When I read Paul’s recent post about the 1962 Chevy C-10 with great patina I quickly noted that I could find one myself that could rival that one and then some.
Some background is in order here. The owner of this truck is Tom. Tom is a former Seabee and Santa Cruz firefighter. He has been a volunteer on the USS Hornet since 1995 making him the longest serving volunteer. I, and maybe two others, date to May 1998 right behind Tom. Tom’s skills are beyond comprehension. He is a machinist, welder, fabricator, heavy machinery operator and mechanic, besides knowing all the operating systems of an aircraft carrier such as the Hornet. He lives in Santa Cruz and commutes 96 miles one way to the Hornet for Tuesday and then for Saturday through Sunday spending the night. When not on the Hornet he is doing something around his small house like rebuilding the foundations digging by hand.
He bought the truck in 1970 after he left the Navy. Prior to that his cars were a 1948 Packard, 1954 Windsor and a 1958 Dodge. Since he entered the fire service after leaving the Navy the truck was used locally around Santa Cruz. Trips to the Hornet started in 1995 and miles have accumulated since then to the tune of 600,000 miles. Yes, that is 600,000 miles on this truck.
It has gone through three engines. The original 230 six cylinder he removed at 65,000 miles because it really couldn’t tow anything. He then put in a 327 which was removed several years ago at 380,000 miles. It sits on stand awaiting rebuild. The engine you see here is a 283.
When I opened the hood I noticed the single pot master. Since I saw Tom before I took the pictures I’ll have to wait to talk to him about that. He’ll probably tell me something like they are reliable as long as you take care of them or something similar to that. Tom is big on regular maintenance.
As you can see power is transmitted through a 4 speed with granny gear. There is a CB radio but I don’t think he uses it. On the passenger side you can see his fire extinguisher. If there is one thing he knows and that is what the laws are regarding fire safety and occupancy. When the Hornet makes a mistake he is the one to note it.
The wood bed is fairly rotted through in some places. This is the second wood bed he has installed in the truck. This bed has hauled a ton of ship parts from the MARAD Suisun Reserve Fleet going back to 1999 starting with the USS Oriskany. There were 108 ships there at the time and now there are just five. He most likely hit most as he had an extensive wish list over the years. I went with him as my schedule permitted and walked across the decks, top to bottom, of dozens of ships including the USS Iowa which is now a museum in San Pedro.
I know the top picture is a crap picture given the front end parking in towards the fence but I wasn’t going back onto the ship to start looking for him much less ask him to move it. The truck is actually in amazing shape considering it’s age and the fact that Santa Cruz is a salt air environment. Of course, there is the standard rust in the lower rear corners of the front fenders. When isn’t there any? There is also some sealer present at the roof seam above the driver but Tom says it is dry inside. He did have another vehicle to use which I saw long ago. Twas a 1981 Buick Century which he complains about the foam insulation stuck in the roof pillars that held water and rusted out the car from inside out. Of course, it is at home in Santa Cruz for what reason I don’t know.
That concludes my story about Tom’s truck. He will not likely see the story as surfing a computer is not his thing. After I talked with Tom at lunch I then went over to Andy (1998) to ask him about his car. A 1995 Ford Escort wagon manual that he drives from San Jose to Alameda. He informed me that the State of California gave him $1000 for it in December. Drat, I missed it by that much and it had 348,000 miles on the original four cylinder. His replacement is a 2018 Ford Festiva for $11,000 out the door. Can it go 348,000 miles?
Amazing. All those miles…
Your ’66 Ford will go as far, you just don’t have that long a commute. How many miles does it have?
Great story, complimented by a great truck. Thanks for sharing.
Looks like another transmission transplant recipient; per the three-on-tree column.
Surprising considering its use, because any of the readily available “car” transmissions were better for a truck seeing mostly road duty.
Maybe it’s a 5-speed?
Or has some tall cogs? Because 85,000 miles of winding truck work would take the heart out of 283 or 327, either one.
Ok, some answers now that I talked with Tom tonight. The truck was originally a 3 speed which he said had known troubles with the linkage over time so he swapped in the 4 speed. The 230 was swapped out because it was not good for towing and the one time he towed something heavy the engine spun a bearing.
The original axle was a 3.73 all the way up to the time the 283 went in. So the 327 saw all those miles with the 3.73 rear and as Tom said it was getting tired.
A 64 Chevy had a coil spring rear while the GMC had leaf springs. When carrying a load of red bricks, 1500 lbs. worth very slowly over a dirt road, he went over a berm where the truck raised up and then sharply down. The coils were never the same so he took them out and put in the leaf suspension from a GMC and added extra leafs.
Thanks for the update.
Now, it looks like Tom is pushing a good bit of oil courtesy of high crankcase pressure. Appears that the PCV is plumbed in at the old road-draft-tube location. Fair enough. But what’s it using for an inlet breather? The oil fill cap looks like a non-vented job, in the picture at least, that leaves no crankcase inlet breather visible.
Just trying to help Tom get lots more miles on Old Faithful before oil loss goes into Valdez class.
348k miles on original engine for escort they should put the picture of that car on 100 dollars bills.most of those Ford’s 1.9 motors ended up dropping valve seats before they reach 100 k miles.
Or blowing the head gasket, cracking the head, rounding off the cam lobes, burning holes in the valves, or the timing belt snapping and bending all the valves 10,000 miles before the belt change interval… all of which happened to CVH engines in my Escort and EXP… grrr
I owned three Escorts back in the day, the last was a ’92 sedan. I traded in the ’87 wagon with a 5-speed manual with 125,000 miles on it, original clutch still in it. Yes, I maintained the heck out of it, but never thought it would ever make 348k like Andy’s. A great car and I still miss it.
The Chevy pickup? 600k does not surprise me.
Does the salt air affect under-car components like brake lines? I suspect that it is far less severe than with salty road-spray we get in the midwest. Around here any car old enough to have a single master cylinder has either had brake lines replaced (probably more than once) or has lines suitable for starring in a horror movie.
I admire folks who can rack up that kind of miles over a long period. Am I wrong to muse that he probably took the most durable engine of the three out of the truck at 58k miles? 🙂
In all the years he has had one break line snap after a very hard stop. Since he was already stopped he then saw the pedal drop to the floor and knew what happened. He then drove home and used the “emergency brake” which is what it is called the “emergency brake” and not a parking brake.
All the lines are original and painted so none has rusted. The single pot has been replaced several times but works fine. Like I said, and he confirmed tonight, the single pot works fine if you take care of things.
Having lived in the salt air zone of California most of my life and even a few years in Hawaii, all of the rust is on the body. Frame, suspension, brake lines, etc. are not touched. Moisture absorbed by brake fluid is an issue with master and wheel cylinder rust, since almost no one flushes brake fluid regularly.
What’s surprising to me is how straight the body looks. This would be prime resto/hot rod material back East.
Not so surprising is the longevity of the SBCs when well-maintained. Transmissions are a little bit different story depending on type and application but in an easy-to-switch foundation like this, it’s hardly a deal breaker.
Originally white that was pretty faded by the mid-70s. Was then painted a beige before going to this brown at the end of the 70s.
Sounds like the Escort could no longer pass smog, is that the case? By the way, there is no 2018 Ford Festiva sold in California, do you mean Fiesta?
You’re right it is a Fiesta.
In California you can only get $1000 from the State IF the car passes smog. You must then drive the car to the reclamation point. The car is then checked out completely and then it is driven off one last time to make sure it is still operable.
In the helm image, what’s with the “AIR” gauge seen port side?
The Chevy dash panel in those days was shared across many lines of trucks. His was basic and had two blanks where the tach and air gauge would be. He wanted the tach and so he pulled a dash from a junkyard truck. He air gauge would be seen in trucks that used pressured air. He actually has a tank to mount under the cab.
This is the good part. I asked how long he has had the tank as I know Tom. He has had the parts for 50 years and just hasn’t gotten around to it.
Tom was born on a ranch in the Salinas Valley in 1948. Lived in a cabin without running water and only an outhouse. By 12 he was driving, repairing fences and doing construction work. Naturally when joing the Navy they saw his skill set and put him in the Seabees. While his father was alive he continued to live on his ranch till 89 and Tom would visit traveling back dirt roads in this truck. It was at this ranch where Tom kept his bulldozer.
At his house he has a barn larger than the house (circa the 30s) which, of course, he built himself. He keeps a 26 foot dump truck there which was once a semi tractor rig that was converted. He was going to convert it back so it could tow a large trailer for his dozer. Only his stepmother sold off his dozer after his father died. Tom was not pleased.
That truck is a beauty. I hope it continues to accumulate miles.
I hope and wish I could visit the Hornet some day. She looks like an impressive ship on the website.
Come out and get a tour, a real tour that is.
They found the original Hornet, which this Essex class Hornet replaced, last week:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/12/us/world-war-ii-aircraft-carrier-found-south-pacific-trnd/index.html
Nice old truck. There is plenty of room under the hood for a larger diameter air cleaner. I don’t know why people like to choke off their 8 cylinder engines with these VW sized air filters.
Those smaller filters don’t “choke off” anything. They’re designed to have plenty of flow. One saw them often on big engines in boats and such.
A bigger filter allows the paper to be denser, thereby trapping more very fine particles. But it doesn’t necessarily flow more air at all.
Paul is correct that this small filter really wouldn’t choke off this little 283. Remember, an engine is just an air pump, and unless you are running high RPM at WOT, there isn’t a lot of air being pumped through the engine. Under normal driving this filter is more than fine.
There are a number of dyno tests comparing air filters. Small filter like these are more restrictive and do flow less air than larger ones, such as say a 14 x 3 open element filter. Some of these test show a loss of horsepower with the smaller filters. However, most of these tests are done with very large displacement, high performance engines, running at high RPM. In other words, they are using a ton of air, so these engines will see power loss from a small filter like this. However, a mild 283, running daily driver duties will be fine.
“You are posting comments too quickly. Slow down.”
NaNa, you missed me this time, I saved it first.
Here it is again, S-L-O-W-E-R:
I’m not so sure the filter is actually smaller than an original 283 dry element. They were only about -what?- 2″ x12″ max? Maybe less?
And that tiny “ardvark snout” intake opening?
However a housing does help.
But it’s tough to argue with success, and this truck has certainly found success in its longevity.
A stock air filter for a 1964 Chevy with a 283 is 11.5″ x 3″ in a snorkel type air cleaner. So a stock filter is considerably larger than what is installed now, however, the small filter is an open element filter which flows better than a snorkel style. Regardless, I am sure this filter is sufficient for this engine.
Here is a study of the effectiveness of different brands of air filters as tested on a 1996 GMC truck with a 350:
http://www.gmtruckcentral.com/articles/air-filter-study.html
Very cool truck. It’s nice to see it still being used in daily service. The climate around here just doesn’t allow for that. Even with extremely good maintenance, rustproofing rust will eventually destroy a car around here. The only way they last is not to drive them in winter.
That’s a lot of miles accumulated, more than I have ever seen. That little 327 served him very well. The most I mileage I have came across was a Chevrolet 3/4 van powered by a 350, that had about 450K miles on it. It was an airport shuttle van that ran up and down the highways all the time. I also remember a 1990 Cadillac stretch limo I worked on that had a Chevy 350 and it had somewhere north of 400K miles. However, the engine had been replaced on that one.
If I lived anywhere but on the West Coast, I would have a summer and winter car. For winter, give me a leased Hyundai Accent. For summer, well, there are plenty of nice older cars here on the Coast.
Those are some fairly meaty tires (Falken Wildpeak A/T) he has on there but worn down quite a bit due to the commute I’m sure. Even the lugs on the sidewall are worn down, they are quite aggressive when new, he must pretend it corners as if on rails over Hwy 17!
Wow, I’m amazed to hear the mothball fleet at Suisun is down to 5 ships. It was always a treat crossing the old Benicia Bridge and seeing them all lined up. Huell Howser on “California’s Gold” did a good segment or two on them back in the day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeuIv-zJde8
That and the concrete ship down off Aptos. That guy was great, I could listen to him talk all day long.
+1 on Huell Howser. I could watch episodes of California’s Gold over and over, he made anything and everything interesting.
Thanks for the link, as much as I tried to watch all 300+ episodes of CG, I think this is one I missed.
Tires are just three years old. He does do yearly trips down to the San Diego area to visit his sister.
Yes, the Reserve Fleet, which is the correct term, is no more. However, it was a hell of a lot of fun going onto all of those ships. There is one I want to write a story about which played a vital but unknown part in the Cold War. That along with a couple of famous warbirds which are well known along with several on a historical landmark, the Hornet and her class.
Below Row G, Suisun
The only ship to leave Suisun and not for scrapping.
Hey I know that ship at the 13:40 mark. I accessed that ship and ladder to that row many times. The next ship over in the background with those strange tall boom like masts is the Amphibious Attack AKA-112 USS Tulare. What a ship that was! One of the first to bring Marines to Vietnam.
Hey I know that ship at the 13:40 mark. I accessed that ship and ladder to that row many times. The next ship over in the background with those strange tall boom like masts is the Amphibious Attack AKA-112 USS Tulare. What a ship that was! One of the first to bring Marines to Vietnam.
I live in Santa Cruz but haven’t noticed this truck, though there are several Chevy/GMC’s of this vintage, and even more Fords, that I see as regular drivers or even work trucks. The rust here from the salty ocean fogs is mostly on body surfaces that collect dew and fog … often on roofs and windshield headers, caused by drips from wet surfboards. The rust-pocked lumber rack is a common sight on older trucks here.