Saturday, July 10, 2021

in the family for 84 years, 50 of those were in a carport disassembled with the parts in the basement, but Harry Lubyk's sons got around to restoring their dad's 32 model B Ford truck, that he first rode in the back of when he was 6. That was 1942


Jim Franks, Harry’s mother’s brother, bought the four-year-old 1932 Ford pickup truck from a teacher in 1936, the year Harry was born.

Uncle Jim had stake sides on the truck that he used to haul pigs and cattle over 23 miles of dirt and gravel roads to the slaughterhouse in Prince Albert. “I remember riding in the truck in 1942 when I was six years old,” Harry says.

Uncle Jim was struck by lightning in 1958 and never drove again. The truck sat in a garage on the Saskatchewan farm with 1959  license plates on it until Harry bought it for $1,000 a decade later.

Harry had left his family’s farm at the age of 17 and would be around cars for all his working life. He hauled new cars between Windsor, Ontario and Vancouver for 15 years as an owner-operator, then sold cars for at a Vancouver Chevrolet dealership for 25 years.

Harry trailered Uncle Jim’s 1932 Ford pickup truck back to Vancouver in 1969 and, after cleaning the gas tank and other work, got it running.

Harry’s son Kirk took the truck apart in 1975 with the intention of restoring it. That got sidetracked and the truck body sat in a carport with the parts stored in the basement for nearly 50 years.

But Kirk recently took the truck in pieces home to Kelowna in 2018 to give it a complete restoration with help from high school friend and fellow mechanic Wayne Hatcher.

When the restoration was done, Kirk and Ken conspired to arrange for their father to visit Kirk in Kelowna. The ‘big reveal’ occurred when the restored truck pulled up in front of the house. It was a complete surprise to Harry who didn’t think he would ever see the truck again. It was restored to better-than-new condition.

https://driving.ca/column/collector-classics/collector-classics-1932-ford-model-b-pickup

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