Time to sort out Dad's old truck!

RavenLord said:

Hello all, I found this forum during a search on replacing rotten rockers on a Squarebody and decided to stay awhile.
My truck is a 79 K20 longbox with the 350 and the slushbox. Originally purchased by my late father in Portland in 1980, he and my brother drove it from there to Eagle River, AK in 2 1/2 days doing high speed low drag team driving. Once there it pulled a Shasta travel trailer and did other truck things, being a backup vehicle I used it occasionally when my VW squareback was broken so I commuted to college and delivered pizza and such. After a few years in the 907 my mom and dad moved to Vancouver, WA area where "Big Red" did truck duty there for a couple decades...there are rottweiler scratches on the door panels from Buddy and other "wear items" needing attention.
Oh, and this wasn't left to me, I had to buy it from the estate I got a pretty good price on it though.
Now it is sitting in the garage in the tip of the mitt where I ended up. So far I have swapped out the Q-Jet for a FiTech 3003 EFI system, and can tell you that the truck has never run better. That poor old Q-jet and the smog stuff really made for a poor driving truck, especially when cold. It came to me with some Sailun Terramax tires which I have swapped for Hankook Dynapro AT2's, LT285/75R16's which fill the wheel wells nicely without needing a lift. Plans for this winter are to redo the interior, the dashboard is a maze of cracks, the seat is torn up under the seat blanket and there is some rust to deal with, tatty rockers and some rust behond the tires on the drivers side. Oddly the passenger side is fine, so I'm guessing Washington does that thing where they salt down the middle of the road? Of course all followed by fresh paint.
As for my handle here, my DD is a Land Rover LR3 with 193K miles on it and mostly everything still works and darned if that beast isn't then best snow vehicle I've ever owned. I rearranged the hood letters and "Land Rover" became "Raven Lord". It kind of fits as for some reason I have a regular congress of ravens here....the problem is that they like to pick at wierd items like wiperblades and the seal around the wifely one's windshield. If you want to get back at them, put a mirror out where they congregate and watch them attack the "raven" in the mirror and then look behind the glass. Hours of fun!

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RavenLord said:

I recall some of the original Yankee northeastaahn states do that brine right down the middle snow melt, the theory being that with one pass you get down to the pavement fpr both sides of the road. Seems like a likely reason for my rust pattern.
Here in this area vehicles rust savagely. The DOT and counties salt them to death. I see a lot of what I call "ghost trucks", so badly rusted there is a thin husk of paint and really thin sheet metal generally defining the shape of what once was a truck (or car).
Being so relatively rust free, as my cab corners are still in good shape, I get random strangers coming to the door trying to buy it. I tell them there is a considerable "sentimentality tax" involved and that puts them off.

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Grit dog said:

Even without the sentimentality tax, seems like everyone acts like a baller until it comes time to cough up some dough.
Sometimes it’s somewhere between hilarious and frustrating. The internet has produced an entire generation of wannabe be ballers who are low ballers. It’s just too easy when you don’t have to drive somewhere bring some earnest money and actually be serious about it just to offer to buy something.

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