Teaching Kids The Right Way

I have been a a huge square body fan since I was a kid working on my dads many blazers. As an adult, the lessons I learned working on cars and trucks have benefited me in so many ways. I wanted to pass along that same love of “wrenching” to my son, as I feel that this gives kids an advantage in life, developing at a young age the know how to work on things. My son quickly developed a love for “garage time”, many evenings spent working on our daily drivers, as well as other friends and family’s cars. We decided to start a new project shortly after I sold my 78 GMC Jimmy to scrape up the funds to buy a house.

While selling my Jimmy I was sad, I looked at is the opportunity to start a new father son project. We found a 1974 K5 that was sitting in a field for over 20 years. While it was in bad shape, it was the first that was 100% complete and had a clean title from the original owner. We began the year down and sadly found a lot of hidden rust, and a few rats, lol yes rats! We found a 78 donor truck for parts and the build was back on track. With much welding and hammering, grinding, and sanding we had a perfect body. We then pillaged a 1980 3/4 ton suburban for 3/4 ton axles and a 80s model military truck for trans and transfer case.

My son Landon and I really wanted to say we “did it all”. So we found old fenders and began practicing painting with base coat clear coat paints. Not to shabby for a 8 year old and a first time painter dad. Looking back on the build over the 2 year it took buying and selling parts to work out the cash to keep buying more parts, it’s a sense of pride to drive up to a show or parking lot and hear people say “Nice Truck”, and watching my now 9 year old smile and say my dad and I built that. I hope it’s a lasting impression on him the way it was for me with my father. Thx for the years of parts LMC.