 by James Williams, on Flickr
At this point I disassembled the bed for the most part. I'm hating to see this but most of the bed is not in very good shape. 2 cross braces are decent enough for sandblasting and repainting. The passenger rear fender is good for the most part and the driver's side has some holes along the front near the step. Both steps are rotten along the rear. Tailgate is separating at the seams and the front panel is rotten all along the bottom. I'm hoping to be able to fix the bedsides and the fenders as anyone who went to buy replacements know, they definitely don't give them away. And I will say whoever thought it would be ok to use large Phillips head screws to secure the fenders to the bedsides was an evil evil man. I stripped out 4 on the one side and decided to not even fight with the passenger side right now.