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So, sort of accidently drove to dallas/Fort Worth this week, and well, this followed me home.

Just kidding.
This is the 1946 Chevy Fleemaster Sharons father bought brand new off the lot in 1946. Theres a whole lot of family history with this car, but Lets just cut back to the year 2000. Sharons Mother was tired of seeing this jalopy taking up space in the driveway, and as a present to her, Sharon and I decided we'd drag it with us home to Antioch and restore it.



At this point in time, it had been worked on by the kids in the 70's who had yanked the engine out for 'reasons' but never got it put back in. They for some reason had stuffed the inoperable engine in the trunk.
Well, I worked on it pretty good for a few years. Took the body off, had it dipped,stripped, primered, I'd cleaned up the frame, got brakes working, found a working 6cyl engine for it and painted the frame and the bottom of the body, but never really got it running. We moved to Reno in 2006 and we dragged the Chevy up to reno with us and there I completely stalled out on the project.
Around 2017 Sharon was channeling her mom and got tired of seeing the Chevy sitting in the driveway. Her brother had just retired and had restored a chevelle and though the Chevy would be a good project for him to work on. So he drove up from DFW and dragged the chevy back with him. I will admit I had mixed emotions at that time, but I knew in my heart it was the right thing to do as he had probably been the one that wanted to restore it back in the day and hot rod it up a bit.
Well, Life will do things as life will, and Eric was tragically killed in 2022. He and his wife were traveling from Texas to their vacation home in Michigan. They were stopped on a freeway at some sort of congestion when a drug addict felon driving at a high rate of speed slammed into the back of their car. We had a celebration of Life for Eric last year in Barstow (Did I mention that Sharons dad had worked for the railroad in Barstow and that was where the car was originally) and Eric's wife Teresa suggested I take on the project if finishing up the Chevy. The intention is that I will get it running, and at some point we will pass it on to one of Sharon's nephews who we hope will have some interest in it.
Eric had done a lot of work to it, installing a new modern front end, steering, small block v8, automatic transmission, lowered it, etc. He did a great job of painting it and putting in some new seats and upholstery.
It's not quite 100% done yet and I was told he never really got it to the point where it was driveable, so that's my task. I need to take it the rest of the way.
The good news is that there's no body work required or painting. I just need to figure out what the punch list is. He left behind a stack of papers and receipts, and perhaps even a diary of what he had worked on and when. Hopefully I will get that and be able to dig into things a bit more.
Well, Guess I need to get busy and get some sort of garage built this summer to store it in. In the meantime, I'll rig up a temporary structure to protect it. Once I get the garage built I'll be able to start working on it this fall/winter.
Some metrics on the trip I just took. I left Monday morning at 7:30am and got back on Thursday evening at 7:30pm My apologies to Don and Vaughn for not getting in touch and working out a meetup, but I was just kind of in the mood to get the whole trip over with.
It was 3337 miles, 4 days, 84 hours there and back.
266.72 gallons of fuel at an average cost of $3.76 per gallon for a $1,002 total.
Average mpg unloaded was 14 with the empty trailer. With the trailer loaded I had an mpg of 9.5.
12.51 mpg average for the entire trip.
Not bad for a 24 year old pickup truck. I had installed a new Head unit in it that ran Android auto that really helped with navigation for the trip, as well as some TPMS sensors to monitor tire pressure in all of the wheels. For someone who seems to enjoy worrying about things, those 2 items were vital to my mental health during the rip.
So there it is. This will be a bit of a project, but it's so close to being complete, I don't anticipate too many issues.


Just kidding.
This is the 1946 Chevy Fleemaster Sharons father bought brand new off the lot in 1946. Theres a whole lot of family history with this car, but Lets just cut back to the year 2000. Sharons Mother was tired of seeing this jalopy taking up space in the driveway, and as a present to her, Sharon and I decided we'd drag it with us home to Antioch and restore it.



At this point in time, it had been worked on by the kids in the 70's who had yanked the engine out for 'reasons' but never got it put back in. They for some reason had stuffed the inoperable engine in the trunk.
Well, I worked on it pretty good for a few years. Took the body off, had it dipped,stripped, primered, I'd cleaned up the frame, got brakes working, found a working 6cyl engine for it and painted the frame and the bottom of the body, but never really got it running. We moved to Reno in 2006 and we dragged the Chevy up to reno with us and there I completely stalled out on the project.
Around 2017 Sharon was channeling her mom and got tired of seeing the Chevy sitting in the driveway. Her brother had just retired and had restored a chevelle and though the Chevy would be a good project for him to work on. So he drove up from DFW and dragged the chevy back with him. I will admit I had mixed emotions at that time, but I knew in my heart it was the right thing to do as he had probably been the one that wanted to restore it back in the day and hot rod it up a bit.
Well, Life will do things as life will, and Eric was tragically killed in 2022. He and his wife were traveling from Texas to their vacation home in Michigan. They were stopped on a freeway at some sort of congestion when a drug addict felon driving at a high rate of speed slammed into the back of their car. We had a celebration of Life for Eric last year in Barstow (Did I mention that Sharons dad had worked for the railroad in Barstow and that was where the car was originally) and Eric's wife Teresa suggested I take on the project if finishing up the Chevy. The intention is that I will get it running, and at some point we will pass it on to one of Sharon's nephews who we hope will have some interest in it.
Eric had done a lot of work to it, installing a new modern front end, steering, small block v8, automatic transmission, lowered it, etc. He did a great job of painting it and putting in some new seats and upholstery.
It's not quite 100% done yet and I was told he never really got it to the point where it was driveable, so that's my task. I need to take it the rest of the way.
The good news is that there's no body work required or painting. I just need to figure out what the punch list is. He left behind a stack of papers and receipts, and perhaps even a diary of what he had worked on and when. Hopefully I will get that and be able to dig into things a bit more.
Well, Guess I need to get busy and get some sort of garage built this summer to store it in. In the meantime, I'll rig up a temporary structure to protect it. Once I get the garage built I'll be able to start working on it this fall/winter.
Some metrics on the trip I just took. I left Monday morning at 7:30am and got back on Thursday evening at 7:30pm My apologies to Don and Vaughn for not getting in touch and working out a meetup, but I was just kind of in the mood to get the whole trip over with.
It was 3337 miles, 4 days, 84 hours there and back.
266.72 gallons of fuel at an average cost of $3.76 per gallon for a $1,002 total.
Average mpg unloaded was 14 with the empty trailer. With the trailer loaded I had an mpg of 9.5.
12.51 mpg average for the entire trip.
Not bad for a 24 year old pickup truck. I had installed a new Head unit in it that ran Android auto that really helped with navigation for the trip, as well as some TPMS sensors to monitor tire pressure in all of the wheels. For someone who seems to enjoy worrying about things, those 2 items were vital to my mental health during the rip.
So there it is. This will be a bit of a project, but it's so close to being complete, I don't anticipate too many issues.
