Ramp Truck Reality Becomes a Nightmare

Ed
Update by Ed Higginbotham to the Ford F-350 Ramp Truck project car
Oct 7, 2015

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Cobra Automotive’s Curt Vogt tries in vain to keep the truck running while we sneak it through a neighbor’s property in order to get it up to the road.

Success… sort of. Now what do we do with a badly running truck, some 50 miles from a decent place to work on it?

Once the deal was made, we had to sober up and figure out how to get a 42-year-old truck running—it hadn’t run in years. We had to extract it from its resting place and then get it home to Florida from Connecticut.

Shipping was not an option since it would have cost more than we paid for the truck. We would need to prep the truck, make it safe, and drive it 1200 miles back to Daytona Beach, Florida. This would take time, money, mechanical work and a lot of luck.

When we really thought about what we had committed to do, our great deal was starting to look like a nightmare.

Our first step was to get the truck running and extracted. The truck was wedged into a small garage beneath a barn. Removal would require driving through a neighbor’s overgrown yard.

With the help of Cobra Automotive’s able crew, we were able to get fuel and spark to the old truck. And surprisingly, we did get the old girl running with just an hour’s work.

That‘s the good news. The bad news was that the truck had a bad exhaust leak, the clutch was stuck to the flywheel and the rear brakes were frozen—probably because of rusty brake shoes.

Still, we were able to limp it out of its resting place, and get it up onto the street. Because of carburetor problems, we were struggling to keep it running long enough to free the clutch. After repeatedly jerking the truck on and off the throttle, the clutch freed up.

The trip back to Cobra Automotive took nearly and hour. We were out of time and realized there was no way it would make it. Time to punt. We called a towing firm and they towed it safely to Cobra Automotive. We would come up with a new plan from there.

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Comments
patgizz
patgizz GRM+ Memberand PowerDork
10/7/15 1:24 p.m.

so when it becomes a reality you guys need to take lots of pics of the bed so i can build my own.

crxmike
crxmike Reader
10/7/15 1:49 p.m.

New plan....sell ramp truck to a faithful GRM subscriber in CT for $2600. ;-)

KyAllroad
KyAllroad SuperDork
10/7/15 1:50 p.m.

Sounds like an episode of Roadkill....

Harvey
Harvey GRM+ Memberand Dork
10/7/15 2:13 p.m.
KyAllroad wrote: Sounds like an episode of Roadkill....

Sounds like pretty much every episode of Roadkill.

Joe Gearin
Joe Gearin Associate Publisher
10/7/15 2:28 p.m.

Keep in mind kids, Tim has been undertaking wacky adventures like this waaaaay before there ever was a Roadkill show.

So I guess Roadkill episodes sound like GRM?

NOHOME
NOHOME UberDork
10/7/15 2:46 p.m.

If you plan to drive that thing home, I would start lining up the GRM reader rescue relay spots and making it a challenge to get between any two points on the route. I figure that about every 60 miles you should have some sort of support on the route either in front or behind.

I can safely propose such a thing because I will be 562 miles away in the wrong direction!

stuart in mn
stuart in mn PowerDork
10/7/15 3:09 p.m.
Joe Gearin wrote: Keep in mind kids, Tim has been undertaking wacky adventures like this waaaaay before there ever was a Roadkill show.

I suspect that if you compared the win/loss records of the two, GRM would come out on top here.

patgizz
patgizz GRM+ Memberand PowerDork
10/7/15 3:10 p.m.
Joe Gearin wrote: Keep in mind kids, Tim has been undertaking wacky adventures like this waaaaay before there ever was a Roadkill show. So I guess Roadkill episodes sound like GRM?

Or the story of my automotive life since age 12.

David S. Wallens
David S. Wallens Editorial Director
10/7/15 3:12 p.m.

Yeah, as far as Tim and Rennie road trips go, this one is still in the fairly tame category. Of course, they still haven't left New England....

Joe Gearin
Joe Gearin Associate Publisher
10/7/15 3:40 p.m.
David S. Wallens wrote: Yeah, as far as Tim and Rennie road trips go, this one is still in the fairly tame category. Of course, they still haven't left New England....

Yeah....it would be pretty hard to top the AE86 road-trip those two took---- they even had a few "adventures" in Tijuana---- although I'm not sure those stories were fit to print.

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