This is my current car, a Chevrolet K30 Pick - up ( M - 1008 ) from '84, with a 6.2 liter diesel V8 and automatic transmission on 35" tires ( now on 37" Wrangler MT's ) and a 4" suspension raise.

The one in the picture above is the one I bought first. But, as you may have read on this page, it was stolen after just 6 weeks ( I didn't even get the full of my 3 months warranty). It was stolen just around the corner from my home. I later found out all the keys to these cars are the same, as they are military vehicles. Luckily I could talk the bank into giving me just enough money to order another one. I had to wait for that one for about 8 weeks. This one wìll be equipped with all kinds of anti-theft devices.

I had it build by van Dam in Elst, Holland. They have about 40 to 60 Chevy K30's and Dodges W200's lying around and build them to specs.
During the build-up I went to the garage and took some pictures. They already put in a new front axle, as he suspected something might be wrong with the original one. It also has two new doors, a new hood and a new tailgate. The engine is serviced with two new batteries, new injectors and all hoses replaced as you can see in the fourth picture.

Below is a drawing I made on a photograph of a K30 standing outside the garage ( with Corel Draw ) to give the painter an idea of what I wanted the paintscheme to be. Luckily he is a better artist than I am!

He sprayed the truck as you see it on the first picture on this page. The second truck was sprayed by someone else, who interpreted the paintwork differently. Although it is very different I like it a lot. I also had the fenderflares installed. I removed the tailgate and replaced that with the Pro-Net tailgatenet you see on the second and third picture below, where you can also see the sparewheel I mounted in the pick-upbed on a specially designed tripod. The tailgatenet reduces airdrag in the pickupbed, which means I can do 60.754miles instead of 60.086 miles per hour !

Well.............it's not thàt quick.

Excuse me ? I don't think so !

It really is an awesome car, towering above the average traffic, overlooking all the other cars. It's funny to see the faces of people in the streets ( and in the cars in front of me ). This is one of three pick -up's here in Utrecht, the other two being standard "altitude" cars.

I had to adjust my roadbehaviour, being a fast driver. This car has an awesome torque, but speed's a different thing. Doing 120 km/h on the highway is like work in a noisy environment! Well, it'll save me some speedingtickets.

Added a homemade pushbar ( not by me, but by some guy in his garage ) and a SMITTYBILT double rollbar with single kickers.

I do go "off-road" sometimes, as far as you can call it that. Here in Holland you can get as far as about 10 meters of the tarmac before being stopped by a fence.

Kevin of OFF-ROAD CENTER in Utrecht ( there will be a link on my "Links" page soon ) managed to find 4 hardly used 37" GOODYEAR WRANGLER MT's. I bought 2 new rims for the rear like the ones I already have under the truck and had them widened to 12" and powdercoated satinblack!

This is the "before" shot:

Below the "after" shot

In the two pictures below you can see the difference on the front. The tires fill the wheelwells much better then the 35" did. We had to trim the fenders just a little to accomodate for the tires.

The truck stands higher than the extra inch it should get from the bigger tires, which might have something to do with the thread being more curved. The ride actually became better with these tires although the noiselevel increased a bit. In the car that is only noticable with the window open and the CDplayer off.

Just a pic of the what people see in their rearviewmirror:

Update November 2003: 

After one year on these tires they were gone, maybe also due to the fact that we moved from Utrecht to a small town 35 kilometers away, so instead of 7 kilometers a day I now do 70 km's every day. I went looking for new tires and found that Co Oskam in Cothen had the new Maxxis Creepy Crawlers in stock. Sadly he only had the 35" version because the 37"ers are not produces yet. I really needed new tires so I bought the 35"ers anyway, the Maxxis tires come in 16" size instead of the 16,5 rims i ran, so I had some stock 16"rims widened to 10 and 12" and powdercoated black ( of course ) They look and sound great, very good grip on- and off road, noisy as H*ll on tarmac, but who cares ;-)

Through my parents in law, who go offroad in their brandnew Nissan Navara pickup I found there's a Off-Road club here in the Netherlands that has a monthly event, so I went to see what it was and liked it very much, sos much I became a member of the ANVT ( link on my linkspage ) and go offroading once a month now.

On my third outing there was a little bit of water which only few even dared to go in. I saw a small Suzuki go in and get stuck, just over kneehigh, so I thought it should be no problem for my big truck. How wrong can one be ???

It appeared that the small Suzuki, with it's smaller wheelbase was on the high point of the track, where as my heavy truck would sink into the lowest part !

This resulted in a very wet interieur, very wet pants, cigarbutts floating around my knees, much laughter from the crowd and a bent con rod, due to the engine sucking water.

So, it was being towed out of the water, onto a even bigger truck, brought to Co's workshop ( all with very wet pants and soaking feet ), he took out the engine and sent it to ERAS in Utrecht for a rebuild. Co had some secondhand con-rods and pistons in his stock off which I only needed one, the rest was fine ( luckily for me ). I had the cranck looked at, new bearings on it, new valvelifters installed, new pistonrings and had the radiator taken apart and put in a new core as it appeared to be really damaged. It was al beack together within 2 weeks, just in time for the next off road event. I'll be just a little more carefull next time ;-) I'm now looikg for a snorkel to put on my Chevy, not that I want to go into the water that deep again, but you can better be safe that sorry ( again ). And it looks good as well. I found one that will fit a Dodge W200 and I told it will fit my Chevy, with just a little friendly persuasion of a big hammer on top of the fender. 

I'll keep you informed !

Can you believe that - while surfing the web for info on this car - I found that there is actually a club for owners of cars with a 6.2 or 6.5 liter Diesel V8 that gives great info on the engines and gearboxes.

There is a link to that page on my LINKS - page under 4X4 links.

Remember the famous slogan:

HAVE YOU DRIVEN OVER A FORD LATELY ?

Last Updated: March 3rd, 2000