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1963 Chevy Shortbed Fleetside Pickup

When we first moved to Maine in 1973, a 72 Capri was our only car. I picked this up for $150 as a beater and hauler for my home based office equipment business. It was a classic Maine rust bucket, with a couple of unique features: white bucket seats from a Ford Galaxie, and a Muncie 4-speed with Hurst shifter paired up to the original in-line 6! That thing drove beautifully! Christy, who was 4 when we got it, loved to do all the shifting anytime she rode with me, which was frequently. When the 52 project was nearing completion and the truck would no longer be needed, I sold the Muncie and shifter for what I had paid for the truck, and replaced it with the original type 3-speed. Its last trip was to pick up the engine & trans for the 52 at the junkyard, but it didn't quite make it - the clutch failed about 2 miles short. A friend just happened by, towed me to the junkyard with his pickup and hauled the engine and me home. The truck was still there several years later when I was browsing the junkyard. It served me very well!

Side note: Rust Bucket? If you rounded a corner at any kind of speed you could distinctly feel the relationship between the steering wheel and the seat change - the only thing holding the cab to the chassis was gravity!

The only 2 photos I can find of that beauty, and not much of it at that!

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This one is just like mine, but in MUCH better shape, and is 1 block from Christy's house in Belmont CA. (Pics taken 11-24-16.)

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(No, it doesn't have the white bucket seats and the Muncie 4-speed with the Hurst T-handle shifter that mine had.)

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Thanks to the magic of Google Earth Street View, we can all drive right by it!

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Even visible from the Google Earth satellite! (See arrow)

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