98 project freshen up
 

About a month ago I bought this 98 from a township auction. One owner truck for the town of Marlboro NJ.. I do a lot of buying cars at auction and scrapping etc with my towing business and although I have a little dodge Dakota plow truck I wanted something I could use as a third truck for my company. This fit the bill because it can tow, plow, and I know Marlboro takes good care of their trucks and provides an entire service record with the truck and this puppy only had 165K on it 5.7 motor.

Got it home and the first thing I did was to go and buy the plow hoop and begin the transfer of the plow that I had on an old 82 Chevy K10 that was pretty rusted and no title, The truck already had the chassis piece on it but the town had removed the controller and the pump set up was a little different

Once that was on and I got her registered , I began the testing to see what was wrong with the truck besides the listed items, and was surprised to find the list was 100% dead on.. We did a center link and steering stabilizer as well as front brakes and rotors. We also cleaned out the balance of the wiring that the town had in there for their radios and other safety apparatus they removed.
I then ran into this parts truck I picked up. The Marlboro truck was not optioned heavily and I decided I wanted to upgrade the seats to the split cloth bench and being a work truck all its life I wanted to get some cleaner dash pieces and maybe throw a carpet down instead of the rubber mat. I figure for $400 it was worth it ( especially after I junked it and got $327 for the carcass)

Re: 98 project freshen up
 

So as we were going along I noticed that the only real rot was along the bottoms of both fenders, in fact both were completely gone for the most part. I had the one fender from my parts truck but the other kinda was fubared , so I bought one from some kid parting a truck out on Facebook .I also noticed the inner fenders were kinda crummy so I found a set of aftermarkets on Ebay that were like $89 shipped to the door so I bought those, and amazingly they showed up in three days . So after the brake job I did on my friend's 11 Taurus my buddy and I decided to swap out the fenders and inner fenders. Im probably going to leave off the flares as Im afraid of the rust returning if I plow

From all the chemicals the guys in Marlboro were using , the top of the steering wheel was all worn down so I scored a like new steering wheel and horn button on Ebay for like $70 shipped to the door and I installed that too...

Re: 98 project freshen up
 

That area is so harsh on vehicles in the winter. I am really surprised that truck isn't more wasted away.

Re: 98 project freshen up
 

looks like a tough little truck

Re: 98 project freshen up
 

it appears to be a nice truck..so my wife is like 5'2" and like all my 4wd trucks had an issue with climbing in.. I guess when you have to try and do a rockettes kick to put your foot in the truck and drag your butt up into the seat once you've hit 50 it gets a little strenuous, and she was objecting to me coming behind her and well grabbing her bottom and giving her a shove, so she asked me if I would consider getting some step bars or something to make it easier on her, so I ordered the black Westin nerf bars from my buddy .
Of course no good deed goes unpunished as the drivers side went in like butter.. bolts came out of the body mounts without any hassle but both bolts on the passenger side snapped on the passenger side.
I pulled that seat and carpet kit out of the other truck so I said to hell with it and we removed the interior of this truck as we had to access the nuts that held the body mounts in to get the old body bolts out. Of course nothing worked except a torch and at least I was lucky enough to have a new set of tanks

Re: 98 project freshen up
 

I knew there was a hole in the floor right where your heel sits when youre driving so I cleaned up the floor some and am preparing to patch the floor pan with the remnants of the smashed door from the parts truck Im planning to POR 15 these floors on top but patch in a section where that hole is. Everything is actually pretty solid except about a 10 inch section by that hole which I will patch in the new metal and seam seal both sides and por15 both sides. I also ordered new door sill plates because both sides the screws were stripped and they cracked off the spacers getting them out, so LMC got more money out of me

Re: 98 project freshen up
 

So today we had some time in the morning to mess with the truck and we patched in a piece of floor using a door skin I cut. ground down more rust pit a spray on rust inhibitor and coated the floor with undercoat both above and below the patch

Re: 98 project freshen up
 

So the original plan was to swap in the seats and floor from the wrecked truck, but when we really looked at the seats , they were warped from the driver and passenger getting rocked around from the impact, plus I really want some kind of arm rest in the center, so those seats were laid aside to go into a junker that will go to scrap. We were able to save the carpet and it fits ok although there are some different cuts from the club cab to the regular cab but nothing that bothers me; this is a freshened up truck that is a beater not a correct OEM restoration. I also ordered new sill plates from LMC and they need to go in, and eventually I will have to clean the carpets I laid in but this is the old seat with a cheap Cabelas cover on it with the new used carpet
We also did a tune up to the motor replacing cap rotor wires and plugs. I have the filter going to get some oil and do that this week

Re: 98 project freshen up
 

She's is going along good. Good to see an old workhorse revived. It still amazes me looking at how nice a truck that is for being a north eastern vehicle.

Re: 98 project freshen up
 

I agree that it was a nice start, which is why I bought it . Apparently some towns do take care of their municipal vehicles. I forgot to mention in the thread that I decided to take out the bed liner that had been installed by the Purchasing Dealer, the entire bed floor was perfect I also found out that this was a grounds maintenance truck used exclusively at the municipal complex and occasionally at the lower school

Re: 98 project freshen up
 

Nice. That will be a good ride when you are thru with the update.

Re: 98 project freshen up
 

Good find! A little bit of undercoat in the right places and this truck should take good care of you for a long time.

Re: 98 project freshen up
 

agree northern trucks get hammered, secret is body washing body washing wax wax wax ..