1979 Lil Red Express Truck*

As I’ve mentioned before, if it’s a truck, it’s my wife’s.  I bought this from a friend of my Brother-in-Law.  He had the truck for years, took very good care of it and finally needed to sell it.  At the time, he told me that it had never been in the rain.  It had about 15,000 miles on it and it was in terrific shape.

I had it shipped to AZ and took it to my body guy.  He loved it and while we were looking it over, the shop owner came over to check it out.  He is bit of a sceptic and kept trying to say that it wasn’t all original.  He thought the paint had been done – my body guy said that it hadn’t.  He kept trying to find problems with the truck.  At one point, he reached up into the driver side control arm and pulled out a piece of paper.  As he started to open it up, I stopped him.  It was obvious that it was old and stiff – it was crinkling as he opened it.  I took the paper home, steamed it and ironed it out.  It turns out that it was the original build sheet that they put in the truck when it was built.  Imagine finding a build sheet stuck in the suspension for decades.  Clearly the previous owner was right when he told me that it hadn’t been in the rain.  As a side note – it’s very rare to find a build sheet on a L’il Red Express truck.  Since it appears that they put them in the front suspension, I can see why.

This truck drives like it’s new and it’s one of our everyday drivers.  We’ve put a couple thousand miles on it since and it’s a blast to drive.