Man discovers shocking engine surprise on 1959 Chevy pickup parked for 30 years

A man rescued a 1959 Chevrolet Apache pickup that belonged to his neighbor and tried to revive it after 30 years off the road. 

The classic truck had been the neighbor’s ‘daily driver’ until the harmonic balancer blew around three decades ago.

Since then the poor old pickup truck had been sat gathering dust in his yard.

However, when neighbor Kent, from the Speed Bump Garage YouTube channel, spotted it one day he decided it would be a cool little restoration project. 

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The 1959 Chevrolet Apache pickup had been parked for decades

Kent admitted that he knew ‘very little’ about the car before he bought it, but isn’t that all part of the fun?

As you’d probably imagine after so long parked the pickup wasn’t in the best shape. 

But we’ve seen people manage to restore trucks in all sorts of states before, such as the guy who rescued this abandoned semi-truck, or the grandson who surprised his grandpa by restoring his 1954 International pickup truck.

Meanwhile, Kent’s Apache had spent so long parked it had sunk into the ground, and that was only the start of the problems. 

The abandoned pickup also had broken windows, some pretty wrecked paintwork, and the back was full of old bits and junk.

But at least it was in one piece, right?

The engine was in a bad way

Lifting the hood, Kent spotted that the balancer that had come off – and took the truck out of action – had been put back in but that the repair job had never actually been finished. 

After Kent brought the Apache back to his shop, he soon realized the size of the task he’d taken on. 

The first thing he spotted was that the inline-six engine was locked and due to its years spent outside, the engine had also sustained a lot of water damage.

After Kent removed the plug, water began pouring out of the engine – all in all, it wasn’t looking good. 

But somewhat incredibly – after a ‘quick rebuild’ – Kent managed to bring the pickup back to life and took it out for its first drive in three decades.

Which really goes to show that in the right hands, pretty much anything is possible when it comes to these classic pickups.