So over the past couple weeks I’ve taken a dive into the history of my old pickup. It started when I was finally able to open the glovebox to see what’s inside. The latch for it has been broken the entire time I’ve owned it, and the prior owner who’s a friend of mine, so it was like opening a time capsule with no knowledge as to what’s inside. I didn’t want to damage it any more than it currently is either, so that’s why I’ve taken so long to do it.
Anyways, let’s get to the juicy stuff! Cracked her open and found all the original paperwork, owners manual, service records from 1982 to 1991, and the original owners very detailed book of maintenance, mileage, and fuel economy. The original owner had it from 82-91 and in that time he put right at 500,000 miles on it! He kept records of when he adjusted the carburetor, changed filters, fluids, tires, average fuel economy, and where he travelled. That is certainly one amazing find for sure!
In 91 he sold it to the second owner, who I also know. He owned it from 91 until 2010. He used it in the beginning to drive back and fourth to work and the beach, but he didn’t record anything like the original owner. He did say though that he tripped the odometer over twice in that time, once shortly after he bought it and another a while later.
The third owner is a close friend of mine. In 2010 he bought it and used it to drive to work only, but he drives about 60 miles a day. He tripped the odometer once. No records were kept on anything, but he did just basic maintenance.
So now it comes to my part of the story. I bought the truck in September 2019. The odometer currently reads just over 47,000, but given the information I have it’s actual mileage is 747,000! I’ve had to replace just about the entire ignition system. The only thing I haven’t replaced is the actual distributor, but the module and harness, cap and rotor, wires, coil, and plugs I replaced. I also replaced the original radio (I still have the original it just doesn’t work), speakers, installed a tach, oil pressure gauge, and another coolant temperature gauge, and I just replaced the wiper motor with one out of a 1994 Mighty Max that I had to modify to work. I average about 20 mpg from the old 2.0 4 speed and I put nearly 70 miles a day on her. Surprisingly I get a lot of attention in it too. I’m always having people give me thumbs up or rolling their windows down to tell me it’s an awesome looking truck and that they love my bumper stickers.
I have no plans on selling it. I want to ride it out as far as it’ll go and then when the engine decides to finally give up I plan on swapping in a BMW K1200 motorcycle engine into it. Something about seeing a truck like this driving and hitting 12k RPM’s just seems way too cool to not do lol.
Thanks for reading this! Hope you all have a great day and if you want drop your story for me to read below!
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