1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

hello i am new to chevytrucks.com and i joined as soon as i found this site, tons of great info.Here is my son's first truck it is a 1968 Gmc 3/4 ton camper special. paid $1,600.00 for it and we are doing a ground up restoration.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Welcome ,thats a very nice truck to start on ,looks very solid .

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Welcome from a little further up north

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

My favorite color and a 4 eyed truck! I would have jumped on it too.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

thanks like the 4 eyed too, my first restoration project was 20 years ago with a 1972 Gmc jimmy which i still have.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Welcome to the forum from Spanaway! Musta taken a long time to find all the license plates! The truck looks like a nice survivor too.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Welcome from Texas! Nice 4-eyed project, keep the pics coming......

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

thanks and yes the license plate shingling took about 5 years.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Welcome to the board and enjoy your restoration on the truck!

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Great looking GMC!

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

we started this restoration July 2014 with removing the two layers of plywood to expose the lovely holy bed. bryce even had grandpa help a bit. the saws all works great to remove rusted bolts. had to remove two saddle tanks on was bolted straight to the rotted bed and the second one had a steel plate on top of the rotted bed. the drivers saddle tank was full of very brown gas.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

with the bed removed we found out this truck has a pull out bumper. also found picture of Bryce's truck and my 1972 gmc jimmy.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

good lookin truck! :metal:

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Welcome from just south of you in Olympia! That is a great looking truck and looks like you guys are really off and running. I'm going to be dealing with the same issue of the saddle tanks. Mine also has them and I dread when I need to pull them off to clean it up.

Best of luck with your build!

Joe

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Removed outer cowl to find some nice mouse bedding. Bryce is working on removing the front end. Start of more rust as we start to take apart the truck.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

So i am loading photo's from last summer to to try and get caught up to what we are doing on the truck now. So the end of July was when we got the front end remove and the by the end of Aug. out came the motor.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Great truck, great project, keep the pics coming!

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Great looking truck.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Nice project. I love the 4-eyes too.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Nice truck. Really like the Union 76 sign on your shop. My dad worked for/retired from a division of Union Oil.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Thanks JJR, I collect gas station memorabilia my shop if full of gas station items. How do you get the list of your vehicles to show up on the post?

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

^^^Edit your signature

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Looks like i have some fair amount of rust to deal with. I was trying to find another cab with little or no rust in the lower cowl but not having any luck. Found 4 trucks in a wrecking yard but nothing i want to work with. Does anyone know of or have a better 68 cab for sale?

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Great looking truck! Has it spent its entire life in Washington? Quite a bit of rust eh. Just an hour or so north of you in Sedro Woolley. Those pick were definitely not taken in the last few weeks. Way too dry. ;) Chuck

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

i parted a truck a few years ago that had a good cab.i just messaged the guy to see if he stil has it. you might check with frank in olympia,or wes at classic heartbeat.. did ya look at south hill auto wrecking? does it have to be a big window?

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Another place to check out would be Vintage Chevy Trucks. They're in the San Francisco Bay area. Great prices and Bill is awesome to work with. I bought a '72 short bed 4X4 frame from him for $400.00 with no rust.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Yes the truck is a Washington truck. That's right these photo's taken end of last summer just trying to catch up to what i have gotten done.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Well the next thing we needed to do was remove the cab, so we built a cart to put the cab on and using the engine hoist we lifted up the cab. That was a job trying to get the center of the cab with the hoist so nothing comes crashing down. Rolled out the chassis and set the cab on the new wooed chassis.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

While youre at it show and tell us about the nice little Nova hiding in the background .

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

I purchased the 1972 nova from a 90 year old lady about 8 years ago with 104,000 miles on it. She purchased the car in 1973 and used it as her only car and parked it in her garage and used tons of turtle wax. The car has a straight 6 in it and has the stock tire and bumper jack still in the trunk. The things i have changed is swapped out the am radio, new tires and rims, up graded the carb to a 2 cylinder holly . The paint and interior are factory original.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Here are more pictures of the cab and frame separated.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Separated the front suspension from the frame and started sandblasting. This was done in the middle of November during our crazy warm weather.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

November 22 and more sandblasting is done to the frame. We removed the rear end to make the chassis lighter to hang. Sandblasting the frame was a long process and i used about 600 lbs of sand which only set me back $60.00.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

My son and I spent thanksgiving weekend building a paint booth and prepping the chassis for paint. Then we applied the primer. this is the start of the truck going back together.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Way cool!

Welcome aboard! I live up on Whidbey Island, but am originally from Orting. So I used to head in to T-town a lot back in the day! :)

Gary

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Showing Bryce how to paint with the gravity feed gun. Bryce did a great job didn't get any runs. This was done thanksgiving weekend when the temp dropped down below 40 degrees outside, it took me about 3 hours to get the chassis up to painting temp.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas Bryce and i worked on sand blasting and cleaning small parts. Prepped the paint booth and during our Christmas break we primed and paint the small parts to the chassis.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

Now starts the slow process of reassemble. put new bushings in the rear leaf springs, cleaned out the pumpkin the old gear oil was black and used a pudy knife to clean the build up of grease out.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

The next thing we did was redo the rear brakes.

Re: 1968 Gmc ground up restoration
 

With some shopping around i finally got a disc brake conversion for the 8 lug truck. With new ball joints, tie rod ends, rotors, calipers, spindles. we reassembled the front end. We also got the parking brake reassembled with a few new pieces.