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A Closer Look at Goliath: Bangshift.com's New Project 1965 C50 TruckBy Brian Lohnes Posted 11/11/09

By now you have probably seen the photos of us dragging our handsome brute of a truck home from the woods of Maine. We've named the truck Goliath for obvious reasons. The thing is massive. After dragging it home we have not had a lot of time to spend with it so here's some backstory about the truck, how we got it, and what we plan to do with it.

The truck is a 1965 Chevy C50 (we previously called it a '65). It has a GVW of 16,000 pounds. It is equipped with a 292ci straight six, four speed SM420 transmission, and large by huge Eaton rear end. We did some VIN decoding and discovered that the truck was ordered as a cab and chassis. It was built at the Oakland, California General Motors factory.

According to the guy we bought it from, the truck was owned by the phone company for many years and had a boom lift mounted to a flatbed. We're on board with the phone company stuff but not sure about the lift part as there is no PTO on the truck and we'd think that a PTO would be necessary equipment to run the lift. Who knows, it may have been removed years ago.

The current green paint was applied long ago, and liberally, with a brush. From afar it's not too bad but up close it's tough looking. We're obviously not beauty show guys here but we'd love to try and remove the green paint to expose what should be bitchin' old phone company lettering underneath.

In its current state the truck runs, but has no brakes. There is a wet line in the rear of the truck which may be the root of all that, or it could be the Bendix Hydro-vac, an old school remote mounted brake booster, gone bad. We're hoping for the bad line, but are still planning on rebuilding the hydro-vac unit for safety's sake. The clutch adjustment rod is out of threads so a clutch will be in order, the floors are rotten badly and will need to be replaced, and some wiring issues need to be overcome, along with replacing at least one of the bedsides. All that being said, this is probably the most intact project we have ever dragged home and certainly the only one that has actually run from the get go.

We were turned onto the truck right here on BangShift.com as one of the members posted the ad in our Check it Out section. We saw it and didn't sleep for two weeks.

After making initial contact with the seller, we lost contact and although the truck was boring a hole in our brains we didn't know how to get back into touch with the seller. Then out of nowhere the seller got back with us, we made him a lowball offer and off we went to Maine to get the truck.

The plan right now is to get the brakes in working order so we can drive the C50 to the shop that is going to do the floor replacement for us. As all the home based work on this big boy will be done under a now leafless tree, we'll be farming some of the more important and skilled craftsmanship out to the professionals who work inside of actual structures. Wild stuff.

Here's a gallery of about thirty photos showing some of the more interesting points of the truck. Make sure to read the captions for more info and stay tuned because we're hoping to make actual progress on this thing, and soon!