I figure its time for me to start a build thread for my Jimmy, before I start forgetting what I have done to it. I have owned the truck since October. I have had 5 or 6 k5's over the past 4 years and since buying my first one I have wanted an 87-91 truck. So I have been buying/selling and trading for the past few years and in October traded my Jeep YJ for this 89 Jimmy with 222k all original miles. I drove it home about 2 hours when I got it, with cold AC! I basically got it from the original owner because he is the best friend of the man I got it from, so I know the history of it.
When I got it:
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On the ride home I noticed a vibration that sounded like out of balance tires at 55 and 65 mph so a few days after bringing it home I threw on the 32x11.50 BFGs that were on the 76, which just sits in the garage now waiting to be restored. Vibration fixed and it looks much better.
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About a month later I walk out of school and notice a puddle under the rear end, look down and there's a hole in the diff cover. Never heard a noise, drive it home and pull the cover and several large pieces of ring gear fall out and the fluid looks like silver metallic paint. Rebuilt the axle with a friend. Installed a set of bilstien shocks while I was at it to make the truck ride as good as possible on worn out factory springs.
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Drove it daily for another couple of weeks after the axle rebuild with no problems, then the AC compressor starts howling and grinding intermittently and then all the time, so I change it out along with the accumulator and orifice. Buddy charged the system back up at his shop, works great now and was already retrofitted to r134.
I vaguely remember dropping and then pushing back on one of the caps off the rear axle u joint when I was reinstalling the rear shaft after rebuilding the axle, but I didn't think about it until a vibration started at 45mph getting worse the faster you went, so new Moog u joints in the rear shaft and all good there.
That brings us up to the current point, and the only other things I have done are a tune up and installed a few interior pieces that were missing when I got the truck, door panel trim and the chrome caps that cover the pull straps along with the driver door lock pawl. Also changed out the locks because the old ones were hanging up.
Plan for this truck is to make it my primary daily driver (which...
