Dads shop was on the Fraser River in New Westminster BC, and next door was Benson Shipyards. Old man Bert Benson took a shine to me and said I could use a space near his marine ways to do any sand blasting I needed doing after hours. He even supplied the sand. So, as I dismantled the truck, I took the parts next door and got to work cleaning up the years of paint and grime. Since I could only work on it a night it took a long time and lots of sand. God bless old Bert.
In those days, I smoked a lot of pot, I won’t lie. I also drank like a fish and liked to party. But my project kept me out of trouble. I would smoke a fatty and start sand blasting. “Wow man, look at the colours…” lol
I had the truck stripped down to the frame rails. Cab, hood and fenders off, engine and transmissions out, rear ends out. Then came the stripping of all of the old air system and wiring, all coated in years of road grime and goo. Once the cab was sandblasted, I focused on it first. Lots of rust repair, learning how to weld doing it, lots of body work, lots of beer and pot consumed, and I was running out of money. As the old saying goes, “It takes big bucks to play with big trucks”. I had my day job delivering soap and I began to work weekends doing whatever I could, saving every penny for parts. I learned to horse trade and was amazed to find a lot of parts for free, all I had to do was remove them myself.
My dad, still doubting my sanity, nevertheless began to help fix the old Cummins. It was an NT-6-B 262 with Jake heads, and once we opened it up it wasn’t that bad. The rings were all shot though and it had a few stuck valves, but it was clean and all there. I think my old man was starting realize that I was serious because he was finding parts and working on it like it was any other engine he’d repaired. He found a very rare cam shaft, new pistons and liners, rebuilt the heads and then we magnafluxed the crankshaft and found out it was toast. Even though the engine was only 30 years old it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Then a little miracle. Right across the way from the shop was an old used marine parts place, and lo and behold, they had a new crankshaft! $400 later and we were back in business. We had the fuel pump rebuilt, dad found some rebuilt injectors, we found a turbocharger, and it started to take shape.
I installed it back in the chassis, hooked up some batteries and a temporary fuel tank, pulled the compression release valve, spun it over and it started almost immediately! Then it started to run away!! All I could do was scurry and slam a piece of plywood over the air intake to shut it down. If you don’t know, those engines absolutely cannot rev over 2200RPM, and I had no idea if I’d just wrecked it or not. I guess I should have waited until dad was there to supervise but I was too excited to wait. Thankfully, there was no damage, but boy was my dad pissed off at me.
The next Saturday we bled the fuel lines and started it up. It idled perfectly and was good to go.