How To Haul-Um

By Staff
Published on May 1, 1995
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Dan and his truck.
Dan and his truck.
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Three-quarter view, Bill Spaugh's truck.
Three-quarter view, Bill Spaugh's truck.
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Front view, ain't I proud!
Front view, ain't I proud!

190 Farmbrooke Lane Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27127

Bill Spaugh and I were sitting, out under his carport last year
kicking around some ideas about how to get engines in and out of
shows with the least amount of difficulty. As we were talking, Bill
was doodling on a scratch pad and he showed me a rough drawing of
an old C cab pickup truck. He said with all our junk and scrap we
could build a scale model of this truck and drive our engines right
into and out of shows with little effort.

Bill and another friend, Red Hinshaw, had previously built a
half-scale Jeep, and a couple of Surreys. I had three rear ends out
of some type military vehicle that were only eighteen inches wide,
and Bill had a couple of Cushman three-speed transmissions. We had
a variety of engines lying around, and so with these humble
beginnings we started. We decided to build two trucks side by side.
We thought about building three, but Red Hinshaw said he would help
us with ours and that way he could lay claim to a part of each
without building one for himself.

The chassis was made from three-inch channel with brace work
made out of whatever we could find (mostly one-inch square stock).
The front axle is made from a piece of square stock with a block
welded on each end that has been drilled and reamed and a bushing
pressed in and a half-inch hardened bolt for a king pin. The front
hubs are off an older model Nissan, and the wheels are spare
throwaways. We had to bore the wheel hubs out to fit the Nissan
hubs. The coil springs came off an industrial bottle capping
machine. We used a steering box out of an A model Ford. We used a
Briggs and Stratton 16 HP vanguard twin-cylinder engine in one
truck and a Cushman 16 HP horizontal bore engine in the other. The
transmissions are both Cushman three-speeds. The front end body
section of Bill’s truck is made completely from scratch and
mine uses the radiator cowl from an A model. We split the cowl two
ways, cut it to size and pieced it back together. The bed is made
of yellow pine with an oak stain and a coat of polyurethane. Bill
painted his bed grey and used red pinstripe. The rest of the body
is a figment of Bill Spaugh’s imagination and is made mostly of
half-inch square stock and black iron sheet metal.

We spent about eight months working on these trucks at night,
after work. Some nights we only worked an hour or two and other
nights we worked for several hours. Cold weather is about to set in
and we are thinking about starting another project.

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