Here is my story on my 1953 Chevy 3100 truck “Bonnie the Depressarado” I named her that because she looked like a Bonnie but was also depressing with all the work I thought I already paid for that we had to re-do. To start Chris and I just finished building me a 1972 K10 Chevy truck as a daily driver. We ended up making it to nice and I finally decided that I get anxiety driving it around so I wanted to sell it and get me a hot rod/ with Patina paint so that if I scratched it I would not be bothered by it. I ended up looking for the right hot rod for a few months. I came across this old blue Chevy truck that according to the selling ad had everything I already wanted done to a truck. I told Chris this is the one, he did some talking with the guy and then the guy called back and said someone already gave him a deposit. Therefore, I was disappointed and kept looking. (This should have been my first sign it was a real pile of junk.)A few weeks later, I saw the truck for sale again and I had to make a deal and get the truck the guy talked it up so big that we made the deal, Chris drove all the way to Tennessee, bought the truck for $19,500.00, and brought it back to New Mexico. I was very excited to get it, just drive it, and not have to build it. That obviously did not happen. As you can see from the pictures, the outside of the truck looked great…. I am guessing thanks to Photoshop. We get the truck home and off the trailer which was a chore because they had the truck so lowered that it scraped on gravel and didn’t have anything but heated up coil springs with some added spacers. We tried taking it for a drive and the front drivers side brake caliper was hanging up so we fixed it and tried to drive it and it had a bad miss, so we started investigating and that was when the “shitshow” started. We put it up on the lift and realized how crappy of a build this was from the beginning. The frame was an S10 frame swap done in a very unsafe manner that if I tried to re-sell the truck I would not be able to have a clear conscience. Therefore, what I am saying is I got screwed. Lol We started to add up everything that needed repaired or replaced frame wise and by the time we got what I needed suspension wise and rear-end wise to eliminate the front and rear wheel spacers that were up to 4” on the rear. It was my cheapest option to replace the chassis with the TCI chassis, which was around $14,000 (for most of what I wanted). We ended up ordering the coil overs and 4-link and new 9” rear end with 3.73 gears. We went ahead and started tearing the truck apart did tons of rust repair and rebuilt the motor because as you can see from the pictures they did not like to do any kind of maintenance on it. The welding on the frame was a total disaster. The brake booster blew my mind when I took it out. You can see that in the picture as well. I have pictures attached of the before and the stuff we managed to fix and replace and then the some after’s. It is still obviously a work in progress but it is slowly coming along. I still have not financially recovered from this. Lol That is why it’s taking a little longer. I’m sure I have missed something so if you have any questions please just let me know. I will have to send a separate email of more pictures. - Erica Martin
