Scratch and dent "build"

Although this truck is starting to come along it really hasn't been much of a build as much as it has been resurrecting it to a point where I'm not ashamed to drive around in it until just recently (sorry if I'm not formatting / writing this right, it's the first build thread I've ever done).

How it's currently sitting as of 10/18/15



Day 1: Purchased it on November 11th 2014. It was in pretty bad shape as you can see... sadly this is the only picture I have of it from the first day. But you get the point. It had 160,000 miles on the dot that day. Along with the absolutely ruined axle seal that caused that wheel to be pretty much be undercoated, and the rotten bed. It needed a decent amount of work. But I bought it anyway because it was cheap ($2,200) and it had an amazing drivetrain and 2 year old frame. The cab was also super clean other than little rust pimples on the roof, which I just wire wheeled and POR15-ed. The engine runs great and is extremely clean inside and it even pulled great compression numbers.


Day 4: After driving it home and letting it sit for a couple days the work started. I purchased the axle seal, and found some roofing tin at a friend of mines house. And after taking some rough measurements cut it into shape to patch the rust as much as possible. (sorry for potato quality picture here). After the rust was patched I painted it with 2 coats or rubber undercoating and did a top coat of glossy spray on bed liner. It was ugly But got the job done.
(before the bed liner)

Day 6: After patching the rust and painting it with bed liner we went to the axle seal. It was relatively straight forward but took forever due to the fact that the drum refused to come off for at least 25 minutes due to being rusted into one piece, and the inside of the drum was soaked in oil. The shoes were mush. But once all of the rusted and oil soaked parts were out and cleaned (minus the shoes) the new seal went in and everything was pretty smooth after that, Until 2 brake lines blew up when bleeding the brakes. After that got fixed I actually got to drive the damn thing to work for the first time. It was ugly, but I loved it.
(Inside the horrifying drum area)
The interior wasn't much better than the inside of that brake assembly. The PO was a complete slob and had a Husky. I ended up pulling the seats out of it, pulling all the trim and carpet up, fluid filming the floor pans for preventive reasons and basically just cleaning the crap out of it.

After the bed liner and sheet metal patch:

I drove it like this for a long time sadly, All the work here was just to get it to pass Vermont inspections and get me through the winter, which it did, amazingly! I did fluid film the frame and plug up the factory holes with wax though, because as we all know even looking at these frames will make them rot. Only other thing I did was change all the fluids. Which was desperately needed in the trans and rear diff. Everything else looked okay.

Jump to early April, stuff starts happening again as it finally got back above freezing for more than one day.
Bought some American Racing atlas ar160 wheels with some cheapo Mud King XT 32x11.50 15s off of an old Chevy. For anyone wondering, they rubbed. HARD. Even after the pinch weld mod they still rubbed when turning or going over big bumps.


2 weeks later, this is where the fun starts. I had been talking to a local fabricator for a month or so and decided rather than find a new-used bed I'd rather have a flat bed so I could eliminate the wheel arches and get as much space as possible. So in very late April I finally decided to have him build it for me.

Unpainted, no floor, and no real lights other than stock ones being held on by zip ties. But the rusty old bed was gone and I couldn't have been happier. The next day I started getting the bed ready to go on and stay on.

POR15 applied on the rear half of the frame and the bed, my hands were black for over a month. So if you mess with this stuff, wear gloves, the can isn't lying.


Finally got the wood floor in and got the tail lights wired, everything tightened up and painted, haven't had to touch it since. Wiring the lights sucked, maybe because I was way overtired, but that harness was ridiculous. I usually never have a problem with wiring but that was hell.
The light that is painted black is the license plate light, It has a section that isn't black for obvious reasons. The clear one is for reverse. The only issue I've had with the bed is that the fuel filler is at a crappy angle so the pump stops if you go too fast. Which is annoying. But not a huge problem. Also replaced the bumper brackets because they turned to dust when I tried to wire wheel them


Jump forward a month or so and I got tired of the brakes being awful, so bought new calipers, pads, and rotors for it. Install was easy (amazingly) and it made the thing stop better than any other vehicle I've owned. I never appreciated brakes until I had some that actually worked good. No pic here sadly. This is the point where I basically stopped working on the truck for a good few months because I picked up a new project which if you're interested in seeing I can make a new section for it. My 88 Volvo 740 turbo drift car.

And now to bring everything up to date, started working on it again 2 weeks ago. Got the Bilstein 5100 and Eibach coil + add a leak kit for it. Install was miserable, seeing as almost all of the bolts nuts and bolts were rotten, top hat center nut for the struts had to be torched, all of the U bolts had to be torched, had to torch the drivers side lower ball joint and tie rod bolts and nuts, resulting in needing both of those parts to be replaced. I used the no spring compressor method without dropping the sway bar or adjusting the camber bolts. I just used a bar in between the skid plate and lower control arm and forced it down while my dad put the strut and spring in place. Worked well but took some swearing and elbow grease. It was well worth the effort though, as I finally got my turning radius back! No more god awful plastic rubbing sound when turning more than half a turn. Also did the diff drop that went better than expected. Sadly it revealed that my oil pan has the famous rusted sump welds, but it isn't leaking (yet). But the 5100s were a huge improvement over the OEM 170k mile struts and springs that were shot beyond belief. I pushed one down and it never rebounded.

This is how it sits currently. I have a plate bumper going on this coming weekend however so I'm very much looking forward to that. Only other thing I've done is plaster the rear window in stickers, because I'm 19 and that's what I do Hope you guys like it, or at least don't hate it. More updates to come



9/17/15: Checked valve clearance, all but one were in spec! Still need to fix that though.



10/1/15: Plate bumper FINALLY goes on along with steel mesh around the bed, mesh wasn't on in the picture sadly.



10/4/15: Finished up painting the outside of the bumper, steel mesh, and drivers side front half of frame with POR15.





That's all for now

To do:
Paint other side front section of frame
Top coat mesh around bed
Paint inside of the bumper
Paint rear axle
Change out one exhaust valve shim + valve cover gasket
Fluid film entire underbody
Cry in corner because I'm sick of wasting all of my weekends on this thing

1/19/16

Relocated blinkers to marker lights.

 

Good Looking rig! You've come a long way! I'm sure the work will pay itself off, these things run forever on just a little bit of love. I can't believe how badly it was rusted, do most vehicles rust that quickly over there? We don't see much rust here in California.

 

This thing is looking really good and has come a long way from that first photo. Gonna enjoy watching where it goes.

 

Rust is a really huge issue in my neck of the woods unfortunately. I junked my first car because of it. I've contemplated junking my current drift car because of it, here's an example.

Outside of my drift car:


Inside of my drift car:


Rust. It's a wonderful thing

 

Thanks It's been a lot of fun, but also a lot of swearing and wanting to throw tools at it.

 

Yikes! I haven't seen the ground through a floor pan in a long time! I imagine that there isn't much of a used car market then?

 

There's a market, but a lot of them are marked as winter beaters. And trucks get marked as mud trucks or farm use. The reason mine is rotten was because the sunroof leaked for about 10 years. Add that and road salt and you get a new episode of the Flintstones. My truck is a VT survivor and as you can see by the 1st picture it had seen better days. But the one nice thing is that cars are very cheap around here. Buy one for 600 bucks, drive it till it rots out, repeat.

 

1/1/16 update, not including in actual build thread.
Ugly steel wheels on with Cooper Discoverer M+S for winter...
Also just got it inspected for another year, amazingly. Can't wait for winter to be over so I can get my other wheels back on. On the bright side it's a blast getting this thing sideways on every turn possible Behaves surprisingly well for being lifted.

 

I like the flatbed

 

Thanks I'm honestly surprised how many people do. I love it just because it opened up a lot of extra space, and I can bang it off of trees and not worry about it. Not the fanciest looking but I like it.

 

Ol' Rusty is lookin good!

 

wow you did a lot of work on that taco but it looks great!

 

Thanks next on the list is sliders and possibly a snorkel.

 

Thanks, its still got a ways to go to get it where I want it, but I'm pretty happy with where its gotten to. It's been good to me

 

Subbed...nice rig!

 

Thanks Hopefully have a couple updates for it soon

 

May as well add a pic of it not covered in mud. Missing summer right about now

 

I'm on the same boat, waiting for summer.

 

I hear ya, washing the salt off of the old girl once a week is getting old. I really wanted to buy a winter beater but that didn't happen sadly.