I was 18, working as a pizza delivery guy, but didn’t have my own set of wheels. School was a 15 minute drive away and I did not consider taking the bus a viable option. Both my parents and I did not like any arrangement where I borrowed their vehicles for any reason and I can’t say I blamed them. Patience with my automotive experiments had worn thin and it was time for me to buy a decent reliable vehicle that wasn’t a hassle to me or anyone around me. The above pic might look good but it didn’t start that way; in fact I would have to continue to learn the hard way before finally achieving my goal of selling a vehicle for more than I paid for it.
Ugh! Sorry for the visual jolt. It really didn’t look that bad when I bought it. It was bad in the sense it was an obvious spray can paint job; but it was at least a uniform colour. By that I mean it was white with black racing stripes down the middle. The kind of paint job where you grind off the rust and just paint over it.
It was almost as if this seller had cobbled together a truck to sell to a dumb teenager. It was lowered, with aluminum slot rims, and had a decent stereo. Remember those tube subwoofers? It had one of those plus speakers built into the headrests. The seller had a thing for Fieros and took inspiration from the fact Fieros came with speakers in the headrests to hack a couple in this truck. Sounded good to me. Another custom touch in the interior was the use of the above pictured paint to coat the dashboard and the door panels. Unfortunately, he did a pretty poor job and much of it had flaked off by the time I took it off his hands for all of $800. No worries, I could buy more paint.
The seller also must have swapped in the 2.5 litre Iron Duke TBI too, as my research seems to indicate that this motor wasn’t available with TBI till 1987. That would probably explain why it ran poorly and had some bugs to be worked out. The motor flooded itself a lot; I can’t remember what the solution was but it was performed quickly and a lot of stress was relieved. It certainly wasn’t fast or very fuel efficient but it was at least fun to drive with the Getrag 5 speed transmission. I always thought it was weird that it had power windows but no power steering, yet someone had installed a Grant steering wheel. This truck had been monkeyed with, but it was running.
While I was back on the road making money delivering pizzas, the truck soon revealed itself to ride very poorly. I know it was a lowered truck but it was really hard on the spine. Apparently, heating up coil springs and compressing them to achieve a lower ride height is a bad idea. It tends to result in broken coil springs. I’ll point out that the past owner did this not me; I would have at least researched it online. I don’t remember how long I rode on broken front coil springs but it was decision time. Do I scrap this piece of junk or fix it up and make some money? I wanted to make some money.
I dove head first into this project; it was all or nothing. First thing I did was buy some proper lowering springs and shocks as well as replace whatever was ugly in the front end. What a difference! The rear end was left untouched as it had “proper” lowering blocks. As this was my daily driver, I had to do all the mechanical work fast and efficiently so as not to miss any work which would of course cut off the money for the project. This is a vicious cycle I’m sure many readers are familiar with. My parents were again kind enough to lend me a vehicle whenever I was unable to finish what I was working on, but I did my best to avoid this; and succeeded for the most part. I recall going without a functional alternator for at least a month. I brought a charger and booster cables with me wherever I went and parked it on inclines wherever possible to allow me to push start if I had to. Money was obviously tight and I eventually bought an alternator which ended this foolishness.
With my much improved ride, it was time to turn my attention towards the body. As it was a Chevy it was very easy and cheap to locate a set of aftermarket fenders and a roll pan that were promptly installed. As for the rest of the body that had rust on every other body panel; I would begin my initiation into the lost art of body work. This was far more involved and took way longer than I expected. It seems so easy in principle; remove rust, fill, make straight, paint with primer. I picked up a couple of less rusty doors from a junkyard that I could work on without affecting the drivability of the truck. As for the rust in the quarter panels, hood and roof, I just made sure to time my work so that I could at least get a coat of primer on before driving off.
image via s10forum.com
Remember tailgate nets? Maybe it’s just me but it seems like I haven’t seen one of those in a decade. While it was somehow absent from all my pics, the truck had a ratty old one that refused to stay tight and flapped in the wind. That’s not all the interesting until you consider that I routinely had passengers ride in the bed. I believe my record was 11, but that includes 3 people in the cab. You see, in Manitoba it was illegal to have dogs in a truck bed but not people (until 2013), and it seemed everyone including the police knew this. So while this truck may seem impractical as a people hauler, the 89″ longbox could accommodate half my football team, and do so comfortably if we could find an old couch. It’s too bad I never did buy a real tailgate as it would have looked much better with one.
I finally finished the (admittedly wavy) bodywork not too long after graduating high school and dropped the truck off at the local Maaco for its $700 re-incarnation. Soon I would no longer be driving the world’s slowest evolving, multi-coloured, Franken-truck and sell it to some other hapless teenager. But it wouldn’t be that simple. While on my way to pick up a camera to take the pics for the Auto Trader ad, I was rear-ended at a stoplight by someone who forgot that ice is slippery. I got to see it all unfold in my rear view mirror but was powerless stop it.
Three months and one insurance hassle later, it was finally up for sale. Interest was moderately high among my demographic but no one pulled the trigger. I suspect it did not meet anyone’s parental approval. Did I mention a lowered truck makes very little sense in the frozen tundra of Winnipeg? After about a month someone finally did come along and buy it for enough of a price that I made a cool $1000. I was rich!
So I finally had a good sum of money on hand but I was definitely not the type to walk into my local dealer and plunk it down as down payment on a new vehicle. I had decided against furthering my education and took a job at a warehouse so I was free to spend as stupidly as I wished. Oh, and I had bought a different project car a year or two earlier but that won’t make its COAL appearance for another week or two. I had accumulated as much automotive wisdom and experience as I had money, so it was time to put it to good use.
It looks ok in the new colour certainly an improve over purchase condition, lowering is interesting done right it can improve handling without ruining ride quality done badly, well you know about that one.
Well written story, To qoute Neil Diamond “Except for the names,and a few other changes…”
I like that color a lot! I always wanted a truck when I was younger but anything decent with a title in NY was way out of my reach at that time.
In the picture with the tailgate net, take a good look just below the trailer hitch.
These are very popular in the deep south, especially Mississippi.
Now we know where he got the inspiration for the color for the future paint job!!
If only more kids would learn from the lessons you took with this truck .
Sadly , too many seem to not get the basic lessons you did .
Well done .
-Nate
Okay, so that confirms the long bed on the S-10 was 7.5′ rather than just 7′ like the Ranger.
Was going to mention the bed myself. Had a 91 that looked like this with the 7’6″ bed. Did anyone else have them? Couldn’t seem to find a shell that would fit without making one.
Sold to my granddaughter who was rear ended. Had a tailgate just like that when she was done but did not have the little appendages hanging below this one.
While not “losing my shirt” was often a goal when buying then selling a car, I’ve only had 1 or 2 instances (in 45 years) where I did better than break even on a car. Making money on a 4 cylinder-powered truck would seem to be nearly impossible.
I can’t imagine how poorly this truck rode. When I bought my Ranger I couldn’t believe how bouncy an unloaded truck rode. Having driven a few S-10s over the years, they always seemed to me to drive/ride like a decent RWD car.
When you consider the amount of work I put into the thing, the $1000 profit meant my labour was worth far less than minimum wage. I agree, you really got to pick your spots or get lucky to do better than break even. I used tot think one could fix cars and flip em to make money but I learned my lesson with this truck.
This truck rode okay once fixed, it was certainly helped by the long wheelbase. For comparison my Dad had a ’92 S-10 a year or two earlier, and it really did ride like a car. In fact it was too soft, couldn’t handle loads very well which was great as it rarely hauled anything.It had the 4.3 which made it a bit of a hot rod too.
You certainly can make money fixing and flipping cars if you know what you are doing. That is how I paid my tuition through my later years of college and had extra spending money for several years later. Haven’t really done it in years since I don’t have the free time I did when I was younger and tend to buy much newer cars and drive them for many years instead of only driving them for 3-6 months.
“I can’t imagine how poorly this truck rode”
Then you have never owned or driven a 1950 Chevrolet 3\4 ton PU, 1957 Chevrolet Panel or 1967 Dodge 3\4 ton Camper Special. They ride just a little bit better than my BIL’s 1963 GMC 3 ton grain truck. The Ranger is like a Cadillac in comparison.
The only time I’ve made money on a car was due to insurance. After the car was totaled, the check they wrote me was $1000 more than I had paid for the car six months prior. That wasn’t due to hard work on my part though, just dumb luck (and knowing a good deal when I saw one).
Ah yes, the things we will put up with in a vehicle when we are young, broke and inexperienced. And you bring back the smell of Bondo. 🙂
I will echo Nate – it is a shame that more kids don’t have the kind of desire that you had at that age. So few among my own kids’ generation has any clue or even any interest in cars, other than as transportation appliances.
I see you transfered the plates from the Gremlin to the S-10. Nice article.
Those plates made it onto 7 different vehicles. Got bent up a few times and had to flatten them back down. I think I still have them in the garage.
Great story! I remember all too well when lowered minitrucks (and tailgate nets) were littering the roads like cockroaches. Your final product looks good though, with a nice clean paintjob. And of course, slot mags can make ANYTHING look good.
Thank you for posting this. It is refreshing to hear from someone who has seen through all the things that come up when taking on a project of the great unknown – finding out what deep sh—- you really are into and making it happen, all on your own. For years, I went through cars like a change of clothes and if something was too daunting, I’d just have a garage do the work for me. . . Oftentimes, looking at the money spent and wishing I had taken the time to learn how to do it myself. This is inspirational. Way to go!
I had one of those that sucked up enough money to balance out almost everything else that I bought and made money reselling. Part of the problem was that my daughter and a boyfriend were mixed up in it. He wanted the truck in the worst way, but he didn’t have a job, so I said, “Well, get a job…” figuring that would be the end of that. Next day he had a job, so…
It was indeed a very nice looking S-10, the same style as the OP’s truck, dark metallic blue, color-matched topper, lowered, nice chrome wheels. So anyway I went the money on the truck. After a couple of months I found out that boyfriend was a lot better at getting a job than keeping one. He drove the truck until the water pump went out and then parked it where he was staying. I had to repo it from him, then get the water pump and the radiator replaced. My mechanic said “They’re good motors, it’s just the crappy accessories GM puts on them…”
I sold the truck the next week. It still looked great, and some starry-eyed kid talked his gullible father into paying my full price, which still left me several thousand bucks in the hole.
Our daughter learned from the experience though – it wasn’t very long after that that this particular romance came to an end. And there was a side benefit too – he’d taught our daughter how to detail a car. It’s really great to lend a car and have it come back with a full gas tank and the interior newly detailed.
Seeing this reminds me how rare compact single-cab long-bed trucks have become. Can you even get a new one anymore? Then again, whether or not you can actually even get a compact truck anymore is a matter of opinion.
Great to see you stuck it out to the bitter end despite all the obstacles against success. The end result was a nice truck. At work in around ’88 we had a totally base red with black interior ’85 S10 short bed. That 2.5 engine made some pretty crude sounds and the steering was really stiff. In the rain even with new tires it was really hard to get started without spinning a tire. I think it was the short wheelbase, I’ll bet the long bed was quite a bit better. But everybody and their brother beat on that truck, and it just kept asking for more. I took it home one weekend to teach a family member how to drive a stick shift. She learned so quickly she was hired as a parts driver using the same truck. Was an oven in the summer months in Southern California, at least it had an aftermarket stereo in it. Eventually at around 150k the transmission needed to be rebuilt. Glad she learned on that truck and not my ’77 Rabbit which was the other alternative. Great story.