My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

THE ELECTRIC CONVERSION STARTS AROUND POST #176

"Hey man how much you want for that truck?" I asked Big Al

"You want it?" Al replied

"What year is it?"

"71"

[poker face on] "Sure what you want for it?"

"For you $1,500"

and that's how I added Dusty to the stable along with Rusty and later Busty

and then we moved to a new house and my computer crashed and I lost all these pictures till now, I just found them by accident four years later

so Dusty was a Poster Child for a Basket Case, no hood, no grill, no bed, no tailgate, no rear axle, no engine, no transmission, just a carcass (I didn't even know it was a GMC at the time, I thought it was a Chevy)

here are the first pics of it after I bolted up a rear end I found on Craigslist and Al told me about a bed he had in his back yard, so we put that on it, he also threw in a 350 SBC and a TH350 he had hiding in the garage, and then he gave me the hood, and maybe some more other parts

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

having two trucks already (and a wife) I had to hide Dusty somewhere, what better place than my mom's house, she was retired and bored out of her mind, and this would give me a chance to visit her on the weekends to work on the truck, plus her house was closer to Al's than mine

and that's how she became the "Project Supervisor"

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

so mom and I went to work, yes she is not afraid to turn bolts, and is great at cleaning stuff

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

turns out that's a pretty good Mr. Goodwrench crate motor

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

after reluctantly learning about all the many front bumper bracketry variations GMC offers we found a matching pair and bolted on the front bumper and the hood, and Dusty began to look like a truck

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

and how will we keep those 95 galloping ponies at bay you ask?

well with Drum Brakes at all four corners of course!

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

I see a hole and I fill it

Re: My Dusty 71e Electruck
 

the bed had a few deep scratches on the rear passenger side :eek:

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

... but nothing that wouldn't buff right out

...

(I just noticed that headboard right next to the bed... get it, headboard)

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

you just have to use a good abrasive in a circular motion

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

and here it is glued back on the truck

I figure 1/2 a gallon of bondo and some distance and from 50 feet away it will look as good as new

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

here's the other side for a stare and compare

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

with the engine in to make us go and the drum brakes to make us [ahem] slow down, we turned to the point and shoot stick (see what I did there, "turned" ha ha)

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

I recall mum getting me this OEM three spoke steering wheel for my birthday, and it wasn't cheap I think it cost 1/10th of the truck, but I absolutely love it, thank you mom, we know you are on a fixed income, ha ha (can you get us some gauges for Christmas - please and thank you)

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

Nice project and good score! Great work on the bed side. Will your mom drive it when you get it drivable?

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

Hmmm, I don't thinks so she's too busy driving me crazy and she hardly drives her 2010 Honda Cervix (has only 30,000 miles on it)

by the way Ryan that's quite a line up you got there in your sig !

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

this was either an extra AC Heater Box or after we deleted it

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

and this is how we plan to control the fuel leak

looks like an Eddie Bauer edition

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

I recall my Italian buddy Pontiac Mike really wanting to know the rear diff ratio, so we did this, boy what a DIFFerence

looks like 41 divided by 11 = 3.72727272727272...

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

... 72727272727272727272

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

Thanks. The carb looks like a nice unit and the 3:73s are always nice!

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

here's a look at the passenger side door, and you can see how badly the rear of the bed was damaged in this angle

and those Eagle Eyed amongst you may spot the world's most hideous seats

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

as ugly as these seats are for some reason I skinned them, washed the covers and re upholstered them, why I do not know? ha ha

these will be hitting Craigslist soon!

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

speaking of seats, let me take you inside

it used to look like that, and now it looks like this (progress not perfection)

I am going to clean and paint the inside of the cab, here I was just trying to sort out the Christmas lights

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

oh yeah, I know you all wanna see more messy wiring pics but let me share my seat huntin' and fishin' story

every year, maybe twice a year Pick N Pull has a seat sale, so I goes and I buy these all manual bucket seats for I kid you not $15 bucks each (then pay $600 each to have them covered in cow skin, ha ha), now they is getting harder to find but man do they make great seats

they come from early 90's GMC Sierras and they are the 40 of the 60/40 bench arrangements

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they comes in blue and red (very patriotic) and have really easy to install and work with brackets / pedestals

Note: every 2 years or so the General likes to make little mods to them so try to get a pair born closely together, some differences are obvious like them adding head rests, but some are hidden like some will fold down but others won't I think I did a separate thread on that cause it was driving me crazy why one of my pair would collapse and the other would not

CAUTION: though they have a zipper on the back do not be fooled, the General played a trick on us and glued the front to the foam, it can be gently removed but that's why the reupholstery costs so darn much as they have to add foam and reshape them a bit

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

hope that gives some of youz sum idears and here's what they look like done did! (brand new in the pic as I just picked them up from the shop, they will shrink up nice n tight over time)

here you can see the other newer style with the headrest (the one on the right (90-91 ?) never had a head rest, I prefer those cause they let me wear my cowboy hat in the truck, I'm not sure how easily you can delete it)

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

I recall having an issue with the ignition switch, so I replaced it and it's plug

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

it appears someone mounted a 3rd gen power steering pump instead of the 2nd gen and it sent us down the pulley alignment rabbit hole right quick

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

so we learned about the Gen 2 vs the Gen 3 bottle necks

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

and we were fortunate to source the right 2nd Gen power steering pump, bracket, and pulley

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

but that was only half the battle as now we had to replace the crank pulley to match, I'm the sorta guy that if I aint gonna run AC I don't want the extra groves on the spinny thing, know what I'm sayin'?

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

folks I assure you that mum actually wrenched on this truck right along with me, and this is not a click bait thread, I would remove the driver side valve cover, and I would have her remove the other side type of thing, I would remove one wheel to do the brakes, and she would do the other side, we are still missing some pics (we have sent the failed hard drive to a lab for repair - fingers and toes crossed)

here we see the engine crudely put together for a first fire up, I love those Ram Horn exhaust manifolds! 20 extra horse power on looks alone, am I right?

We don't need no stinkin' wheel wells! ha ha

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and here's the more civilized engine bay (God I love this little truck!)

Notice how the Alternator switched sides, ha ha that's one of the GM fun games they like to play, long (newer style) water pump means alternator on the passenger side (bolted to the water pump), short (older style) water pump means Alternator on the driver's side bolted to the cylinder head. Goodness I hope I got that right!

by the way I hate it when accessories depend and bolt up to other accessories, such as the alternator bolting up to the newer water pump, I think they also do that with the power steering pump bolting up to the driver side exhaust manifold, STOP IT ! hee hee

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

Job well done on the Christmas lights!!
The most common later pickup seat swap I’ve seen is using a 88 and newer bench seat. The seats you have are a generation newer(I don’t know when they changed).
A friend of mine has one of those engines in the 71 he just bought, they are very good engines!!
Carry on!!!
It’s great to see what and how you’ve done!!!

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

Thank, you I think I saw that engine in another 71 on the InterWebs too so maybe that is native to the truck and what originally came with it, I say that because I thought it was a crate motor put in later!?

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

so I went through my notes and confirmed that I bought the truck in April of 2017 and six months later in October it was running and driving

here it is out of the garage under it's own power, I remember mom and I took it around the block for the first time with huge silly grins on our faces, everything rattled, everything squeaked, there was a funny smell, but we didn't care

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I don't know what happens to tailgates with these trucks, are they in the same black hole as all my 10mm sockets? is there some dude with like a 100 of them in his barn in every county?

anywho this truck needed one and I bought one in really good nick, it must have been good I paid $300 for it (mostly cause it said GMC on it cause I'm an idiot and my OCD wouldn't allow for anything else)

well I am going to use this post as a place holder for when I find the pics, so I can show you how much bondo we chisled off of it when we suspected it was unusually heavy ha ha

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once the bondo was chisled and wired wheeled off, we saw a huge dent on the inside of it, the size of a cannon ball

now it is said these trucks built America, so their bed construction is no joke, you ain't gonna pull them dents out with a slide hammer (unless you're Thor of course) and you can't hammer it out from the other side cause of the double walled construction, so...

Note the different looking yard/house, yup we moved 4 times during the ownership of this truck (don't ask, ha ha) the landlords kept selling their rental homes, we used to joke, "want your house sold, rent it to us!"

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alright now this next set of pics is sometime in the future (how do I know, well, yet a different house, we got tired of moving so we bought this one, and yes all 4 homes were within .5 miles of each other, Halloween was a riot, kids trick or treating were like WTH weren't you just in that house over there, ha ha)

check out that tail gate, straight as an arrow, honestly I don't even know how you get an elephant to fit in the bed of that truck, let alone use the tailgate as a step to get up there

we welcome any tailgate straightning advice, I'm thinking lift the front wheel of the truck and put it under and let the weight of the truck flatten it out, maybe put a 2x6 between the wheel and the metal to spread the pressure ???