In the ’50s, home-delivery baker Helms Bakery went door to door, delivering bread and bakery goods on the streets of Southern California. All you had to do was call and order what you needed, and the next day it was delivered to your door. You could also stop the drivers on their route to buy their goodies, and that’s how we remember the early ’50s Chevy Helms delivery trucks. We figured they must have a rather large fleet of them to cover the L.A. Basin. We aren’t sure exactly when it happened, but no doubt rapidly changing family lifestyles took their toll, and Helms stopped the delivery portion of the business. As a result, there were a lot of early Chevy panel trucks that went somewhere.

It has been more than 40 years since we saw the last of the Helms trucks, and what happened to them is anybody’s guess. One thing is for sure: Finding one wasn’t in Dean Brown’s mind when he heard about an old panel truck that was for sale locally. Dean had sold a ’40 pickup truck awhile back when he was building a new home, and he was now finally in a position to buy another for a project. Since Dean likes trucks, he decided to take a look at this ’52 Chevy panel delivery. When he arrived the panel was in solid condition for its age, and it looked as if it could be turned into a rather wild ride, so Dean purchased the truck and formulated a plan of action. 

The panel was still in running condition with a six-cylinder engine, but that certainly wasn’t enough power for Dean. He removed the stock engine and transmission and purchased a hot 350 Chevy and a B&M Turbo 350 as a replacement. Dean generally works on his own street rods, but he is currently working offshore as a construction consultant, so his free time is limited. He decided to have all of the time-consuming fabrication work done at Dream Cars in Simi, California, where the front suspension was upgraded with a Heidt’s IFS assembly. The folks there also installed a new parallel leaf rear suspension and, for this story, a power brake unit and pedal assembly.

A Classic Performance Products power brake assembly, designed as a bolt-in application for this early Chevy truck, was selected. The installation was simple because the unit connects to the same holes originally used by the stock pedal assembly. This same kit also works great on all ’47 through early ’55 Chevy panels and pickups. In this story we will show you how the install was done using normal hand tools. The entire process should take only a few hours from beginning to end.