3rd Gen K9
By Todd Dills
When Harold Hardage passed away in 2003, he left his son an old workhorse of a 1963 Mack B-83 fitted with an oil-field service body and dual-winch bed.
The 40-year-old Mack was originally used by a West Texas oil-services company until the elder Hardage purchased it in 1990 to move the bodies and guts of all manner of used vehicles around the yard as part of the his parts-export business.
Now the old Mack’s fate was in the hands of Jeff Hardage, owner of J&C Investments, a 16-truck fleet based in Garland, Texas. The old truck couldn’t have found a better home.
Seven years and a long way from the salvage yard it once plodded, the newly christened ‘Big Dog’ took home a solid first in the Antique – Specialized class at the Custom Rigs Pride & Polish event staged during the 2010 Great American Trucking Show in Dallas.
The award was made all the more special that Jeff wasn’t the Hardage named on the award: It was his son, 12-year-old Eric, who took the honors.
“Eric showed the truck really well,” says Jeff, pushing the Mack into its third generation in the same family.
-A Long Road-
We first saw the B-83 at the Dallas Pride & Polish event in 2007, at its initial stage of restoration. At that show, the “beat-up old greasy hat,” as Jeff put it, that Harold always wore graced the seat in the immaculate interior on the show floor.
Though the Mack placed a not-too-shabby Second in that year’s Antique category, Jeff and Eric began the restoration anew when they got it back into their shop in Garland.
“We brought it in two days after the ’07 show and started tearing it down,” Jeff says. “We started the restoration all over. I wanted to do it right.”
They employed the services of Andy Krause, friend and owner of Krause Bros. hot-rod shop, to acid-dip the cab to remove layers of paint and old oily residues.
“The acid eats the rust and stuff off of it so that you’re back to new metal – if it isn’t metal, there won’t be any of it left,” says Hardage. “When we got the cab back about half of it was gone.”
-Labor of Love-
They then set about rebuilding the sheet metal lost in the acid-dip to the point it now looks factory new.
To keep true to the rounded, smooth look of the old body, Hardage says, “the bumpers all the way around are pipe,” the radiator shell is rounded, likewise the cab and fenders. Even the winch covers on the body are built out of pipe. “I didn’t want any sharp edges. Everything had to match the curves of the sheet metal.”
The interior was kept true to the original, but reupholstered with some special touches like the phrase “Labor of Love” stitched into the passenger seat where Harold Hardage’s old hat rests, along with a bulldog that was given to Eric as a child.
Through the entirety of the project, the hat only left the confines of the cab one time – when it was dipped.
“Everybody thinks I’m nuts about it,” says Jeff of the old B-model, “But this truck means a lot to me. I think we’ve finished the truck in a way that would make my father proud. And I know Eric loves it, too. We hope to be able to show it more in the upcoming years.”
Specs:
Owner: Eric Hardage
Model: 1963 Mack B-83
Engine: 335-hp Cummins (producing 420 hp)
Transmission: 5 & 4 Dana Spicer
Exterior mods: Stainless grille (w/ Mack bulldog design), stainless front bumper, light bars, chopped air cleaner, oil-field service bed, rebuilt winch cages and cover, diamond plate body cover, tool boxes and battery box covers, DuPont black and maroon Aggie Pride paint scheme laid by Andy Krause of Krause Bros. in Garland, Texas.
Interior mods: New upholstery – “Labor of Love” stitched into the passenger seat where family patriarch Harold Hardage’s hat is kept along with a bulldog given to Eric as a child; chrome steering column, heater box, pedals and seat base; black/maroon interior color scheme.
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