1969 Chevrolet Van Interior Door Handle. Plus - Free Automotive Memories!!!! on 2040-parts.com

1969 Chevrolet Van INTERIOR Door Handle.

Fits Driver, Passenger AND Rear/Side Cargo Doors.

MAN! I sure do wish I still had the van this came from! (see all pictures)

What can I say? It's a door handle. Not much to say about a door handle so instead, I'll say a little bit about the van this door handle came from. I bought that van used from a car lot back in the late seventies. The salesman started the engine and it sounded okay to me. What did I know? I was a kid. Hell, I didn't even take it for a freakin' test drive. DUH! I swear to God, I didn't notice it had three pedals until after I paid the guy for it. I'd never driven anything with a manual transmission before. I'm serious. I quite literally learned how to drive "stick" trying to get the thing home. I lived 15 minutes away and it took me, like, forty-five minutes. Sheesh! First thing I did after I got it was to fix up the interior with a louder radio, some inside lights, a bed platform, some insulation and plywood on the walls, doors and ceiling but I never got around to finishing it with carpet or anything. I spent most of my time working on the drivetrain. After getting the inside going, I drove it around for a while until tossing a rod through the side of the block. (Ouch!) With a borrowed cherry picker and using a friend's garage, I began my first engine transplant. I removed the passenger door, went in through that passenger door opening with the boom hoist, yanked out the lunched 307 incher and replaced it with a junkyard 350. I eventually spun a bearing in that although I didn't know what it was at the time. I just knew that engine was making a baaaaad noise. With the engine knocking like hell, I drove it over to a local auto repair shop to have him diagnose the problem for me. I parked outside and shut it off. I walked inside, found the owner, told him what was up and he followed me back outside. He told me to start it so he could give a listen. I did. He IMMEDIATELY told me to shut it off and told me it was a bad rod bearing and that it would cost $600 for him to fix it. WHAT?! Screw that. I'd never rebuilt an engine before but for $600 just to replace ONE bearing, I figured I would learn! I called my buddy to use his garage again but no dice. His wife had tossed him out of the house for parking his willy in someone ELSE'S garage, so to speak, and he was living in a trailer. Looked like I'd be forced to do the job outside this time. Darn. So right there in the street in front of our first apartment, with a borrowed engine hoist, I yanked the engine out through the passenger door, pulled the hoist back, moved it over and then shoved the engine back into the van through the side, cargo door. I set the engine down and unchained it and using the back of the van as my garage and workshop, I tore it all apart. (Don't believe me? Take a look at the photos!) After I totally disassembled it, I borrowed the shop truck from work and took the engine block to a parts store to get it hot tanked and machined. When I walked into Burnham Auto Parts at lunchtime that day carrying the engine block in front of me, I asked the counter man where he wanted me to put it. He screamed, "DOWN!". Anyway, after they were done punching it out thirty-over, I borrowed the shop truck again, took my bare block home and again, right there in the street in front of my first apartment and using the back of the van as a workshop, I reassembled that motor. Buying parts and gaskets and stuff with a $500 loan I took out from General Finance (Ouch again!!!) with new bearings and freeze plugs and gaskets and stuff, a set of finned aluminum M/T valve covers, new rings and TRW 11 / 1 domed aluminum pistons, a new Crower 3/4 race cam, spring and lifter set, a set of Doug Thorley headers, two bolt-on Cherry Bomb mufflers and a four-barrel intake with a Quadrajet carb I traded from a guy for a dime bag of weed. All these parts and machine work and stuff cost me LESS than that repair guy wanted just to fix that one, bad bearing! I've been doing my own repair work ever since that time. Anyway, man, that van used to HONK! It had a three on the tree and I could smoke the tires in all three gears. I'm serious. I used to beat cars with it on the street regularly. I got arrested in it one night after I uncorked the headers and with my wife riding shotgun (that's her in the photo) we went out looking for some action. I was literally in the middle of beating a guy in a Firebird with it when the cops showed up. The cop knew me and thankfully cut me a break (no drag racing ticket!) but he still had to arrest me because I didn't have my drivers license on me. (WHAT?! As it turned out, my wallet apparently fell out of my pocket and was left lying in the street in front of our apartment from when I crawled underneath the van to remove the Cherry Bomb mufflers!) After the cops took me away, my wife had to drive the van back home to switch cars before driving to the station to bail me out. On her way home, two guys in a Camaro pulled up next to her at a light. With that lumpy cam loping enough to make the whole van shake and flame pumping out of those open headers, the Camaro driver shouted over the exhaust noise asking my wife if she wanted to race. She had to politely decline, telling them she needed to bail me out of jail for driving it that way. They laughed and drove away, she went home, found my wallet there in the street and then drove the old station wagon back and got me out of jail. Good times! The van was eventually towed away for scrap. I cried as they towed it away. I'd already yanked the motor however and had saved it. It found a new life in a four-wheel-drive Chevy Blazer I bought with a seized motor for two hundred bucks. I pulled and scrapped that locked-up engine and dropped in this one in its place. (final photo) It ran for a few more years until the crankshaft snapped literally in half but even with a broken crank, the engine STILL kept running with the harmonic damper bouncing up and down and the fan belt flexing in and out but that, as they say, is another story for another time.

If you're not interested in buying the door handle, no harm no foul. At the very least, I need to thank you for reading some of my very favorite automotive memories. God, I miss that van! And I probably don't need to say this but I'll say it anyway: VAN NOT INCLUDED!

As always, used parts being sold as-is as-seen and are being offered with no warranty intended or implied. What yuh see is what yuh get so study the photos and contact me before bidding if you have any questions (about anything besides applications) or want me to email you any additional, specific photos or measurements or like that.

 WINNING BIDDER ALSO RECEIVES:

We'll even send you a free Uncle Nick's Biker Tees Bumper Sticker with each order! So you can offend folks with either your van or your toolbox! (See our other items)

As always, being sold, as-is as-seen.

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No Local Pickup

"That which does not kill us makes us want to stop and get something to eat on the way home."

                                                                                                                                                        - Uncle Nick