1951 Alaska Road Commission 3100 - A restoration saga (2024)

1951 Alaska Road Commission 3100 - A restoration saga

Eagle River, Alaska

This saga begins in March of 2015 with my son-in-law, who lives in Juneau, sending me a link to a Craigslist ad for a 1951 Chevy pickup that was originally owned by the Alaska Road Commission, a Federal agency charged with developing roads in Alaska that traces it's roots to 1905. For those interested HERE's [en.wikipedia.org] the wikipedia article about the ARC. I had always liked the style since my dad’s plumbing shop truck was a 1951 GMC ¾ ton, and I worked for him in summers when I was going to high school and college. Picture #1.

Since I was nearing retirement I needed a project to work on so as not to annoy my wife too much hanging out at home. Don’t remind her about how she wound up losing her garage - she’s still not happy about it. But maybe I can blame that on my son-in-law.

So I gathered up a buddy and we drove about 50 miles north of Anchorage to look at it. The thing that sold me on a restoration as opposed to modifying it was the brass label screwed to the valve cover indicating that it had a short block installed in 1953. Since it was a fleet truck, it must have been rode hard and put away wet. The most recent registration was from 1982, and it was pretty complete, although a rust bucket, with the front floor gone, along with cab supports. The cowl had been kinked where the fenders bolted on, so the cowl panels needed replacement. The right front fender was bent up and eventually deemed unrestorable. It was painted blue with LOTS of the original Orange showing through, and had a white top on the cab with some stupid looking mickey mouse ear turn signal lights on top. I made the guy an offer a bit below his asking price, and he agreed. We agreed that I would pick it up within a couple weeks. I conned a co-worker into borrowing his dad’s tilt trailer with winch, asked another buddy if I could keep it at his place for a while and we picked it up.

Re: 1951 Alaska Road Commission 3100 - A restoration saga

klhansen#1550466Mon Jun 24 2024 05:20 AM

Eagle River, Alaska

April 2015- THE BED

The first order of business was working on the bed, which needed some serious repair, with the wood being totally rotten . I took my O/A torch out and got to work, cutting the bolts attaching the bed to the frame, discovering that a previous owner had tried remounting it with some rubber donuts in place of the wood blocks. I removed the wood with my bare hands as well as some of the bed strips. The left side of the tailgate was only attached with the chain hook, the hinge mounting and stake pocket being rusted away, so that made removal pretty easy. The Barden style bumper needed to come off, then the rear fenders, using the “tighten the bolts till they snap“ removal method. The rear bed cross sill was cut with the torch near each side, and the front panel unbolted from the bedsides to get the pieces into my F250 for the trip home. Sections of 4” steel pipe had been welded to the frame arch above the rear axle in the fashion of overload coils, but they didn’t have much “give” so they got cut off. There was also a nasty looking home built upper shock mount that had to go, but that could wait.

Re: 1951 Alaska Road Commission 3100 - A restoration saga

klhansen#1550470Mon Jun 24 2024 12:02 PM

Upstate NY

Re: 1951 Alaska Road Commission 3100 - A restoration saga

klhansen#1550501Mon Jun 24 2024 06:23 PM

Eagle River, Alaska

Re: 1951 Alaska Road Commission 3100 - A restoration saga

klhansen#1550510Mon Jun 24 2024 07:02 PM

Eagle River, Alaska

June 2015 - Front Bed Panel

My first repair was to replace the lower section of the front bed panel. I had a sheet metal shop bend up a piece of metal to replace the lower 4 inches or so and welded that in. This was the first welding I had done with the new MIG machine I bought for the project. Being somewhat of a newbie at sheet metal welding, I managed to get it slightly warped and had to work at getting it flat again. I had to dig up some of my experience in restoring a Model A pickup back in the 1960's to get that done. Then I started tackling the bed sides that had rust thru spots along the angle strips and at the fender mounting holes. I noted the hole locations for the fender bolts and cut out the rusty metal and welded in new pieces of 16 gauge steel, then redrilled the holes. The right side rear stake pocket was trashed, so that got removed, also.

Re: 1951 Alaska Road Commission 3100 - A restoration saga

klhansen#1550511Mon Jun 24 2024 07:17 PM

Eagle River, Alaska

October 2015 - Repair of the rear fenders

After a time out for fishing season, next up was repair of the rear fenders. This was where I got a good education in metal forming. No patch panels existed for the rear section of the fenders where the Barden style bumper had been bolted. Both sides needed work there, especially the passenger side, which had hole in it that needed a patch of about 6” high by 18” long. The mounting flanges of both rear fenders had some serious rust also, so I cut replacements for the doublers used there. I bought a neat little drill mounted nibbler, which made cutting out the flange doublers pretty easy. Also used the nibbler to cut out areas that needed to be patched on the fenders. But I had to be careful to pick out the little crescent shaped bits of steel from my shoes to keep from incurring my wife’s wrath by tracking them into the house.

Re: 1951 Alaska Road Commission 3100 - A restoration saga

klhansen#1550835Thu Jun 27 2024 08:10 PM

Atlanta, Ga

Re: 1951 Alaska Road Commission 3100 - A restoration saga

klhansen#1550840Thu Jun 27 2024 08:19 PM

Eagle River, Alaska

Re: 1951 Alaska Road Commission 3100 - A restoration saga

klhansen#1550841Thu Jun 27 2024 08:29 PM

Atlanta, Ga