CK5
Register an account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members.
'88 K5 - Running Down A Dream
- Thread starter jimmyleetn
- Start date
Ground up restoration of my '88 K5. The plan is to go through every inch of the truck and fix or replace pretty much everything that needs it. This will also be a full vert conversion and I plan to make the vehicle look more like a 73-75 than 88.
The driver's side floor pan is a sad place. The rust isn't horrible (worse than the passenger side though), but man the previous owner's repair job was garbage. What you cannot tell from the pictures is how bent up this all is around the rear seat bolt holes. It looks like he took a mini sledge to it. I'm cutting all of that part out, it's the only good way to make this right. Still not exactly sure what I'll do with the outer rocker. I cut a hole in it so I could run the camera inside. I'm leaning towards cutting out and replacing that top portion only. There's rust in there, but nothing any different than the passenger side. It appears to have rusted from the outside in.
This actually isn't a photo dump. Finished the rust treatment on that cowl/firewall panel and got it coated with encapsulator followed by some spray can epoxy on the inside. I doubt I top coat it since it'll never see the light of day once I weld it in. If it ever rusts in my lifetime I'll be impressed. In other news, I got to go the ER today. Not a truck related injury for once but geez at my luck. Contractor left a broken mirror on some boxes in his junk pile in my garage and I sliced my leg. We're having our bathroom renovated since I don't have the time to do it since school is back in session. We're going to have a discussion about the mess they made when they return.
Can't believe I haven't worked on this thing in a month. So I bought some random stuff. Ambull shackles and engineered vintage shackle mounts. The really cool thing is the the front license plate. I went to the C10 Nats in Nashville and all saw was USA-1, heartbeat of America, and blah blah blah. I would bet my next paycheck 75% of the trucks with front plates had one of those two plates. They don't look bad but I wanted some that held true to the era but wasn't overdone. A FB post on the NOS page got me digging and I found this YouTube video with this plate. This was the sales slogan for '74 and '75. I couldn't find one for sale anywhere so I had one made. Showed a seller on Etsy (of all things) a picture and they made it. I think it's cool and definitely different. Reasonably priced too. What do you think? I bet someone remembers this plate.
thanks for the business!
I actually worked on the Blazer today. First time I've welded (or worked on it) since September. Like riding a bike. I've been looking at that cowl piece for 6 months. It's nice to finally have it back on the truck. Looks like the AC box is going to line up so I'm at least close to where the original one was. Also bought a little eye candy last week during the AMD bumper sale.
Well I'm starting on the driver side. Back to the salt mines as they say. Check out the pictures, it's a cobbled up mess. I don't know how anyone could be that bad with a MIG welder. There's still wires stuck in. I know it's not going to fit all but here's to hoping that floor pan at least tries to fit.
I was able to get some work done Friday afternoon and a little bit Sunday while my daughter took a nap. Pretty proud of the progress giving the lack of time I'm working with these days. I'll blame it little bit of that on work and a little bit of that on turkey season. Anyways, panel is cut and fitted now. Finished the final touches on Sunday. All I need to do is drill some holes for a spot welds to that subframe. Got that stupid heat shield out of the way too so I can see what I'm doing from up underneath when needed. I guess I need to cut a panel to go in that rectangular hole. I guess that's for vehicles with the latching style tilt seats. I'll have to put some relief cuts in the panel to get it to angle correctly into the original floor. The step up stamped into the aftermarket panel is way shallower than what there was originally. I overcame this problem on the passenger side with a smaller panel I put in by the seat bolt hole so it shouldn't be too big of a deal. Just more work and welding. My goal is to have this thing burned in by this Sunday.
Well it's going slow. This panel has no interest in fitting. Two relief cuts and lots of starts and stops with the welder and hammer with a punch and we're slowly getting there. Had to put an old dumbbell on it to get it to lay on the subframe so I could spot weld it in. My welds look good I think, at least in the areas where I my gaps weren't too wide.
On today's edition of what did I learn: I learned that the passenger and factory seats are not mirrored in the same location. If you're not following what I mean, what I mean is the driver seat is further towards the driver's door and the passenger seat is further away from the passenger door by comparison. Best guess on this is so that the steering wheel is centered up for the driver. Why they wouldn't just mirror those measurements on the passenger side I do not know unless it was to make a little bit more room for passengers to go into the rear of the vehicle. Why this matters is one, I thought it was square like probably most of you did, and two, the stupid people that built these reproduction panels took none of that into consideration and so I get to do even more cutting and welding to get the seat bolt location in the rear inner driver to actually function in a way that won't rip through the floor after year driving. Take a look at my measurements.
You think this is bad, ever been in a Chevy van?
You don't need a tape to see the difference
Alright so a little more cutting and patching and welding and I solved the floor problem. Also was able to get this entire section of the floor panel done from what you'll see in the last two pictures. I grounded the welds smoothish. While I was grinding I got to thinking about it and I was like no one's ever going to see this and I'm going to put a kilmat or some other brand sound deadener over it so I quit and put the grinder away. I really hate grinding, I swear I'm not lazy. I turned the lights out in the shop and crawled around with the light for about 30 minutes and only found about 10 or so pin holes. I spot welded them up and I'm marking this piece of the floor as done.
Been in and out of town, but I've been slaving away. Got the seat attachment points strengthened, thought about posting a write up elsewhere on the forum about this but I'm sure it's been done. It should be plenty strong, my welding skills are getting more robust. I do think I put too much heat into the front pieces when I plugged to them in because it sags a little in those two spots but oh well, everything lines up.
Are the plates the same size on top and bottom? Usually you want the lowers a little bigger so they do not pinch tear the sheet metal over time.
Regrettably, they are the same size. I did think about it a lot, but with the contours of the floor and whatnot it was kind of hard to do it that way without getting really serious into the fabrication aspect with all the angles to match those contours. Since it's not a roll cage I don't know that it's ever going to have an amount of pressure on it that would ever tear it unless the vehicle was being torn into pieces anyways in a high speed crash. My thought process was more along the lines of this has to be better than what was there before and should definitely spread the weight better. It made It 30 years with those cheap weld on nuts/plates they use. Let's hope I'm in the grave before it tears again. Either way I have a skill to fix it if this doesn't work.
So I got the cowl side panel off. Initially, I patched the rust hole in it that the rain gutter caused, after I got it off, I have decided to just buy a new one since they make them now and I had to really destroy it to remove it, at least up top. What a waste of time, but it did help me practice my skills a little. If you'll notice, after this things got a little out of hand and now the door is off. The big concern though is the stress crack I found behind the lower hinge on the door jamb. I've never seen one crack here. I'm assuming standard procedure would be to just deepen that groove a little bit and weld it up shut. I am curious why I cracked here though. I'm working on getting the kick panel rust and floor rust by the kick panel cut out so I'll be able to look up in there with the camera tomorrow. I'm open to suggestions about that stress crack.
Find the ends of the crack drill to stop the crack and weld it.
I'm getting decent at drilling spot welds. Kick panel is removed along with the rusty part of the floor and inner rocker. Shot some rust encapsulator in there while it's all apart. Will button it up soon. I wasn't going to go this far, but I think this will end up being faster I'm excited too that this panel basically fitted out of the box other than some very minor trimming.
A step closer each day. Spent way too much time making that block off plate. I did get the kick panel welded in. I'm thinking I could be done with the floors and cowl by the end of June. Those last two are for @imiceman44 . Drilled, grooved, and welded.
Last edited:
Should put in a non AC floor vent while you are there!
Martin
Martin
