It has been said that it takes a lot of money to restore a vehicle. There is a lot of truth in that statement, but it is not the final truth. I have found that patience is money! The most obvious item I needed was the '52 grille. That grill has eleven (11) pieces to it. The park light mounts are water traps so they rust out fast and thus are hard to find. A good rear bumper is another allusive item. Few trucks were sold with bumpers so there are not many available and most of those that are are not usable.

So I decided I would look for the hard to find parts early, before I needed them. If one impatiently buys these parts the price of rebuilding a vehicle skyrockets. So when I discovered these were very expensive (on ebay, for example) I just kept my eyes open.

One day someone posted he was looking for a rear bumper, a forum member in the San Jose, CA. had one he was willing to give away because it was 'damaged', that is, it was not pristine. The seeker turned down the offer so i put my name it. Since I have an original patina finish, this bumper was ideal for me. In short I got the bumper free. I have a friend who does a lot of business in the San Jose area and he put the bumper in his pickup and I even got it home freight free.

One evening someone posted a '52 Dodge Logging truck for sale. If no one was interested he was going to torch it and sell it for scrap. I offered him $200 clams for the grille and anything else I needed from the cab. He agreed and I got my grille, the headlight buckets, dash knobs, and one windshield glass.

Now I must regress a bit, In an earlier post I showed a red hood. My garage opens to an alley and I made the mistake of leaving my upper hood out and it grew legs. I found the red one in the Lodi, CA area for $100 clams. When I got it home and removed the paint, underneath was the same color blue as my truck. So I changed grit numbers and took it off slowly. Some of the red was stubborn so I left it, "patina flame!".

Now back to the grille. It was white when I found it. I took it home and put a high pressure steam cleaner to it and underneath was RED. Now that matched the red 'flames' on the hood so I left that paint on and the red grille fit into the paint scheme.

My point is, look down the road shop ahead of your need and you may well find those hard to find parts at a reasonable price and thereby significantly lower your resto investment.