Another one to be resurrected
 

Recently I had the chance to acquire a truck from a board member who became frustrated with one of his projects. The purpose for his project was to have a nice truck he could use to not only have a hobby while repairing it but to also have a viable truck for those days when he needed one for doing household chores and projects. He had built the transmission over the course of a year or so and had just installed it in the truck, and while out with the truck the motor let go and that was the catalyst for him buying a retired flatbed fire truck which he intended to use as the new truck as it ran and drove.
I picked up the truck about a week ago in Maryland and I was originally intending to use it as a parts truck, but upon looking at it I was bitten by the restore it bug
here are some before pictures

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

so the motor on this truck is a factory 400 SBC and I want to get this truck at least moveable so I just bought this truck , which is a 2wd 74 GMC camper special 20 series truck. It originally had a 454 motor which was replaced by a 350. My plans are to get his running ( its sat for a while) then pull the motor and the bed and rear bumper and some other parts and put them on the solid red truck making that whole and runnable. Eventually if possible I will salvage the 400 and replace it back into the red truck. The red truck is a K20 the parts truck is a c20. I will also use the fenders and inner fenders on the other project shortbed I have. The interior will be stripped and used on the shortbed as well as some of the trim work. I am going to store the trans core as a possible trans to hook to the 454 if I can get it for the right price.
I will probably sell the cab as a usable part and scrap the 2wd chassis

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

followin along...

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

Im in too.

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

So yesterday my nephew came over and we were messing around with junk in the yard.. and we got to pulling the motor and trans the rest of the way out of the truck. the motor definitely messed up third cylinder from front passenger side the connecting rod snapped during a ride and got wedged up in there. Its never a good sign when you drain the oil and pure new anti freeze comes out..This is very much a shame as it appears someone was in this block not too long ago the timing chain was a double roller and was nice lifters and pushrods were good and these pistons and all were very clean so this was a motor that had been fairly recently worked on / rebuilt I took it apart more as a why than as a reason to see if it could be saved

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

I took the trans and transfer case to my buddy Dean at In Gear to make sure that no damage was done by the sudden catastrophic engine failure and the effort made by him to remove the trans without fully unbolting the torque convertor while the assembly was in the truck being the motor was locked up now the next step is to disassemble the parts pic

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

Wow its been a while since I updated this..
The parts pig was stripped down probably a month or so ago. new timing chain, gaskets , oil pump and seals and a fresh paint job and she was ready to drop in. The transmission had a few issues that the previous owner caused, basically a snap ring wrong and some other minor issues that was fixed in short order by my transmission guy.
I threw the motor in the truck and the bed from the parts pig on it
This weekend my buddy welded up some holes on the new bed and the cab and hopefully this week I can grind down that and throw some filler. I found a good bumper in my shed and got that mocked up and now im also messing around trying to put a newer tailgate on the truck.. replacing trunions etc
more as we go on

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

The lwb k square bodies are awesome! I'm in too.

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

Finally ordered up some metal to replace the rotting floor and the cab supports being done as we speak also replacing left inner and outer rocker and right inner rocker
I also decided to take the new core support and upper to the powdercoater to be done up in black
Thanks to board member ScottH I have an air conditioner compressor amd brackets to install too

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

Glad to see this one rolling along.

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Its been a while since ive posted and for the most part the truck has sat. Ive been gathering some AC parts and am going to be changing out the brackets etc so I can put on a newer AC compressor.. I have most of the AC parts now and will be installing them.... Also after watching an episode of Garage Squad in which they took some girls farm truck and turned it into a Fall Guy truck, I decided to buy a roll bar for mine.. Once I get the newer front end on the motor I have to do a little bit more work to the rockers ( inner and outer) then I can do body work.. I should also note that we had a swap meet here not long ago and I picked up this cowl hood..
The truck came with a red interior and im going to keep that, and I am thinking of going with a two tone and as of right now im going to do a dark grey and burgundy scheme.. I will post as I can and as progress happens

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

Well its been a while im kinda bad at keeping in touch.. so after the welding of the floor pans I painted the floor with POR 15 and being I have a friend in the powdercoat business who gives me awesome deals I had the radiator cover mount powdercoated as well as the 4wd unboltable part of the cab floor. Today I am installing the Amazon equivalent of Dynamat
Also I installed the cowl hood so as to get it out of the shed.
Over the winter the carburetor went bad, so I installed a new Edelbrock 1406
Ive been having a time trying to learn to weld as the cab corners and rockers still need a bit of attention but ill get there

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

also over the winter I found another tailgate to go with my bed. this one wasn't rotted to all heck , and the other major upgrade was to remove the stock exhaust.. got some headers and added some summit 2 chamber mufflers and turndowns and welded it all together well my son did the welding part. So much I want to do so little time... My kids truck which he wrecked by slamming into a tree in reverse off roading, I straightened his chassis installed a new bed and gave him new doors off a parts truck I have.. meanwhile the 79 sits doing nothing except becoming a closet for a whole bunch of corvair parts a buddy of mine asked me to hold while he moved

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

the previous owner put 77-87 doors on the truck so im kinda stuck with the incorrect door panels so I decided to redo them. am trying to get the old dye off and its becoming a chore most of it im scraping off with a plastic ice scraper the lacquer thinner isn't really working any suggestions?

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

Some updates.. I finished spraying the interior parts I probably should take some pictures although the door panels are only half installed on the truck... So I was looking on Ebay a week or two ago and saw this Raptor bed liner spray on kit and heard some nice things about it and I ordered one. I tried using a whizzy wheel to grind rust off the bed floor but it just wasn't happening there was pitting and all

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

so I decided to send the truck out to get the bed blasted. In addition the driver side inner structure for the bed and the wheel arch had rot and splits and the bed wheel well was shot due to rust , I picked up a used wheel arch from GM72K10 and sent the truck out to be sand blasted. got the truck back yesterday and got it back together this afternoon

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

Looks good...are you color matching bed liner or going with black

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more photos and in prime and oh yeah the painted or redyed door panel next up bedliner

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

Im going with black because I haven't really finalized the color its going to be... just when I think I nailed it I see something else I like but its getting the roll bar and all

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

Subscribed!

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as most of you know I work for myself so my weekend is pretty much whenever I get the chance. We have had a couple of slow days so today I sprayed in the bedliner.. that Upol Raptor stuff doesn't spray bad so its drying in the garage as I write this Next up cutting bedsides and welding in patch panels

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

What's your opinion on the raptor liner?....looks good in the pics...

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years back I had my 82 Linexed and it was pretty thick and had a good grain... this wasn't too bad although it does dry a little sparse id have preferred more texture and thicker but hey it worked and looks pretty good... I don't know if you ever saw this thread but rest assured this was on my mind as I was doing this... good read for a laugh
https://www.explorerforum.com/forums...-hootus.18595/

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

oh wow..!!!!!,,,note to self...keep my hootus covered at all times while spraying bedliner..!!

Re: Another one to be resurrected
 

a few pics of the progress on the bed driver side