5 Unexpected Uses For Old Car And Truck Bodies
There are thousands of broken-down old cars and trucks in the world sitting idle in driveways or backyards, collecting dust and rust while their owners ponder what to do with them. For some, shipping a beloved ride to the scrap yard may not be a palatable option, as few artifacts inspire more sentimentality from their owners than a car or truck they used to drive.
Sentimentality aside, eventually you have to do something with that decaying vehicle. If you lack the resources to take on full-scale restoration, you might think your options for salvaging it are pretty limited. In fact, there are many things you can do to keep at least some parts of the vehicle off the scrap heap. Before you call the local wrecking crew to haul your vehicle away or strip its old parts for other practical uses, consider repurposing it in one of these unexpected ways.
Your truck bed or car engine well could become a flower bed
Many of the suggestions on this list call for considerable skill and creativity on your part, as they generally require disassembling parts of your vehicle and reassembling them in another form. If you're not up to that lofty challenge, or don't have a handy friend who is, said options may not be viable.
However, there is one option that even those with no practical experience working with cars can undertake. All you need to convert the cargo bay of a truck or a car's engine compartment into a flower bed is a handful of standard gardening tools, a few bags of dirt, and a packet or two of seeds.
You will, of course, also need the area in question to be empty and relatively rust-free. You may want to line the bed or engine well with gardening mesh or other growth-promoting materials before you start, just to give your seeds the most hospitable possible environment. Once you've done that, just fill the space with soil, drop in seeds, and you've got an automotive garden.
The front end of your car or truck can become a bench
Car and truck flower beds tend to look more at home in more rural environments. Those looking for a more urban use for their old car or truck body might have more interest in converting sections of the vehicle into furniture.
There are multiple ways to re-purpose a vehicle into furniture, with crafty owners turning truck beds and front ends of cars into everything from bookshelves to fully functional bar setups. Converting part of your car into a bench or sofa is a fun and functional way to go. That option will require some work, as part of your vehicle — typically the front end — needs to be cut from the rest before you begin.
Some design work will also be required. Depending on the state of the car's exterior, you may need to sand down and re-paint the body before adding anything new. You will also have to decide what support is necessary, accounting for the object's weight and that of whatever — or whoever — will be sitting on it. It takes a lot of work to convert a car into a couch or a truck into a dining table, but the finished product will be the definition of a "statement piece."
An old truck bed could become your new trailer
An argument could be made that truck owners can get more attached to their vehicles than most, and the convenience of having a truck bed around whenever you need to transport large items is a big part of that. A functioning trailer is also extremely useful in that scenario, however, and if you have access to an old truck bed, you might be able to convert it into a spare trailer.
As with the couch conversion, turning an old truck bed into a trailer is a job that requires tools and skills that most folks won't possess. If you're not up to detach the bed of a truck from its body and weld a trailer hitch onto it, you'd be wise to find a professional who can do the job for you. Before you start converting your old truck body, check out the laws in your area concerning trailers, as some states do not allow converted pickup setups to operate on public roads.
Even if pickup bed trailers are not street-legal in your town, such outfits could still prove helpful on a farm or a homestead with significant acreage. They can potentially even be utilized in such areas with a tractor in lieu of a truck.
Cut your old car or truck down and hang it as wall art
Once you've converted the bed of your pickup truck into a trailer or built your car's backseat into a couch, you'll need to sort out what to do with the rest of the vehicle. If you've already started taking it apart, you could turn what's left into hangable wall art.
The opportunity to turn the front end, or any other part of your vehicle, into an artistic structure worthy of your wall depends a lot on make, model, and condition. If you're working with a classic car or truck that isn't rusted to pieces, the carved-off front end could look amazing on the wall of your living room, man cave, or garage. In the correct configuration, old-school hoods, windscreens, and doors might also make a lasting impression on your wall.
Converting such pieces into covet-worthy wall art will obviously take a little work and even more creative vision. If you want functional headlights on your front-end wall piece, you'll need some electrical expertise to boot. Perhaps more importantly, you'll also need to sort out exactly how to hang the finished piece, as it will be significantly heavier than most artwork.
An old car or truck bed can also become an actual bed
While few things say "I'm a gearhead" as clearly as hanging a piece of a classic muscle car on your wall, fronting such an artifact in your bedroom positively screams it from the mountaintop. If you are the sort of gearhead who needs to fuel their need for speed while they sleep or have a car-obsessed kid who does, converting the body of a car or truck into a bed could be a worthy endeavor.
If you think the other listed projects sound intimidating, converting a car or truck body into a bed frame is probably more work than you can handle, as it will require considerable steel-cutting and welding. It may also the most time-consuming. Since you or your child will be spending hours of time in the converted bed, you'll want to take extra care to leave no sharp edges or exposed metal on the frame that could cause injury.
On the design front, a truck bed makes an ideal starting place for a bedroom piece because, well, it's a bed. But if you've decided to cut and re-fit an old vehicle for such use, you'll be able to pick and choose which parts to include. If you pick a popular model with robust aftermarket support, the sky's the limit on your bed frame configurations.