Mike and Megan's 1959 Chevy Apache

Page1. first getting the truck

Page2. Pictures

Page3. Body work and some repairs on the inside

Page4. New Blower switch, some wood in bed, seat belts (3 points) and more.

Page5. New aluminium radiator and windshield

This is a husband and wife stock rebuild of a 1959 Chevy Apache 31 Short Stepside with the original 235 3.9 L straight 6 including the not too common 4 on the floor ("Old Jim"), and dedicated to the father who gave it to us.  Truck was purchased new in 59, and has been in the family ever since.  So it is a third generation in the same family. This is a work in progress so it may take some time.

 We started to work the day the old truck rolled into our garage.  It had been sitting in a field the better part of a decade, but the body was in pretty good shape because it was hand painted and only 73,000 original miles.  Unfortunately it would not run, had no brakes but the E-brake, and was in no way street legal.

We have 3 goals currently:

1)Make the truck run well

2)Make the truck street legal and safe

3)Protect from further rust damage

We found two major reasons why the truck wouldn't run.  The fuel pump was pretty worn down and the carb was leaking and full of carmalized fuel.  The float was carmalized to the bottom of the carb and it was overflowing with fuel, as well as other parts being stiff because of the same old gas.  We replaced the fuel pump, rebuilt the carb, as well as adding two inline fuel filters (one after the gas tank and one before the carb), new plugs, added a new thermostat and replaced the old coolant, and ran the overhead.  The engine now runs great.

Fortunately the lines and drums had been redone recently so they clearly were just plugged up.  After three hours and a liter of brake fluid we got all the gunk and air out of the lines.

The old tail light units were rusted and crumbling.  So we added new units, upgraded to LED bulbs, and rewired the lights.  We also replaced the running light gaskets and replaced several of the bulbs in the front.

The back window had been shot out with an arrow so we went to the junk yard and were lucky enough to find an intact window from a junked 59.  We also liberated a sideview mirror arm that we refabbed.

The old accelorated peddle was shot so we went to replaced it and discovered that it was being held on with a set of clutch head bolts (time to buy new tools).

Lastly we wanted to save the parts we had from anymore rust damage.  We sanded, sealed, painted, compounded, polished, and wax the roof of the cab.  The old wood bed was completely rotted out, so just to prevent water buildup on the bed walls we completely removed it.  We repained the bezels and are currently working on the front bumper.

Starting to look good!