Posted by Judd on Sunday, May 05, 2002 at 11:01PM :
Interesting story for an interesting truck!
This truck belonged to THE MONTANA POWER CO in Butte Montana it was sold to a Curtis Reed who then I belive sold it to Herb Hobi. Herb Sold this truck to a gentleman in Glenwood springs sight unseen for $7000, back then it had the flat head and was bone stock! Russell Coletti decided that the truck didn't have enough power and braking power for him and shopped out the work to local shops. He found a real nice new style 318 (used but checked out for compression and cracks) mated it to a NP435 trans, had the trans rebuilt had the transfer rebuilt, had the complete front axle rebuilt (seals, bearings and all) put $1000 worth of tires on it, had it rewired, put dual exaust on it, new steering wheel from VPW, power steering,dual master cyl, wheel cyl's, new clutch ect ect. All told he had $14,000 dollars invested and then lost interest!
Put it in his barn after he put the new tire's on and there it sat for a year before he decided to sell it to the man I bought it from. BTW he bought a Porsch instead ;).
Dwight Jones is the man I bought it from and he kept it in storage, driving it once in awhile until he found a very nice WM300 he wanted even more! So I ended up with it.
Now I have driven the truck a little around the farm and up and down the road in front of the farm and it is a real neck jerker!!!!
I belive it still has the 5.83's but that little 318 just rockets it around like nothing! It has PWR Brakes (drums still) PWR steering and electric wipers. 12 volt system and the interior is pretty darn nice.They completely rebuilt all the springs front and back.I was unable to find any rust when I was looking. Windshield is clean and has a working regulater (sans handle) I have a first series box that can go with it if so desired and I can work out a number of different deals (different tires, winch or no winch, bed or no bed ect.) With the tires on it and the first series bed with a restorable drivers rear fender (pretty nice) and a rough passenger fender (no tailgate) I would like to have $6500.
If you would like to mix and match drop me an email and we can talk about it.
Thanks
Judd
BTW. this was a decent job of repowering, not a helitool kit by any means but they did a decent job even without our help.And the funky looking windshield wiper is from doing 80 mph being trailered. Works fine!