Angus was a 1966 Chevrolet C10 pickup, the second such truck that had been in my family. The first was a battered red stepside my dad had when I was very small; I'm told I called it the Christmas truck, because though it was red, its original rear body had rusted out and been replaced with one taken from a green donor truck.

The second was the result of one of Dad's mysterious weekend day trips when I was in high school, this time shortly after I got my driver's license. We went to Brunswick one Friday, if memory serves, and there we found a man with a '66 long-wheelbase Fleetside for sale.

Fig. A Wikimedia photo by Corporal Clegg48

The truck above is in far better condition than the one we found that day. That one was at least three different colors, two of which were different shades of automotive primer (grey and "red", which is really a dull brown—think of Luke's landspeeder from the first Star Wars movie, a color choice I'm sure was not coincidental), with a few surviving patches of dark green faded to a matte finish. It all seemed to be there, though, which was fairly unusual for pickups of that age in Maine.

The owner, a guy about the same age as Dad, seemed eager to prove that the truck actually worked, so we all piled into the cab and headed out for a test ride. As we pulled out onto the main road, he declared cheerfully, "Tunes work!" and switched on the radio, demonstrating to his chagrin that the tunes did not, in fact, work. But never mind; who listens to AM radio, anyway? (Is AM commercial radio even still a thing? It was 30 years ago, but only in the sense that there were some stations whose owners seemed to have forgotten to turn them off.)

After the drive, which proved, if nothing else, that the steering equipment and the brakes worked, we conferred and decided, what the hell, let's get it. If memory serves me right, the guy wanted $600 for it, which was more money in 1989 than it is now, but still not a hell of a lot. Dad paid him in cash and asked directions to the town office, so we could buy a one-day transit plate to get it home on. "Ah hell, just take it with mine and mail 'em back to me when you get home," was the seller's reply.

(We did that, but it meant I had to drive the Oldsmobile back, because Dad figured he'd have better odds of not getting arrested if he got pulled over with someone else's plate on the truck than I would.)

At home, we had a closer look at the pickup and determined that it was—unusually for a transaction of that kind—exactly what we thought it was when we bought it: a shabby but complete 1966 C10 Fleetside long-bed, running, driving, and probably even capable of passing inspection if taken to a liberal enough garage. It basically needed three things to be fully serviceable: an oil change, a radio that worked, and a new seat. The first was easy.

The second was a little harder, but not much. The only really tricky part was figuring out how and where to mount the speakers. The radios in 1960s Chevrolets were all monaural, usually with the single speaker built into the dash right above them, but the cassette deck we had on hand (salvaged from a previous vehicle) had stereo outputs. Dad solved this problem by mounting a couple of small cabinet speakers (not intended for any automotive application) to the rear bulkhead, above and outboard of the corners of the rear window. Anybody much taller than we were would've had problems with that speaker positioning—score one for short dudes. :)

As for the third, we took the seat out, cut the ragged remains of the upholstery off it, and determined that the frame and springs were in decent shape, so we ripped all the ratty old stuffing out, gave the metal bits a wire brushing and some Rust-Oleum, and then made new padding for them out of a couple of athletic mats we bought at Ames (remember Ames?) for about $10 apiece, then covered that with one of those horse-blanket-style bench seat covers that were all the rage at the time. Worked a treat! Certainly no worse than the originals were when they were new.

I should note, for the younger members of the audience, that pickups were a different thing in the 1960s. Nowadays they're fashion vehicles, with interior fittings just as plush (if not plusher) than their contemporary passenger cars. In the '60s, pickups were for work. You could get them fairly fancy on the outside, but even those had interiors that were all business. In 1966, that meant bench seats with lap belts only and one (1) adjustable parameter, to wit: they could be moved forward or back about three inches. It meant metal dashboards with no padding at all. It meant heaters that did one and only one thing: blow some hot air into the cabin, either onto the floor or onto the windshield, but not both, and certainly not out of any namby-pamby dashboard vents. If you wanted to cool the interior, open the windows.

Power steering? No. Power brakes? No. Power anything at all? No.

(Speaking of brakes: drums all the way around. And only one master cylinder, so if it fails, you've just lost all four brakes, and you'd better hope the cable-operated handbrake is in good working order. I discovered that mine was, one day, when the line to the master cylinder failed and caused my next press of the pedal to do nothing other than deposit all the brake fluid on the ground. There is no other sensation in motoring quite so dismaying as when the brake pedal goes all the way to the floor without any perceptible effect on the speed of the car. For my money, even that floaty feeling you get when you realize you're hydroplaning isn't quite as much of a dolly zoom moment as that.)

Anyway, with those simple modifications in place, the truck was ready to enter service. It was, for reasons which now escape me, promptly dubbed "Angus the Wonder Truck".

Angus had, to borrow a phrase from a certain cars-focused YouTube Personality, many quirks and features.

For one: its original steering wheel was long gone, and had been replaced with a wood-and-chrome aftermarket one whose manufacturer probably envisioned it being used in a vehicle with more sporting pretensions. (There was a nearly identical, if smaller-diameter, one in the GTO, come to think of it.) Whoever installed it hadn't bothered to wire the horn button; instead, the horn could be sounded with a spring-loaded toggle switch(!) added to the under edge of the instrument panel, below the speedometer and connected to the old horn wires that used to run up the steering column. It had once been a nice wheel, with finger grooves and everything, but it was so old the varnish had entirely worn off it, so every time it rained and I drove with wet hands, little rolled-up fragments of wood rubbed off on my fingers.

Mechanically, Angus had some peculiar habits. It had a 250-cubic-inch straight-six engine, not an uncommon power plant in GM pickups of the era, which had sufficient power to haul the truck around, although presumably not with too much of a load on board. This engine was, however, quite... well-broken-in. Its most arresting feature was the fact that the piston faces were so covered with carbon that, once the truck had been running for any appreciable length of time, they would get hot enough that the engine didn't really need its spark plugs any more. This wasn't a problem while it was running, because it ran fine on the lowest-octane gasoline available and so the hot pistons didn't make it pre-detonate, but it meant that when you got where you were going and switched off the ignition, it would tend to sort of... keep running for a while. It would harrumph and grumble through four or five further revolutions, each taking a bit longer than the last, until finally the inertia of the cylinders that weren't firing any more would outweigh the impulse of the ones that were still going off, and the whole works would finally come to a halt with a huge, shuddering sigh. I got used to that, but some of my friends never did.

It also had that annoying design flaw shared by so many mid-century GM vehicles, the misplaced hanger bearing. The drive shaft to the rear wheels of most rear-drive, body-on-frame cars and trucks is supported in the middle by a large circular bearing suspended from the frame amidships. In a lot of GM's vehicles of the '50s and '60s, this bearing is in exactly the wrong place, where it is subjected to the maximum possible deflection forces in use. This means they wear out quite fast, and when they finally fail, they do it a) very suddenly and b) completely. You'll be driving along minding your own business, and then BANG WHUMPWHUMPWHUMPWHUMPWHUMP the drive shaft will be kinked at the universal joint in the middle and beating on the underside of the body with each revolution. This isn't very dangerous in the short term, at least not at any speed Angus was capable of, but it is extremely disconcerting.

Other fun features of Chevrolet pickups of that era: the fuel tank is behind the seat. Yes, that's what I said. Behind the seat. Inside the cab. In a hard enough corner, you can hear the gas sloshing around back there. Heck, if it's full enough and you go hard enough to the right, gas will come out of the filler cap, which is right behind the driver's door and has no backflow prevention device of any kind. I'm sure it's perfectly safe.

When we first got it, the truck had one of GM's old two-speed Powerglide automatic transmissions in it. This venerable relic of the motoring world was one of the first viable automatics, if not the first, fielded by General Motors, and even by 1966 it was getting pretty long in the tooth. Two gear ratios is not really enough for a motor vehicle, but particularly not for one with the RPM range of one of those old straight-six engines. Compounding the problem is that someone had installed a set of ridiculously short-ratio rear end gears at some point. All of this meant that with the Powerglide in high gear and the throttle wide open, going full-bore Cap'n-she-cannae-take-it, you'd be doing... oh... 45 miles per hour.

After a month or so of that, Dad decided to swap in the four-speed transmission out of the GTO (previously mentioned), since he'd determined that it wasn't original to the GTO anyway, and see if that helped the situation. It... didn't, particularly, since it turned out fourth on the four-speed and High on the Powerglide were practically the same ratio. It just meant shifting more often before hitting that 45-mph top end. It also meant Angus acquired two new oddities, one annoying, the other occasionally amusing.

The annoying one was that the clutch linkage would occasionally come apart. This is not immediately fatal, but it's very irritating, because it means you can't use the clutch any more. On the other hand, it provided valuable experience in a motoring survival skill, because it taught me that you can shift without a clutch, if you're careful and develop an ear for your engine speed. What you cannot do is ever quite stop, because you'll either stall or have to throw it into neutral, and getting it back in gear without the clutch is... quite a lot harder than switching between them.

(Eventually, we took out the four-speed and put in an almost-worn-out three-speed, which had the interesting if unintentional advantage that the gears were so worn you could slam shift it without doing it any further harm. Yes, you had to hold it in first gear with your hand to keep it from jumping back to neutral, but into each life some rain. :)

The amusing one was that, when we installed the floor shifter for the manual transmission, we left the lever and the PRNDL indicator for the automatic on the steering column. I think that was just because we couldn't be arsed to take the column apart to get them off, but it meant the lever was still there, and still worked, it just was no longer connected to anything mechanical. This confused people.

It particularly confused the guy who was tailgating me as I drove home from the Tastee Freez in the next town over one day, when I dropped the Powerglide lever into reverse. That had no mechanical effect at all, of course, but it made the truck's white backup lights come on. If you ever want to see someone perform a Panic Stop, find yourself a car that can do that and enjoy the show.

After a year or so, Dad decided that the three-color paint scheme was embarrassing. He had bought himself a giant industrial air compressor and a full set of automotive refinishing tools by then, so one weekend he decided he was going to sandblast the truck and repaint it. Which he did! In the process of doing the sandblasting, he discovered that the green we thought was the original color was actually about the fourth. At various points in its career, Angus had also been a different shade of green, blue, and what appeared to be school bus yellow.

When he went to repaint after sandblasting, Dad had some problems with his paint gun and had to send it back to the manufacturer for repairs. In the meantime (and, in retrospect, probably in a fit of pique), he undertook to paint the truck anyway. This he did with a very large number of rattle cans. Color choice: flat black. (I believe it was actually stove paint.) This predated such notoriously matte vehicles as the Lamborghini Sesto Elemento by many years.

What else? Oh, yes—Angus was banned from the driveway of my friend Joe's house, where we used to congregate to play BattleTech in the loft above the garage. It leaked a bit of oil, and after the first time it spent an evening out there while we played, his mother informed me that I would have to park it on the street so it wouldn't ruin her nice paved driveway.

Also, for one brief glorious weekend, Angus had the 350-horsepower Pontiac V8 out of the GTO in it, as Dad used it as the testbed for that engine when we finished rebuilding it. That was kind of epic... but those stupidly short rear-end gears meant it still wouldn't go faster than around 45 miles per hour. It sure made an amazing noise doing it, though.

(What was the owner who put in those rear-end gears trying to accomplish? Win drag races no more than 50 yards long? Tow very large trailers very slowly with far too little engine? The world will never know.)

Hilariously enough, I once drove Angus to Worcester and back, when I briefly moved back down there for the first time, the fall after my year at WPI. That was an ill-advised venture in many respects, so perhaps the very slow, extremely noisy ride (nine or so hours to make a trip that usually took around six) was a sort of built-in penance for my foolishness.

All the car stories I've related to date have had a sad ending. You may be gratified to learn that Angus the Wonder Truck's does not: it is, in fact, still in my possession. Well, technically it's in Dad's, since it's in a shed out back of his garage, but, still. In all the 25 or so years since it last ran, it's not been sold or scrapped. We're thinking of trying to get it back on the road this summer. If we do, I'll keep you posted.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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