No, there's no real question here. This is for giggles and daydreams. I'm really just trying to encourage a general discussion of what the merits of different approaches to "truck" are. How much load and towing can you safely ask of an old truck? How much is it worth to have your truck just truck along while you chew all the other things you may have unadvisedly bitten off?
Okay, I've asked a lot of questions about vans in recent history. And I'd love one. It would do most of our truck things, the right one would do most of our towing things with a few limitations, but... they're hard to find not beat to hell or with a million miles at reasonable prices, and it feels right now like the surest way to need more towing capacity is not to have it. Yes, I am being a little irrational after having done a big runaround renting from U-Haul and then arguing and wheedling with the rental place to let me tow a dump trailer with it. (Rental place: "That's not a factory bumper or tow rating." Me: "Do you think U-Haul's going to overstate the towing capacity instead of covering their own butts?" To their credit, we got it sorted; glad to have a local rental place that's pretty easy to deal with and a few minutes from my house.)
I'd love a van. I'd love a cool, older pickup. What I probably need right now is a truck that will take fuel and wear and tear maintenance and any task I can throw at it for a few years.
What that's mostly pointed me to is a "modern" (post-1997) F-250 or F-350 (I'll never sully Calvin by having him pee on any marque, but I do have an irrational Ford bias for pickups). The reason for this thread, though, is kinda stumbling onto this thread about "real trucks" from a while back.
One of the iterations I went through was pondering a 1st or 2nd generation C20. I figure a lowered C20 could get down near modern-van load-in heights, while I find myself looking at in-bed cranes and Tommy Gates to put a motorcycle in the back of a modern pickup. A C20 is a full-size, 3/4-ton pickup. The later 2nd generations had front disc brakes, and of course you can figure out how to do that for any of them. I figured it'd be cool, I'm not usually in a hurry with a load or a trailer... Then I looked up weights, which was harder than I'd have thought, but it appears a 2nd-gen C20 is more than a ton lighter than my last-of-the-old-school F-250 was. Like 1/3 off! That gave me some heebie-jeebies in terms of towing, even if the rental place might see "3/4-ton truck" and send me on my way. Never mind the ability to add power or bigger brakes, that's a lot of missing mass for negotiations between truck and trailer!
So yeah, I'm probably about to buy a ridiculous, giant, (fairly) modern pickup, which I expect to be more reliable, more comfortable, more capable, and we'll call parking a wash with my older standard cab F-250 when I'm sure the longer, taller newer truck will at least have, if nothing else, an aftermarket rear camera.
What approaches are sane? Fun? Safe? What about taking an old medium-duty truck (e.g. Ferdinand), and updating the drivetrain and axles and perhaps doing air springs sized for use as a heavy pickup rather than an actual medium duty truck? Anybody know the actual differences suggested by the Wikipedia article that notes that while there are differences between old C10 and C20 chassis, the C30 is not just heavier but a whole different design? My searches indicated that everybody wants a C10 and nobody in the forums much cares whether it actually does truck things, apart from a few people who are a bit more "send it and see" than I am...
