Thorunn Howatt
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Aug 08/01) - Twenty-five years ago a neglected and abandoned wreck of a truck caught Gord Piro's eye.
"It was sitting in the bush. Obviously it had been abandoned. It had holes cut in it. The hood was up. The radiator was gone. Somebody had stolen the horn," said Piro, who admits he saw something in the old heap and just couldn't let it die. Now, a beautiful cherry red -- the 1954 original colour, with a white top -- the vehicle sparkles brightly in the florescent lights of a Kam Lake garage.
He rescued the 1954 Ford F100 panel delivery truck from a burial at the city dump, took it home, and there it sat covered by a tarp for the next 10 years.
"I thought, 'Geez, that truck looks too good to bury. It wasn't meant to die.'"
The busy Piro eventually became tired of looking at the cloaked mound and decided it was time to get at it and get rid of it.
So he and a handful of friends started a 15-year restoration.
Piro wasn't new to old autos though. The first vehicle he owned, back when he was in high school, was a 1940 Ford.
He started the fixup by disassembling the whole vehicle.
"We took the body off the chassis and sandblasted it. A frame-off restoration, rebuilt from bottom to top."
The truck was outfitted with new brakes, wiring, paint and inside wood panelling.
"These old trucks are easy to fit," he said but adding that new chrome is harder to get.
All the parts are original to a truck of that era except for the fancy wheels and tinted glass in the rear doors.
"The radiator was the hardest part to find -- I had to get it from California," he said.
The rad cost him a whopping $900 -- not much less than the original price tag of the truck back in 1954.
Piro guessed that cost would have been about $1,700. Ford only made the panel-truck's body style for three years so refitting can be tricky.
Piro, while shining the chrome and showing off the original flat-head V8 engine -- is unsure of the fate of the beautiful new-old truck.
"I think I'm going to sell it," he said.
