1952 Fargo

Owner: Brenda Spanier

I've always liked old trucks, it didn’t really matter what make they were, there was something about the way they looked that always appealed to me.

When it came time to actually get serious about finding an old truck I figured that since my husband, Walt and I are active members of Northern Mopars that maybe I should restrict my search to just that, an old Mopar truck. Just to make things more interesting & unique, (as I was to find out later, much harder, expensive and frustrating) I decided that the truck should be Canadian, so I centered my search for a Fargo.

Initially I was looking for a ‘59, the year I was born, but I didn’t really care much for the style of the rear fenders when I actually saw one. So with fewer restrictions we went out looking for the right truck for us.

Well, we found some Fargo’s, although there was something that we liked about some of them there was also things that were bad, such as the ‘49 farm truck down by Foremost at an auction, it was an original truck, owned by the same family, 3-speed on the floor, however it need a lot of body work including removing a gawd awful wrap around rear bumper, new windshield glass, and that it sold for $3,300.00, of course there was the small matter of getting it home. Then there was a Chrysler dealership that had a ‘51 that at first looked okay but closer inspection revealed that the paint was slapped on over grease, it had a definite lean to it and the tailgate with the stamped FARGO logo had been replaced with a piece of wood that had FARGO painted on it. The final straw was that although they were licensed to do an out-of-province inspection they refused to do it. Even though they ‘reduced" the price, to $8,500 from $10 K, that one was real easy to walk away from.

Getting tired of running around all over the place we decided it might be easier to put an ad out in the local papers.

My ad read, "Wanted – 1950’s Fargo ½ ton, short box, step side, in good running condition, good body. We got a couple of responses, but we ruled out a couple when found out they needed more body work and/or paint, we ended up going to see only one. That was the beginning of Walt and my self’s introduction to the ups and downs of having a pre-owned antique vehicle.

To say that we had been spoilt when it comes to antique vehicles would be an understatement, as Walt and his original ’70 Charger R/T have been together from day one. This was turning out to be a "LEARNING EXPERIENCE" and one where we asked ourselves maybe we should have walked away. Actually we asked ourselves that many times.

On Tuesday April 27, 2004 we got our first glimpse of the 1952 Fargo truck, that we eventually would buy. The truck had just been ‘driven’ down to Calgary from storage in Olds that day by it’s owner, in fact it had only made it to Crossfield when the fuel pump went, it was towed the rest of the way.

In spite of not being able to hear it run or test drive it we liked the way it looked, the older restoration was holding up okay. Although the upholstery and headliner aren’t anything resembling the materials of the time, the interior looked well, with stock seats and dash, the paint and body were also in relatively good condition. At the time the fact that the emergency brake assembly was missing didn’t seem to be a big deal, a 3-speed on the tree we figured we could just put it in first gear to keep it from rolling when parked.

She was and had been for sometime registered in Alberta which meant we didn’t need to get an out-of-province vehicle inspection, this was another selling point for us as her VIN was 5112-577 not anything close to what it should be.

It looked good enough to take to a show with some cleaning and polishing. The crappy hand fabricated running boards and tacky plywood in the box with aluminium strips screwed on top would eventually have to be replaced but that was to be down the road, soon I would find out much further down the road than I envisioned.

The engine compartment and flathead six needed to be cleaned up quite a bit but considering the truck was 52 years old we thought she looked not great but not terrible either.

The terms were settled with the owner, $5.200 after he fixed the fuel pump and he would drive it out to our place. The latter part proves to be good for us and not so good for the owner. Thursday, April 29 he phones and said he’d be bringing it out late that afternoon or early evening, the manual fuel pump had been replace with an electronic one and the truck is running fine. 8 pm rolls around and we get the call the fuel pump went again and the truck has quit at Sarcee trail (about ½ way between his place and ours) what should they do?

We tell them get a tow truck and bring her out here, in the morning we will take her down to our mechanic in Cochrane, Bill Mellor, owner-operator of Valley Automotive and also long-time friend.

Bill orders the parts to replace the fuel pump and anything else he needs to put it back together, while he is at it we figure he may as do other maintenance and check out other things to make sure it is road worthy.

That’s when he discovered pieces (chunks) of metal in the oil pan, one of the pieces is the arm from the fuel pump but we don’t know what the rest of them are… yet!

This is the beginning of a long and extremely frustrating saga and the reason why I changed the truck’s name from Futzie to jinx. So much for a ‘good running’ truck!

Along with Jinx needing the frame to be re-welded by the right front shackle, ($246), king pins and tie rod ends ($240 +labour), we also discovered that Jinx was unusual, in that she came equipped with fluid drive, which means her transmission was like a semi- automatic, guess what, she does roll when in gear.

When you are driving, you use the clutch to shift as usual to go into 1^st, 2nd and 3^rd, however, lets say you come to stop sign, you can stop with out touching the clutch and then take off again in whatever gear you were in. And that meant an emergency brake was a big deal, that or keep using the chocks to park, which can be a tad difficult if you don’t have a passenger to get out and place them by the tire before you release the brake.

At this time the owner (we still hadn’t paid him yet) was still insisting that the only thing wrong mechanically was the fuel pump and that our mechanic was screwing around. That’s when Bill discovered that a bearing had spun and we needed to order new rods and mains bearings. Although Jinx was an ex-RCAF truck she had been restored using more than one vehicle, her engine had been rebuilt in 1964 but who knew if it was stock, ask 10 people what size of engine it should be and you will get 8 different answers. The only true way to find out was by measuring the bore and stroke, results, a 250.6. John at Cochrane Town & Country Auto Parts found and ordered the bearings ($440 + labour).

It could not be that easy…..

Because the owner said that when the truck quit it didn’t make any noise we never dreamed that this poor engine had so much wrong with it. The owner had instructed our mechanic to replace what needed to be replaced and nothing more. Because the owner of the truck said it didn’t make any noise we ended up spending an additional $1,000 peeling off the layers so to speak and coming down eventually to the real problem. The connecting rod was bent and not just a little. I think he figured, that if he had said, "yes, it made a hell of a racket when it quit", we would have walked away, and he would have probably been right. But we sure wasted a lot of time and money on finding out what the real problem was.

My idea of having the truck ready for the May long weekend at Heritage Park had already gone by the boards, Father’s day show was out, now I was thinking "Will it even be ready for our show on August 21?

Off to Precise Engine Rebuilders goes the engine, of course it takes much longer than the 3 weeks we were told (2 months), is a bit higher than the quote $2,500- $3,000 ($3161.75). The good news, they happened to have another 251 there that someone had dropped off and left when they found out the price of rebuilding the engine. They were able to use the crankshaft and a few other hard to locate parts from it. The bad news, remember those bearing we had ordered, they were no longer the right ones.

Thinking we could see the light at the end of the tunnel, now that we have a good idea of the costs involved we figure we should settle up with the owner. We have too much time, effort and money tied up in Jinx, for him to decide to change his mind, the agreed upon price has now dropped to $1920.00. We now own Jinx.

One week before our show, Jinx comes home under her own power; we have washed &, waxed her. Rick, Walt’s son spent the afternoon hooking up her speedometer, lights etc. Confident now that we have a winner we take Jinx out for a drive down the 1A highway to Ghost Lake, we made it 30 miles before she starts sputtering, jerking and generally running horrible, somehow we get her home and find out that the fuel pump has quit. That makes 3 that she has killed, that we know about.

August 21 dawns and its off to our car show at C.O.P. Jinx is running great and I’m having fun driving her in even though when you put on the brakes she really pulls to the left, oh well I can get use to it! 2nd Place trophy in Early truck, I can tell you I wasn’t expecting it, I think I’ve gotten to know this truck too well and know a lot of what is wrong with her. But it certainly made my day!

Driving home made it as far as Rocky Ridge Road and the truck quits, "&^*$%", that’s all I can say at that point. It’s a good thing Walt is following me in the Charger and we manage to push her to the side before we back up traffic too much. After a few minutes got her going again but not running well at all, run the next red light as there was no traffic and there was no way I was even going slow down. She quit just past the lights, that’s it, Walt went home to get the truck (the one that runs) to tow me home. Not liking the idea of learning how to be pulled by a chain, I kept trying to start her, got her going and sputtered all the way home. Walt said he was quite surprised to see me coming down the road. Turning into our road was a challenge as it’s on a hill and there was a lot of oncoming traffic coming, once again there was no way I was going to even slow down and I cut across and was actually driving up the wrong shoulder. I was out of the way before the first vehicle got there but the driver must have wondered what the heck I was doing. Got down the driveway and she quit. Once again we push her into the barn.

New plan of action, hook up the electronic fuel pump again, that floods the single barrel carb that’s no good unless we get a regulator. (Thanks Barry for finding it). That seems to solve the problem. Take it out for a test drive everything is working well, had a bit of sputtering on a hill but runs good again. A few miles down the road there is a strong smell of gas and the sputtering starts again, I shut off the fuel pump and pull over. The hose has come off the regulator and gas is everywhere. Put a better clamp on and drive it home.

Next test drive the accelerator sticks, that’s lots of fun when you are trying to slow down, need to get a spring hooked up to pull it back. And we still have sputtering. Take the carb apart, drain the fuel, everything looks clean but we do discover that the fuel gauge is NOT broken, but backwards. Increase the regulator pressure to 2. Except for the accelerator problem the truck runs good.

Install a used emergency brake assembly but because it is not off a truck that had fluid drive some creativity on Rick’s part was required, still needs some additional work including a better cable as this one sticks. Still use chocks as safeguard, until completed. Also replace Dodge hubcap with Fargo one found from the same source as the emergency brake.

Took Jinx enumerating, parked her (with chocks) and walked about 15 miles instead of starting and stopping her all the time, moving her occasionally. She ran really well until I was coming home and tried to pass some slow person going up the hill. I prayed almost the whole way up, "Please don’t quit, please don’t quit". Once again sputtering all the way but we made it home. Have bumped up the regulator to 2 ½ but haven’t tried it yet.

We now have invested over $9,000 in her, far less than what she is worth but what she was appraised at. We had a lot of help from N.M. members putting up with all my calls, answering questions and giving us suggestions. Thank you all!

There are several things you should know; 1) Walt always follows me in a running vehicle (usually a Chevy), 2) We have always made it home (knock on wood), 3) For what ever reason this always seems to happen on the 1A highway between Calgary and Cochrane, so if you ever see me and my truck on the side of the road it wouldn’t hurt to stop and ask if I need help even though Walt might be nearby.

For me, to get this truck reliable is my number one priority I need to put 500 miles on her before she’s put away for the winter, that sounds a lot more achievable than the 2000 suggested to us at first And more importantly, so that I can take my Mom on a promised picnic and fishing trip.