The story on it is that I first came into contact with it about 2012ish. It was bought by one of the installers at my work from someone who had cobbled it together from a few different trucks. The truck cab was originally blue with blue interior and the bed was red. It was then sold to a different coworker and that is who I got it from. The second coworker retired from here a couple of years ago, although we keep in touch, as I’ve known him for roughly 20 years. He has been battling cancer for the past six or seven years, and now it is pretty much the terminal. He called me up right before Thanksgiving and told me he wanted to work out a deal for me to get this truck. He absolutely would not take any money for it, and said that I have helped him way too much for him to charge me for it. He said if I would take it he wanted me to have it and for me to come pick it up as he knows my affinity for Datsuns & Nissans. It has needed work on the transmission and he has gotten to the point where he did not want to work on it and didn’t feel like he would ever get to it. After it sitting on jackstands for two years at his house I went down there one day right before Christmas and talk to him for a little while, then we threw a fresh battery in it, and it fired up. I drove it home and on the way it rattled fiercely and when I’d shift into fifth gear It rattled even worse, sounding like it was going to come apart. What I’m thinking is the throwout bearing is bad. It’s possible that it’s something else I guess, but I’m gonna start with that when I start looking into it. The only thing I’ve done at this point is hit it with the pressure washer. He had lost the title somewhere at his house so we have a replacement title applied for, and I don’t really want to do anything to it until I get the title back & I can get it switched over into my name.
While I was trying to tell him that I wanted to pay him for it he also told me he wanted to give me the 720 that his son has. It’s an ‘83 & has the same engine and transmission in it but the body is pretty much shot. So, me and another friend went and picked up the 720 and hauled it back to my friends house about a week after we went and picked up the hardbody. Which you can see in the pictures below. The plan now is for me to keep the hardbody and just use it as a knock around truck, firewood hauler, mulch from Lowe’s grabber, scrap metal hauler, and more than likely a daily driver. Basically just a truck. The 720 will stay with my buddy that helped me get both of them, (which coincidentally I’ve known for 17 or so years and is the guy that took the place at work of the guy I got the truck from). I’ll be taking the engine, trans, and rear end out of the 720 and storing them at my house and he’s going to take the body and put it on a K5 Blazer frame, that’s the plan anyway. At any rate, I need to figure out how to get the mice out of the truck as of now. Obviously something hauled the mouse trap off to somewhere other than where I left it in the truck. After I get the title back I plan on sliding the transmission back to check out the throwout bearing. If that’s not the problem then I have the transmission from the 720. While I’m in there I may just go ahead and change the clutch and all, even though Dave told me he did that right before he quit driving it. I couldn’t imagine them changing the clutch and not the throwout bearing but we will see. Anyways, Some of y’all may remember this truck from the thread on here of “jobs you do for free” or something like that, where I put bucket seats in this truck for him a handful of years ago. I’ve also tinkered with some of the wiring for him to get the lights working again and stuff like that, which probably means I’ll have to redo my work eventually. It’s sort of new territory for me as I’ve never had a vehicle with a NAPS-Z engine before.
TL:DR,
Free truck, needs work, repair and drive, doing minor upgrades as I go.
