1949 Chevy Pick Up Custom

OK, so we all mostly drive late model vehicles for our daily stuff, and keep the vintage stuff for special. Well, what if you could do both? You can! We do it all the time and we absolutely love it. If you could have a brand new restored ’49 Chevy Truck, but all the power and comfort of new, that wouldn’t be too bad!

So the client calls up and has a ’49 Chevy that she wants to work better. It starts off with wiper issues, heat issues, the windows don’t work well, and the doors don’t lock. She’s in Colorado Springs, but we don’t mind. We like skiing anyhow, so we killed two birds with one stone.

Once the vehicle gets here, the client becomes more and more comfortable, and asks more and more questions. What about power disc brakes on her ’49 Chevy Truck? What about going highway speed…in snow…with a real defroster? So we started talking about the ultimate woodsy, vintage commuter.

We settled on a late model Chevy ¾ ton pickup chassis with a 6L engine, automatic. You can see from the photos a couple of unusual things we did, if anything about this project was usual enough to distinguish from the unusual part! We adapted 1 ton wheels for the look she liked from the vintage truck she had, for starters. And we also maintained all of the original truck creature functions; cruise, power steering, power brakes, ABS, intermittent electric wipers, tilt column… Cool huh?

The client is a horse person, so this truck has to haul. We maintained the tow/haul feature of the late model truck, and built the gooseneck ball into a custom wood bed. Oh, did you notice the toolboxes mounted under the bed? What fun is it to go to the grocery store unless you can bring all of your dogs in the cab and not have your groceries freeze! So the boxes are heated! Seriously, there are auxiliary heaters in the two toolboxes with controls inside the cab.

The original dash didn’t have enough room for serious heat and defrost, so we installed an auxiliary heater behind the seats, too. One of those big honkers you see for cab heat in a dozer, front end loader, or school bus.

So now she can pile the dogs in, keep the groceries warm, fill the bed full of hay, hitch up the horse trailer and blast through the Colorado wilds in a Restored, modern, 1949 Chevrolet Pickup!