Revival: 1929 GMC Truck Runs with Minimal Effort After 81 Years of Sitting Idle
Rust bucket 1929 GMC truck might be literally falling apart, but all it takes is plugs, oil, and a good scrubbing to run again.
When vehicles are left to sit, bad things happen. Rubber deteriorates, gas goes bad, and metal turns to rust and eventually evaporates. Idle time is indeed devastating to vehicles like the 1929 GMC truck that’s the subject of a new video from Jennings Motorsports, which was just rescued from 81 years of sitting around and slowly returning to the earth. The goal here was to see if the team at Jennings could get it running once again, which looks like a daunting task given how bad the vintage hauler looks.
Unfortunately, the condition of the 1929 GMC truck only got worse when the crew extracted it from its long-term resting place. “I know it looks a lot rougher now than it did in the thumbnail,” our host says. “The reason for that is, as soon as we pulled it up out of the hauler, that road was so bad the termites quit holding hands and the whole thing just about fell apart.”
Indeed, all of the wooden components present on the truck essentially disintegrated while it was being moved, leaving only rusty metal behind. That includes the hood, which is so rusty that it won’t stay put either. Regardless, the point of this video is to simply see if the team at Jennings can get the truck’s old 310 cubic-inch inline six-cylinder engine running, even though it hasn’t done so since 1940.
“I already know the motor is stuck, but it shouldn’t be too hard to get unstuck,” our host says. Working in his favor is the fact that the truck was said to be running when it was parked, and it doesn’t have a ton of miles on it, either. The first step is to remove all the built-up gunk, rat and insect nests, replace the spark plugs so that the old engine will have some spark, change the ancient oil, and put some duct tape on the carb, which has a hole rusted in it.
Amazingly, during the inspection, the engine magically becomes unstuck. “It’s a Chevy – well, GMC – so it doesn’t want to die,” our host says. And sure enough, with just a little bit of elbow grease, the old inline-six fires up and chugs right along. Sure, it’s smoking and leaking oil everywhere, but the simple fact that this engine runs with minimal work after 81 years of sitting idle is nothing short of amazing.
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