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Oh yeah, I'm in 
It started when I saw this truck in a friend's father's backyard. It was slowly on it's way to becoming a permanent fixture, yard art if you will, and I offered him 500 bucks for it. he told me that he had a stack of parts for his wife's Pontiac, and if I would put them in the car I could have it. About 9 hours of my time later, I towed my new truck home.
Initial inspections were rough, but I was told it ran when he parked it 8 years prior. He said he thought that the transfer case was broken, he was hearing loud bangs in the driveline, and he parked it with intentions of fixing it but never did. I found several bad u-joints but no t-case issue. The fuel lines were rotted out, both front hubs had seized bearings, 8 year old gas, mice got into the interior, only had one good piece of glass, body mounts were toast, rear brakes were toast, rear shocks had broken away from the frame, floors were rotted out, hoses and belts were all rotted, no battery, dash was destroyed by the sun, etc.
But it was complete.
Got a battery, put a little gas in the carb, and she started.
Knowing that I had a running truck, it was off to the races to bring the maintenance back up to snuff. Took a trip to my local Napa and bought all new fluids, full tune-up, all belts, hoses, filters (including trans), the replacement u-joints, new wheel bearings and seals, all new rear brake parts, new front pads, a couple reels of different sized vacuum line, enough rubber fuel line to replace the rotted stuff, and a carburetor kit. Then I went to work.
Most of all that was straight forward, but I ran into some snags. Upon dropping the gas tanks, I found a rodent's next on top of the passenger side one. Those little bastards chewed through all of the hoses connected to the sending unit, and the wiring to the level sender as well. There was enough wiring left to repair the harness, and I was replacing all of the rubber lines anyway, so it wasn't too bad. When I pulled the axle shafts front and rear to do all of the seals and bearings and u-joints on the fronts, I was really surprised at all of the rust flakes that I could see inside of all of the axle tubes. After thinking for a while on how to remove it without pushing it all into the differentials, I decided that I would duct tape a section of 3/4" PVC to the end of my shop vac and kind of scrape the inside of the tubes as I ran it in and out. It actually worked quite well. In addition to that, I found the the front diff was nearly completely full of water. It turned out that the pressed in vent tube had popped out sometime before it was parked, and it subsequently filled with water. I didn't find any rust (a miracle of sorts) so I opted to grab some inner axle seals as well just to be safe, then I tapped the housing to have a screw in vent tube. While all of this was going on, I replaced the ball joints too, figuring that I might as well since everything else was new. While I was working in the engine compartment, I saw that one of the vacuum canisters was broken at a hose nipple, and the big coolant actuated vacuum switch on the thermostat housing was broken on a couple hose nipples too. Figuring that I would make a weekend junkyard run and find these, I worked on what I could until then.
Fast forward to my junkyard run, and I scored big. It was in this moment that the name "The Price Is Right" came to me. All of the other Chevy hunters must have stayed home for a couple weeks. I walked out of the yards with the above mentioned emissions stuff, an Edelbrock Performer intake manifold, a STOUT rear bumper that was built for a Suburban, a decent enough dash pad, some aftermarket steel wheels with 33's on them, new front and rear glass, both wing windows, the one door glass I needed, some aftermarket window vent-visors (the metal chrome kind), inner door panels w/ good armrests, and an unmolested direct replacement Quadrajet, and a pair of matching mirrors, all for about 350 bucks.
I realize that I am kind of rambling, so after getting the above finished (with a little painting for prettiness), and pulling the A/C components due to a siezed compressor clutch, I turned my attention to the interior. I don't have any before pictures (tends to be a problem for me) but it was pretty sad. I basically gutted it, and coated everything south of the window line in black Herculiner. I got some sheets of diamond plate aluminum and cut and shaped them to the floor panels and lower inner doors. Went to my local Joann's Fabrics and acquired a couple yards of a decent looking camo pattern and covered the "decent enough" dash pad. Found a clearance seat cover at Cabela's for the factory bench seat and put it on. I made a couple more junkyard runs and scored enough gauge clusters to be able to mix and match them into one good working unit. Got all of my glass put in and painted the new to me inner door panels and installed those.
By this time a few months had gone by and I called up ORD and ordered new body mount bushings, the 1" body lift, and the steering box brace. I have always hated the rear taillights and had been staring at the old faded factory exterior lighting long enough to decide to replace as much as possible with easily replaceable grommet mount LED truck lighting. Using some of my left over diamond plate I made custom rear mounts for these lights and used some flat plate for the front turn signals. Time for some pics.
Initial inspections were rough, but I was told it ran when he parked it 8 years prior. He said he thought that the transfer case was broken, he was hearing loud bangs in the driveline, and he parked it with intentions of fixing it but never did. I found several bad u-joints but no t-case issue. The fuel lines were rotted out, both front hubs had seized bearings, 8 year old gas, mice got into the interior, only had one good piece of glass, body mounts were toast, rear brakes were toast, rear shocks had broken away from the frame, floors were rotted out, hoses and belts were all rotted, no battery, dash was destroyed by the sun, etc.
But it was complete.
Got a battery, put a little gas in the carb, and she started.
Knowing that I had a running truck, it was off to the races to bring the maintenance back up to snuff. Took a trip to my local Napa and bought all new fluids, full tune-up, all belts, hoses, filters (including trans), the replacement u-joints, new wheel bearings and seals, all new rear brake parts, new front pads, a couple reels of different sized vacuum line, enough rubber fuel line to replace the rotted stuff, and a carburetor kit. Then I went to work.
Most of all that was straight forward, but I ran into some snags. Upon dropping the gas tanks, I found a rodent's next on top of the passenger side one. Those little bastards chewed through all of the hoses connected to the sending unit, and the wiring to the level sender as well. There was enough wiring left to repair the harness, and I was replacing all of the rubber lines anyway, so it wasn't too bad. When I pulled the axle shafts front and rear to do all of the seals and bearings and u-joints on the fronts, I was really surprised at all of the rust flakes that I could see inside of all of the axle tubes. After thinking for a while on how to remove it without pushing it all into the differentials, I decided that I would duct tape a section of 3/4" PVC to the end of my shop vac and kind of scrape the inside of the tubes as I ran it in and out. It actually worked quite well. In addition to that, I found the the front diff was nearly completely full of water. It turned out that the pressed in vent tube had popped out sometime before it was parked, and it subsequently filled with water. I didn't find any rust (a miracle of sorts) so I opted to grab some inner axle seals as well just to be safe, then I tapped the housing to have a screw in vent tube. While all of this was going on, I replaced the ball joints too, figuring that I might as well since everything else was new. While I was working in the engine compartment, I saw that one of the vacuum canisters was broken at a hose nipple, and the big coolant actuated vacuum switch on the thermostat housing was broken on a couple hose nipples too. Figuring that I would make a weekend junkyard run and find these, I worked on what I could until then.
Fast forward to my junkyard run, and I scored big. It was in this moment that the name "The Price Is Right" came to me. All of the other Chevy hunters must have stayed home for a couple weeks. I walked out of the yards with the above mentioned emissions stuff, an Edelbrock Performer intake manifold, a STOUT rear bumper that was built for a Suburban, a decent enough dash pad, some aftermarket steel wheels with 33's on them, new front and rear glass, both wing windows, the one door glass I needed, some aftermarket window vent-visors (the metal chrome kind), inner door panels w/ good armrests, and an unmolested direct replacement Quadrajet, and a pair of matching mirrors, all for about 350 bucks.
I realize that I am kind of rambling, so after getting the above finished (with a little painting for prettiness), and pulling the A/C components due to a siezed compressor clutch, I turned my attention to the interior. I don't have any before pictures (tends to be a problem for me) but it was pretty sad. I basically gutted it, and coated everything south of the window line in black Herculiner. I got some sheets of diamond plate aluminum and cut and shaped them to the floor panels and lower inner doors. Went to my local Joann's Fabrics and acquired a couple yards of a decent looking camo pattern and covered the "decent enough" dash pad. Found a clearance seat cover at Cabela's for the factory bench seat and put it on. I made a couple more junkyard runs and scored enough gauge clusters to be able to mix and match them into one good working unit. Got all of my glass put in and painted the new to me inner door panels and installed those.
By this time a few months had gone by and I called up ORD and ordered new body mount bushings, the 1" body lift, and the steering box brace. I have always hated the rear taillights and had been staring at the old faded factory exterior lighting long enough to decide to replace as much as possible with easily replaceable grommet mount LED truck lighting. Using some of my left over diamond plate I made custom rear mounts for these lights and used some flat plate for the front turn signals. Time for some pics.
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As I write this I remember some of the other stuff I have done, like replacing the heater core, my shown but not talked about electric fan conversion (which has been changed because my first set of fans crapped out), got a nice sized tranny cooler from a friend and put that in,
I was getting married and had a baby on the way, so not to much happened for a while. Opportunity struck however, and I picked up this Suburban parts truck for cheap. It had a 6 inch Rough country lift with a 14bolt FF, 8 lug 10 bolt, good running TBI 350, 700R4, crossover steering, a Hi lift, sway bar disconnects, and some other goodies.
Heavily digging on the tail lights. I had done something similar in the past but I like the rivets
I chopped up that Burb and took everything of value to me, sold off a few items, and set out to start working on my truck again. Digging around the interwebs and talking with a few friends made me quickly realize that the Rough Country springs weren't going to cut it, and being that I don't have a million bucks, I settled on doing a shackle flip with 56" springs in the rear and a B52 kit in the front. I bit the bullet and picked up a 4 pack of 14 inch travel Bilsteins, a couple guys at my job run them on their rigs and love them. I still have yet to figure out mounting for them, but I still have yet to do a lot of things. Work that still needs to happen includes pulling the old TH350 and NP203 in favor of the 700R4 from the Burb and a twinstick 205 that I am building. The engine is coming out for a reseal, and it will get a brand new timing chain set and the serpentine belt setup from the Burb. I am going to cut out my cracked engine crossmember in favor of an ORD one, replace the motor mounts, clean and paint as much stuff as I can. I got a nice set of Jeep JK bucket seats for a song and a dance, so those are going in. And then driveshafts...
Here are a few more recent pictures showing the more current status of the truck.
Here are a few more recent pictures showing the more current status of the truck.
Thank You
Wow that cleaned up pretty good, gnar pain job on that burb.. Looks like you have a great start! Cool rig dude.
Looks like start to a fun build I'm in! I also did the LED oval lights on my F150 after bashing out all my spares, much better than factory lighting for sure.
What transfer case was in the Suburban?
Are you going to use the TBI setup on the truck?
Martin
Are you going to use the TBI setup on the truck?
Martin