While I was at The Pate Swap Meet this weekend, trying to score some good deals for the truck, I ended up getting a better deal than I even imagined. But it did not happen at the swap meet.
Friday night I checked the 67-72 Chevy truck forums and found a guy here in town who had a complete longbed to get rid of. I thought about it until this afternoon and decided to email him when we got home. No one else wanted the bed, so I'll be going to pick it up this coming weekend.
I'll have to do some work on the truck to make this bed work, since it is a fleetside and my truck is a stepside. But from what I have read, it is not too hard to swap the two out.
The fleetside is probably not a permanent solution for my truck. I really like the original look of the truck. But this will let me decide what I want to do about the long/step bed. I either need to replace it with new reproduction parts at a cost of about 2 grand or I need to find a decent longbed stepside that would not need too much repair. Once in a while they come up for sell for around $500. The most likely option though is that I'll start gathering the parts at swap meets and junkyards to build another long/step bed. I can probably do this a lot cheaper, but it will take a lot more time and effort.
So the long/fleetside will buy me some time either way. Best of all, it has a decent floor, so I'll actually be able to use the truck once I get the other bed installed.
And double best of all, the price is right, 2 cases of Shiner Bock Beer.
Now THAT is a swap.
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4 comments:
That one will make it to my blog.
What all needs to be done to the stepside? I will look by through the your pictures to see.
My fenders are shot, the end panel by the cab is shot, the tailgate is crap, the floor is gone. The bedsides might be salvageable but they have issues, too.
And whatever else there is to a stepside bed, it is ruined.
Honestly, I'm not a truck guy, but there is a certain beauty in trading a truck bed for beer. I am a beer guy. And while the steel may rust, the memories of a great case of beer will only become grander with time. Or, at least, more selective.
And I think the memoried that these two cases the I DON'T GET to drink will stay with me, too.
What if the truck bed is junk. I may be sad about the two cases that I let get away.
And if I get a good truck bed, it still won't help me cool me off on a hot day after I finish working out in the yard. (Unless I sleep in the shade underneath it.)
But then, I would have been ablke to slide a cooler full of bee under there, too...
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