Feature Story
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Restoring a Great Tradition
Dawn and Wayne Meicher with their 1957 Chevy pickup.
Wayne Meicher believes in General Motors, and he's very sad about the current state of the company. His father worked as a service representative for GM for many years in the 1950s and 60s. Wayne has always owned GM cars and trucks, and he learned his mechanical skills working on them.
"GM has been such an important part of this country for so long, I just hate seeing what's happening to them, and to all the American car companies," says Wayne.
The Meichers won three first-place trophies
during All Wheels Weekend in 2007.
After leaving GM, Wayne's father bought several Texaco service stations in Colorado Springs, and Wayne worked at and managed them for many years, further honing his mechanical skills.
Wayne and his wife Dawn are doing what they can to preserve the legacy of General Motors products. At this year's All Wheels Weekend show in Dayton, they will display all three of their immaculately restored Chevrolet half-ton pickups: a 1940, a 1952 and a 1957. The 15th annual All Wheels Weekend will be held on June 19th, 20th and 21st.
The Meichers brought all three trucks to Western Washington from Colorado in 2003. Dawn finished her nursing master's degree at Pacific Lutheran University, and she and Wayne moved to Dayton in 2006. Dawn is now Nurse Practitioner for the Columbia County Health System at the Waitsburg Clinic. Wayne is retired from farming.
Before, during and after restoration.
Wayne and Dawn did all of the restoration work on their trucks themselves. And each truck has been restored to factory original condition. "With the exception of radial tires and seat belts, there's nothing on these trucks that you couldn't have gotten as a factory option the year they were made," says Wayne. "All of them have original radios that work."
In Colorado, Wayne was a farmer and Dawn worked as a registered nurse. In the mid-1980s, Wayne bought the old 1957 Chevy pickup to use as a fuel hauler on the farm. After about a decade of service, it was time to retire the truck. Wayne and Dawn decided it was also time to try their hand at a restoration.
The '57 was completed in 1994, followed by the '40 in 2001 and the '52 in 2003. The latter two trucks were both purchased in Colorado with the intention of restoring them. For each of their restoration projects, the Meichers purchased at least one parts truck.
Each truck was completely disassembled for a frame-off restoration. "Dawn did all the bodywork," says Wayne. "She's much better at that than I am." Wayne did all of the mechanical work. It took over a year to complete each project. "And that's working on it nearly every day," says Wayne.
"I got a lot of practice hammering the metal," says Dawn. "I tried to get it as straight as possible, and I used as little filler as possible."
Wayne and Dawn's approach to the restorations was always to make each truck just like it was when it came from the factory. That includes painting, which Wayne did himself. "When these trucks were painted at the factory, they didn't sand between coats, and they didn't use clearcoat," he says. "So neither did I." The two-tone ivory and red paint scheme on the '57 was a color option that was available that year.
The Meicher's 1940 and 1952 Chevy pickups
parked in their shop in Dayton.
All three of the Meichers' trucks have their original stock engines and manual transmissions. The '57 has a 235 cubic inch in-line six cylinder with a three-speed column shift. Both the '40 and the '52 have 216 cubic inch straight sixes, with four-speed floor shifters.
The '57 has several added options that were available that year, even though this truck didn't come with some of them originally. They include the sun shade over the windshield. And since shade can block the driver's view of traffic signals, Wayne also added a prism device – offered by GM in 1957 – mounted on the dash that shows up red or green, depending. Other options include: carpet, headlight brows, right-side mirrors, electric windshield wipers and washer, and an under-hood lamp.
Wayne also restored the bed of each pickup with new yellow pine boards, which were the type of wood originally used.
Wayne is thinking seriously about shopping for an old car to restore soon. "I'm not sure what kind it'll be," he says, "but it'll be a car this time, and it will definitely be GM."