My grandfather was the original owner of this truck. He bought it mostly to use on his dairy farm and to pick up supplies in the city. Apparently, my two uncles used to use it as a Saturday night cruiser and apparently that old 307 v8 and 3 on the tree standard tranny was an awesome stop light drag racing combo. My grandfather always wondered why the back tires seemed to wear out faster than the front tires but had his suspicions.
Well, the Canadian winters are hard on vehicles that get driven year round and eventually the original box was scrapped in exchange for a wooden flat deck complete with hardwood cross-members. The original rear coil springs received a frequent workout hauling in the summer hay. The truck would often see the bales stacked a nosebleed heights.

After serving several years more as a commuter vehicle to the city community college where my Dziadziu (grandpa in Polish) taught a machine shop course, and patching the truck’s now badly rusting body with riveted patch panels, the ol’ 68 (as she was known) was parked in the barn sometime in the mid 90’s at which point the truck was replaced by a series of newer vehicles. The engine was worn out and much of the undercarriage was in a sorry state of repair.

Several years ago, and shortly after receiving my driver’s license, I got into a conversation with my grandfather about the truck. I was reading stories about other guys that had restored these trucks back to their former glory with the popularity of aftermarket parts suppliers like LMC and told my grandpa that I’d love to fix up the ol’ 68. Dziadziu, who was having some serious health problems at the time said I could have the truck if I promised to give him a ride when it was all done.

After looking at the truck, my dad told me that it would probably be easier and cheaper overall to find a less rusty and beat up classic to start with and that the farm truck might make a good donor vehicle. I quickly pointed out (as did my mom) that any other vehicle would not be the ol’ 68 and after some pleading and talking, our father-son project was born. This was the summer of 2010.

The first step was to get the ’68 from Sault Ste Marie Ontario to our own driveway in Wawa, Ontario which was more than 140 miles away. We fabbed up a tow bar and attached her to a buddy’s truck. We finally had her close to and from there started with the dismantling and removal of the body from the frame. I immediately opted to scrap the wooden flat deck in place of a factory steel box. The original box that came with this particular truck was an 8 ft stepside. As I quickly learned, those particular boxes were not exactly plentiful in the used part world. We considered, as we did in all our major part purchases, a brand new box but my limited budget just didn’t allow for that expense especially when considering the cost of shipping. We eventually settled on a fleetside box that had been used as a bodyshop trailer. Although one fender was severely wrinkled, the box was from a western truck and fairly solid. It was deemed repairable however our end result was not what we now realize worth the hours and hours of cutting, welding, banging, grinding and banging that resulted in a mediocre box that is still far from perfect. In fact the entire project saw the insertion of many custom and backyard fabricated pieces including the welding in of a complete floor for the cab and new floor crossmembers.

In addition to a complete sandblast and repaint of the frame, many of the smaller and medium-sized components needed to replaced or fabricated due to the effects of corrosion over the preceeding 40 years.

Although the original project utilized the factory 307 and 3 speed manual transmission, we later decided to build a semi hotrodded Chevy 350 mated to a 700R4 automatic for better cruisability and added fun factor. (this partly because the maiden voyage was less than successful when something inside the old Saginaw snapped and the transmission locked up solid).

After filling, blocking, and priming, we painted the truck using a two-step Orangello acrylic enamel, adapting the cushy center seat of a Cadillac Escalade into the cab as the 68’s new bench, and wrapping the truck with Micky Thompson Sportsman rubber on chrome 15″ Cragar rims.

Back suspension was lowered 3 inches, newer Chevy hood adapted thanks to snow drift falling off our garage in the middle of the winter and crushing the stock 68 GMC hood beyond repair. Current modifications now include adding disc brakes and dropping the front end 2 inches and fabricating a custom vinyl covered tonneau.

All in all. I am very proud of what my father and I have accomplished over the past 5 years. Although it’s still a work in progress, I already get quite a few head turns around town.

The total cost of repairs and modifications to date is about $6000. My Dad and I shared in some great father-son moments during the countless hours of sweat and bloody knuckles during this project. I learned a great deal and hope to eventually pass that new found knowledge onto my own son or daughter some day. In hindsight, there were some things that I’d probably do differently if I was to do this over again but that’ll be another day and different truck.

Thanks to LMC for providing the one-stop shopping location for all those hard to find pieces at a reasonable price.