In front of Sunny’s Bar in very hip Red Hook (NYC) sits this splendid survivor ’53 Willys pickup obviously still doing the work it was designed to do: haul loads. Triborough has been documenting its comings and goings with a terrific set of pictures at the Cohort, so lets pick a few and see what the cargo consists of.
The most common load is garbage bags; mixed in this case.
Or all black, as on this day.
Fresh bales of straw…
And sprouting ones. Are they the same ones a month or so later?
And no load at all. Few things I like more than seeing old trucks still hauling the goods.
Here’s my CC on an old Willys Pickup in my neighborhood also still hauling loads
There is an almost identical but lifted one that I see around town once and while.
I agree that it’s nice to see oldies still hauling the goods, but that thing isn’t fit for service with the sag in the middle and the ancient bias-plys it’s rolling on.
I don’t see any sag in the middle, and I sincerely doubt there is one. I think it may be the angle it’s sitting that might make you think it has a sag.
Someone restore this beautiful thing before it splits in half from the rustmonster
My Dad used to tell a story of how he sold an old 40’s Ford that sagged and had a welded frame. The guy that bought it broke it in half going over railroad tracks. This was in Erie, Pa. right after the war as cars were hard to get. I’m sure it was a total rustbucket. He said he sold it for a good price (don’t remember how much). He was working in a garage in the grease pit when the buyer came looking for him, said he froze his ass off waiting for the guy to leave!
There’s definite dag in the middle. Under the cowl. Not necessarily rust, it may have taken a jump and bent the frame. It makes a cool street/yard ornament, but I’d hate to drive that beast very far.
It is definitely swaybacked. Surprised it still passes NY inspection.
Cost might be prohibitive but if you can straighten frames after an accident I am pretty sure an old unit like this can be straightened. Too good to park.
Most of the time I find it to be cheaper to fix than replace.
Saw these on the Cohort and hoped they’d get a full audience. Very cool.
This looks pretty good for old vehicle in New York standards. I can still see the edges of the fenders, the bottoms of the doors, and the sides of the bed are mostly intact. Chevy C/Ks often get more swayback and rustier than this. As long as the frame is mostly intact or the rust is not uber intense New York does not care. However, some shops are more strict than others and I saw plenty of rustier vehicles when I lived there. If the vehicle is pre-1996 then to hell with emissions to boot!
Why are 98% of old pickups either red or this color of green? Not complaining, just observing. My 63 F100 was this color too.
The sway could also be soft front cab mounts, a problem on older Ford pickups in the rustbelt.
Downstate NY vehicles don’t get rusty as quickly as Upstaters, if only because anything more than 3-4 inches and many people just don’t take their cars out.
The frame certainly is sagged, it’s visible in all three side profile pictures. 61 years of heavy loads will do that.
Perhaps the three on the tree and clutch pedal are a theft deterrent in this modern day and age…
I was going to add that in the first pic, the hood appears slightly raised, skewing the sight angles, esp with a rear end that seems higher than the front.
But then I scratched my head and decided that once the running boards rotted off, the chassis probably lost 50% of its structural integrity. Next month after the snow melts, the truck will be folded up like a reverse wallet, with green on the outside and brown on the inside.
Ah, the Red Hook Willys. I took my Baja out to see it a while back and managed to make off with this photo. The owners at the bar were very nice, too.
http://autofrei.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/p1052133a.jpg
My mother-in-law told me about a ’49 Willys pickup for sale just up the road from her, so I went to take a look at it. It looked fairly solid, but for three grand it needed a lot of work, so it’s another car on the “cars I didn’t buy” list.
Still fun to see this one running still around, even if it has seen better days.