I bought it on Jan 19, 2019 from a gentleman south of Tyler, TX. It was a 5 hr drive down there. Hauled it back on a U-Haul trailer and it took about 6-6.5 hrs on the way back. I left my house at 7:00am and crawled into bed at about 1:00am. It’s a running /driving truck. The owner I bought it from had purchased it from another older gentleman that had retired. During that time it was used as a daily driver, about 40-50 miles per day. The original 350 motor was swapped out for a SBC from a 1988 Suburban. The transmission is a 700r with overdrive.
I looked the truck over, we took it for a test drive, and everything checked out ok. It’s missing one of the bed side trim pieces and has a couple of small rust spots in the rockers. He included replacements for those. The front passenger fender has a spot right behind the bumper that is slightly bent with some rust, like it was bumped at some point. The bumper was replaced, but the fender was left as it was. He gave me a replacement fender to swap it out, or use for patch parts.
Now, I went into this knowing that there were things to fix, obviously. First things were all cosmetic – wheels & tires, seat, steering wheel, rocker panels, fender, trim pieces. Now that I’ve had it almost a week, there’s a lot more to go through and fix. So, here’s my initial list of things to fix:
1) Water pump
2) Temperature sensor/sending unit
3) Transmission leak – maybe rear seal.
4) Transmission shifting – Hard to shift into Reverse/Park. Neutral, Drive, L1, L2 are fine.
5) Door locks – working with LockDoc about that now.
6) Wheels & Tires
7) Seat – Eventually recover, probably get a temporary cover for the time being.
8) Rocker panels
9) Front fender
10) Grill insert – ok for now, but could use a replacement
11) Figure out all of the wiring under the dash – someone added gauges, switches, choke knob, light knob, and some sort of push button for something. Probably pull all of that out.
12) Stereo – has aftermarket with blue tooth and added speakers. May pull all of that out and find a OEM style replacement at some point (not high on the list).
13) Lower the ride height - Suspension drop of some sort. Never tried it before, so huge learning curve here.
14) Speedometer doesn't work - Probably due to transmission swap to a 700r, but no idea.
**EDIT** - adding things to my list.
