Power Wagon Canada - Eight Hours to Lethbridge

Eight Hours to Lethbridge

By jake wiebe

Published in Power Wagon Advertiser November 2006 pages 8-11

This hill seemed a lot steeper on the return trip than on the way there the previous day. The night was dark with no help from a moon hidden behind multiple layers of snow clouds. The blinding snow was coming down hard keeping the painted lines of this mountain pass highway hidden from our view.

My two boys have been home schooled since grade one and my job has always been to teach the shop courses. Thank God for my wife who does a great job teaching the academic courses, I would last about a day trying to teach that stuff. We thought this would do just fine as our first restoration project. We also thought it would make a great hunting vehicle, this would allow for an

The semi behind me was way too close for comfort and the turns in this stretch of highway were more like switchbacks than a modern highway. Even with the trailer brakes set at the highest possible setting, the heavy old 65-power wagon was still trying to push me around.

I was already thinking that a stop over in Golden might be in order when my wife, Tracey, suggested just that. Our three children instantly agreed that we should get a room at a hotel that had a pool and hot tub.

My 2001 dodge 1/2 ton 4x4 seemed to agree with the general consensus that a hotel stop was the wise thing to do. We were all quite relieved to see the lights of Golden appear in the distance a few miles later.

I guess I could lay the blame for this whole episode squarely on the shoulders of the people that publish the Old Car Trader. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t brought home that last issue and seen the advertisement for a 1965 Power Wagon Utiline listed for $700.00 or best offer.

imperfect body and paint job.

When my wife Tracey saw me and my boy’s Kalib and Dylan looking at the add in trade magazine she said let's go get it. At that moment I realized once again what a great lady I had married.

With suitcases packed, we drove the eight hours to Lethbridge to the biggest and best Hotel we could find, this one had the water slides and hot tub to keep everyone entertained as Kalib and I headed down the road to Magrath to look at the truck.

We found the address and proceeded to look the truck over. The 1965 Dodge Power Wagon had a utility box with no tailgate. The truck sported a 318 wide block with a four speed manual transmission with the two transfer levers beside the shifter on the floor. The speedometer showed 67000 miles.

The truck was was purchased originally by Alberta Forestry and then sold to a local farmer.

We got the beast home and parked it in front of the garage where all the neighbors could get a good eyeful and spur on some jealousy of our good fortune. The next morning my kids were having a blast playing in the truck getting covered in dust and grime, they obviously had no trouble seeing the value of an old truck.

Since I did not have shop at home at the time, we pulled the truck to my machine shop in town and started cleaning and dismantling the truck in record time. We welded new metal in for the floor, we cleaned the engine bay and put the distributor back in its home. The truck was running in about two weeks. We replaced all the brakes; re did the clutch, and put on new tires and wheels.

The farmer had used the truck until the clutch went out on it and then decided to park it behind the barn for the next couple of decades. That’s where our friends in Magrath took over and set it behind their shop for the next two years until they decided it needed to much work.

We took note of the Flintstone style floor that allowed for emergency propulsion by foot. We also noticed that the distributor had been misplaced, it was now located in the cubby hole.

That's when we
discovered the wheel
that refused
to turn.

Repairing the body was next. I found out that these old trucks used real metal in the body parts. We banged, pulled, pushed and worked on it until the body started to look like a 65 Power Wagon once again.

We had the whole truck dismantled and primered before I applied the single stage viper red onto all the panels, this took about a day to complete.

This took about a day to complete. The box wood was completely rotted so we

After a period of fault finding, we settled on $600 for the truck. That’s when we discovered the seized wheel that refused to turn. That required us to take turns cranking on the come along as we inched the heavy beast up the tilted trailer deck.

Well we finally got the loaded trailer back to Lethbridge and parked it for the night. Morning came and I was amazed at how much worse the body looked in the daylight, I had missed a few body modifications that had obviously been executed some where behind some ones barn in an absolute state of anger or even rage. However I still felt pretty good about the find, I hadn’t seen a lot of these trucks for sale here Canada up to that point.

had no choice but to cut new boards for it. I used lodge pole pine and applied several coats of marine varnish before assembly.

The truck was somewhat bumper-challenged when we got it, so we made our own front bumper and are still working on the rear bumper. We also noticed an obvious over sight in the engineering of this truck; it had no cup holders in it. We decided we would have make our own so we planned to machine three steel rings with holes around the circumference for the stainless steel bolts. Then we inserted a rubber o-ring in a groove to hold the cups over any rough terrain we might encounter. We also decided to make matching flanges to secure the shifter boots in place.

The overall truck looks good and with our oirginal idea to use it as our hunting and fishing truck we think it will do just fine. We have since found a tailgate for it and will be installing it as soon as we get it painted.