52NowWhat

What are you doing with the old flathead????

Welcome from the girlie side of the forum! What a great truck. Hubby and I just started on our 52. We are having so much fun! This forum is amazing...and you will love your new book too. :-) Sandra

LOL, Hey it was Valentine's Day weekend and I spent an entire day in the junkyard!!!! A girl has to get her treasure! ;-) The lump on his noggin' will go down eventually and what's a little concussion compared to a cool dual horn??????

Hey I found my dual horn!!! I think it was Reg who told me to look for one....I never would have known. I love it! I found another kind of dual horn (not the trumpet one) not sure what those were on originally. I took it anyway but in the process of removing it the hood of the truck blew down and just about "brained" my husband....then I found the dual trumpet horn that I just "had to have"....I think he was about ready to throw me outta the junkyard!!! LOL ;-) Got that steering wheel I wanted too!!! Happy lady!!!!

So, last Saturday we spent at the junkyard stripping more trucks....I think we found about 6 of them! Hopefully we finally have about everything we might need and then some! No major dog bites...a few scares but we survived...there was about 3 feet of mud though and we about bashed the "Big Dodge" into a few things....I thought we might need parts for it by the time we got out of there!!!! Probably spent $10.00 at the carwash getting the mud off.....what a day! I will get some pics of the parts and if someone is really interested they can message me....of course we got a foot of snow this morning so I'm not doing it today!!!! I took a couple pics but its not the kinda place you want to be waiving a camera around. ;-) I just loved this power wagon in the bushes though!!! Oh and I took the picture of the grill guard because there was just a recent thread about those. Sandra

Good reminder!!!!!!!!!! I already put some pruners to chop rose bushes on the list too!!!!!!!! LOL ;-)

Thanks guys! I was hoping there was a simpler way but I guess a puller is it...We will go better armed to the junkyard next time! Sandra

I wanted to grab a better steering wheel at the junkyard but we weren't sure how to remove it????? I am sure we were missing something obvious. LOL ;-) Help please! Sandra

I'll take pictures next time we go. I just love that great big old truck buried in the bushes its awesome! There were a few of those seat softness tags....I will have to grab some. The big truck had a great big tag on the glovebox about something too. Hubby said after looking at link that Reg posted, that the 52 we looked at had the deluxe heater that looks different than the 62 and 65 we grabbed. We thought it was just the wrong kind of heater. I guess we will grab it too. LOL, might be a long day! I guess we will get what we can and go from there. Thanks for all the help you guys!

I will start a list! Thank you so much!!!!

Welcome! I love your BLUE truck! Could you post more pics...interior too! I am working on a blue one as well and would love the inspiration and reference! Sandra

LOL...I wasn't trying to show off...I was just super excited!!!! :-) Thank you Reg....it is the ashtray that you showed in the link for the 48-50 trucks. Should I go get it????? My truck is a 52 but we aren't really restoring to original...or maybe we could sell it? What else should I be pulling off of these trucks? No radios sorry....a truck that apparently had one but just an empty space. :-( They aren't going anywhere soon so I could go back for more....well hubby did all the yucky work. ;-) But hey I did crawl across a couple very mouse poop covered seats to catch the heaters! YUCK! Sure made me appreciate how clean I have our truck when I got home!!!! Sandra

LOL, considering that this junkyard is about 1 1/2 miles from my house and buried deep in the woods with scary dogs and scary people........ummm...I would venture to say it hasn't been picked for these trucks yet! My husband did come away with some really lovely holes in his leg from a pack of dogs that bit him when he stepped away from the owner to look at a truck!!!! We will be going back for sure....dare I tell you that he only wanted $30.00 for the stuff we got??? ;-) Sandra

Forgot I had one more question....there was a HUGE farm truck...sorry guys I have no idea the size. It was super in-tact and had interior and all, so it was neat to see what the truck should look like originally. It had an ash-tray that was mounted under the dash and had a knob that said "ash" on it that matched all the other knobs in the truck. Is this original to that year of truck maybe???? This truck was older than my 52 with the older dash style. I am not sure if it could even be removed but curious if I should try? Just looking for as many unique parts as I can find before these trucks get smashed! Sandra

So, hubby and I went junkyard "shopping" and came away with lots of fun stuff for the 52. My find of the day was a set of sunvisors...all that is left is the hardboard...is there a visor covering that can be bought or will I have to recover these myself? I was pretty impressed with my passenger side find! Found 4 trucks so far and there might be more in there...pretty rough going but still parts to be had on them. We also came away with two heaters..one is a 62 and one a 65. What is the difference? Excited to get all the parts for the fresh air system too!!! :-) I came away with LOTS of little pieces, 2 sets of in-tact parking lights, windshield wipers (mine are bent), grill bars, and other trim parts...etc. I was really bummed to find a truck with an ash-tray but without the darn ash-tray!!! Should I go back and get the cover and pray for a tray to fall out of the sky???? LOL ;-) Sandra

Sooooo, did you buff the plate under the speaker grille and it came out that good???? Mine is not as bad as your original pic but I would like to get some of the rust spots off....how do I do that or did you find a better one???? Your after pic looks good I can't wait to go back out and work on mine...might just have to start a fire in the shop since its a complete blizzard outside! Getting excited about how great the interior might look!! Sandra

Thank you for the warm welcome Wally! I actually live 35 min. from Spokane and south of CDA outside of Plummer. Its a beautiful area. We spend almost all our free time up the St.Joe river up from St.Maries. I have lived here my entire life and never plan on leaving! I don't think we have many Pilothouse people here so I guess I will have to start a trend! I think its funny though considering almost EVERYONE here drives a new Dodge! LOL ;-) Sandra

The finish is a faux finish I am assuming said teenager applied! ;-) I have all the emblems, hood ornament, and top stainless bar....missing bottom bars. UGH! Of course all of those are actually for the older style so if I change to actual 52 grille then they are worthless to me. Really there is very little rust on this truck which is great! Even the floor inside is spotless. Now mouse poop....that was a different story! LOL Here is a pic of the dash and the dark blue color I was talking about....sorry for the confusion.

Thank you for the blue truck pictures! The dash of my truck is the same dark blue color in the pics posted...the light blue on the outside is some kind of faux finish and the older grille is originally green. LOL I was just super curious what that blue looked like originally. I think I will paint it back to the dark color but with the black box. Starting to feel a plan here...... ;-) Curious if the other truck from Idaho had the same bumper if that was a local dealer thing? Who knows!!!! Sounds like anything went as far as bumpers go but thank you so much for the history!

Thank you so much for the pic of the blue truck!!!! That looks very cool...I would never have thought you could restore the paint like that.

Here is a picture...it has an older front grille etc....I guess I am in need of a parts truck..although I kinda like the older grille style. ;-) Its been sitting in someone's yard for seven years and they purchased it from a kid who was at the time driving it to highschool. He lived very close to the school....I'm assuming he wasn't driving very fast! Lots of work to be done.....

Thank you everyone! The bumper is similar to the one on that yellow truck how it wraps around to the fenders but it is solid all the way. It doesn't have the braces on the sides though. I will try to figure out how to post a pic. The truck does run just needs lots of love! Good to hear we maybe didn't do too awful on it....kinda rushed into it without any research. I am sure we will be putting LOTS O' MONEY into it though! :-) The outside of the truck has some kind of faux finish on it?? Maybe someone was gonna make a rat rod out of it??? That look will have to go...I want it to be shiny! Was hoping someone had a pic of the blue looking truck just so I could see what that might look like....

Well I started lurking recently and thought I should introduce myself.... Probably not alot of women on here but here goes... My husband and I recently purchased a 52 B3B pilothouse! We had not intended to buy a vehicle to fix-up but it was on CL and we called and well now its here. ;-) It is in pretty good shape as far as we can tell although it must have been crunched at some point in its life because it has an older style front on it. We paid $840.00 for it...not sure if we were getting a good deal or not since we knew NOTHING about these guys! We found this forum and that is helping alot. I hope you all can help out on this journey because this is all new. We are from Northern Idaho and it appears there aren't alot of people from that area on here??? I do have what is probably a silly question but I am curious....it has a rear bumper on it that is HUGE and is one piece wrapped around to the fenders. I don't see this on any restored trucks...so is this just a bumper someone made for it? It fits on it perfectly but we took is off because it looks good without it. Just wondering what the heck we should do with it??? Also curious about the purple blue color...I don't see any trucks restored back to this color and was wondering why? I do think the green ones look really great and initially that is what we wanted to do but the interior is purple blue and in good shape so I think we will keep it. Anyone have any thoughts on this??? O.K. that post just got really long...thanks for reading. This is a wonderful resource!