By Sam Barer

Sound Classics

You’ve seen it frequently in Craigslist and eBay advertisements: “mechanic owned”. No matter what the make, model or age of the vehicle, those two little words are supposed to evoke confidence in the quality and completeness of the service history.

The only problem is that if you ask most mechanics, they’ll tell you that mechanic-owned cars are usually in more dire need of past-due maintenance than most urban public schools. As the saying goes, a cobbler’s kids wear no shoes…and when it comes to a mechanic’s car, its brake shoes are probably down to the rivets.

The crux of the issue is that anyone who spends all day doing something for someone else doesn’t want to continue doing the same monotonous task for himself. I can understand, because I once tried doing oil changes on just four of my cars in one day and by the end of the afternoon I was ready to set myself on fire.

Despite all I’ve just shared, it didn’t stop me from jumping at the opportunity to buy a 1979 Chevy K10 pickup from a friend who is a professional mechanic. As fate would have it, he had purchased the truck from another mutual friend who is one of the best professional mechanics I know.

Continue reading "The Perils of Buying a "Mechanic Owned" Vehicle" »

By Sam Barer

Sound Classics

With the low-buck Maaco paint job done on the Sound Classics 1979 Chevy K10 project truck, it is time to turn our attention to finishing it all off with an interior upgrade. Let’s face it, the ripped-up Saddle Tan interior just isn’t going to cut it on a shiny black and silver 4X4.

In keeping with the guidelines set forth before the exterior restoration, the challenge remains to do this on the cheap-as-a-Trenton, NJ-hooker. Since there’s no budget for a professional upholsterer and I’ve never done any serious interior work in any of the previous Sound Classics projects, nobody is expecting a miracle.

Continue reading after the jump!

Continue reading "Interior Restoration Made So Cheap And Easy, Even A Journalist Can Do It!" »

By Sam Barer

Sound Classics

We’ve all heard the old standard “you get what you pay for.” Here at Sound Classics we’re using our 1979 Chevrolet K10 4X4 pickup as the guinea pig in testing if you can get more than you pay for with a cheap paint job—if you’re willing to do some prep work yourself.

The last installment detailed the four arm-wrecking days of sanding, Bondo, more sanding, priming, and more sanding on our 1979 Chevrolet K10 4X4 pickup. With this done it was time to hand it off to a cheap painter. Seeing an advertisement in the newspaper for a $199 special deal at Maaco in Lacey, we had our place.

As readers might recall, we already did a mock-up of how we wanted the truck to look. We printed out the “Sound Classics Virtual Paint Booth” (actually nothing more than a photo-chop) comp of the truck in black and silver and gave to the quote manager at Maaco.

Continue reading "The 1979 Chevy K10's New Paint" »

By Sam Barer

Sound Classics

The restoration process on the 1979 Chevy K10 has officially begun. If you read the last installment, you know I already Photochopped a picture to establish what I want it to look like (black and silver two-tone), but now it’s time to get off the computer, get out the tools and implement the game plan.

The plan is pretty simple — something I’ve heard hundreds of times from other collectors: “just do the prep work yourself and then have Maaco spray it.” The premise actually makes sense. Maaco employs people who day-in and day-out use a steady hand to spray in the same quality booth as the high-price shops. Where they usually fail is in skimping on the bodywork and prep. So to get the best of both worlds, the collector does all the body work and prep and Maaco sprays. Sure, they also use cheap paint, but how much worse can it possibly be than 1979 Chevy OEM?

Okay, considering I’ve really never done serious bodywork or prep, there is some doubt to the results. It will either come out with a great bang-for-the-buck exterior or it will suck worse than Matt LeBlanc’s Friends spin-off.

Continue reading after the jump!

Continue reading "The 1979 Chevy K10 Starts Its Striptease" »

By Sam Barer

Sound Classics

How could I refuse? I bet if you were in my shoes you wouldn’t have been able to walk away!

The long and short of it is that a friend of mine wanted to get rid of his 1979 Chevy K10 Silverado for about what I have into the tune-up parts on Sound Classics’ Infamous Craigslist Ferrari Dino 308 GT4 project. Despite having little room left for anything larger than Vern Troyer in the Sound Classics garage, I was like Angelina Jolie at an orphanage: I simply couldn’t say no.

The trump card is that Sound Classics is truckless. Ever since the POS 1998 Ford Expedition was pawned off to the dealer in 2006 when I got the new Toyota Avalon, all treks to acquire project cars have relied upon mooching off friends with rigs. Even my wife mentioned it was time to find a “good old truck”.

Continue reading after the jump!

Continue reading "Can You Have Too Many Collector Vehicles?" »