Current Distractions
Posted by TFG on August 13th, 2008
In front, in the place of honor under the carport, is the 1978 Silverado I bought one week after buying the former Tiny Bidness. It’s been sitting for two years, since I sold original Tiny Bidness, so there’s a little bit of work to do. For example, when I went to pick it up, there was softball-sized mud-dauber nest on the carb at the throttle linkage. The allure is the 454 rat motor in it. Problem is, I have no idea if it’s even worth salvaging. But there’s no reason not to try, right? Cuz that’s the kind of bash-around truck I want - carb, duallies, power steering and a radio. If I can tune this thing to be able to get on down the road for a reasonable distance and at a reasonable pace, well, there’s my hunting/camping/fishing/kayaking driver. A new seat, and battery-operated jambox in the floorboard, and I’m good to go, no?
Back behind it is the 11-year newer Ford F150 Lariat with the 351W. Pshaw on that fuel-injected over-computerized thing. “Remove it from my sight.” Well, maybe not…it’s still a decent runner, just has all those damn chips and pods and codes, and I feel like a moron when I open up the hood. Hell, I dunno…what I think I should do is engineer a trade for a 20-year-older 4×4.
As an observation — whatever happened to the bench seat? Even the baseline, so-Spartan-it-hurts newish base models have those faux split benches. A man needs to be able to set his big old fat arm on the back of the seat sometimes and rest it. And how do kids these days get their gals to snuggle up to them when blasting down a blacktop road at midnight? It never was too romantic to just hold hands over a dumb console. I say we’ve lost something in America when we decided to ditch the bench seat.
OK, I’m off to LMC, Jegs, and JC Whitney.
August 13th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Scott, I had a 91 f150 with the 351,put 165,000 on it when I was in the land clearing business,kept it loaded with tool boxes,80gal. fuel tank,various other crap I thought I’d need,never had any major probs,replaced shocks & brakes pretty often though.Got a 01 with the 5.4 replace a coil pack about every 3 mo’s on that SOB.That 454 oughta make you a fine ride for your pourposes,check your local wrecking yard for that seat thing.By the way after 47yrs of marriage,don’t need but 1 bucket seat in my ride.
August 13th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Well, I’m still not sure I want to part with that Ford. I like it, I just don’t know fuel injection. I don’t know carbs, either, but I worked on them once a million years ago, and could generally make em go. I don’t need much more than one bucket, either — I’m thinking of the kids, though. Tell me you didn’t enjoy a few moonlit nights at the submarine races, Diller.
I just looked at that picture closer — I got old kitchen table seats out there, left-over cedar posts, random pieces of plywood, a home depot bucket, a 20 year old Workmate I use for staining wood, and a log bucker in there, too. I think I’m turning into my packrat mama.
August 14th, 2008 at 8:24 am
you brought back some good ol memories there.Wish I still needed a bench seat,no floor shift though please.That packrat thing ain’t all bad,been going thru boxes of crap we’ve moved from place to place thru the yrs.Find lots of junk thought we’d use,lots of memories,good & bad,few treasured old mags from 40yrs ago & a great sense of sadness when I find a box of things that the daughter we lost in 01 made or wrote.All told, no regrets in keeping parts of your life to look back on.
August 14th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
My folks were poor for over a decade there, so the new ‘89 Ford (351 EFI engine, 3-speed automatic, half-ton 4×4) they got to replace the wheezy, 360-powered F100 seemed like a rocketship. I don’t know how to fix the fuel-injection stuff either, but my injected Fords have been exemplars of total reliability. Of course the family’s ‘89 got a whopping 13 MPG on the highway if you could keep it to 55-60 MPH, which was bad when gas was $1 a gallon, and goshawful now.
I, too, miss bench seats, but not the crappy vinyl bench seats. I think GM perfected the bench with that dense-foam, no-springs, durable-synthetic-mouse-fur covered design that debuted on the 1988 trucks. My brother’s 1990 Chevy, which he tried to beat to death, was sold to a farmer I know, and the truck is still running strong (350 EFI engine/4-speed Muncie manual) at 350,000 miles, and the danged original seat is still in it, and still looks and sits okay. I bet you could find one of the bench seats I’ve described that’d fit your “Big Ten” truck just fine, I think Chevy made them starting in 1988 and maybe running through the mid-1990s or later. And I guess the “Heavy Half” moniker was the name of the same slighty-more-heavy-duty 1/2 ton truck as marketed by GMC, if memory serves.
The R Man
August 14th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
My Daddy had one of these types of trucks. I loved that thing…three on the dash…down was first, up was second and up was third. There was even a hole in the bottom that had been rusted out…well worth the work is what I say.
August 19th, 2008 at 9:52 am
“Its a bench seat baby, you don’t have to sit over there” the great Fred Eaglesmith.