The Hawaiian Blue 1978 GMC.

[HunterRotten]

HUNTER'S 1978 GMC C15 SIERRA BUILD THREAD

It's crazy looking back on this thread, seeing how fast it makes things go by when a lot of these processes took days and sometimes multiple weekends.

The next patch wasn't entirely necessary however the panel was really beat up and there were tiny rust holes and "pock marks" throughout the area from the surface not being appropriately prepared for the bondo. This area still needs some hammer and dolly work but it's better off with this patch for sure.

We replaced both the inner part of the fender, outer, and a couple of areas inside of the bed. We found that the door patch we had used earlier had the same bend.

[HunterRotten]

HUNTER'S 1978 GMC C15 SIERRA BUILD THREAD

[HunterRotten]

HUNTER'S 1978 GMC C15 SIERRA BUILD THREAD

Sorry if that seemed like a rush, but I really just didn't take too many photos! Did not want to take my gloves off and I was really tired of all the body work. Here is an overview shot of the bed floor after the welding was done for the most part.

Now it was finally time to get around to some of those Christmas goodies, and man did I have some great Christmas goodies! First thing on the menu was changing out my rear leaf springs, which I bought from https://www.thesuspensionking.com/ and were partnumber CHE50 I believe. They are the 4+1 1950 lb rated spring pack. The springs themselves were cheap however shipping was not and they arrived with some heavy duty sticky tape. The tape made the painting process WAY longer than it should have due to all the residue, I ended up giving up and painting over a lot of it.

I needed new springs because my truck was sagging towards the gas tank. I thought these springs would give me a small lift with the flip kit - don't get me wrong, they did.. just not very much I think I gained 0.25" of lift. I was looking for an inch or inch and a half. I should have bought a 1" lift set.

In that last picture you might notice something cool, that something cool also is why this process took a lot longer and we ended up removing springs, adding springs, removing springs, and adding springs again in one day. It wasn't too fun.

[HunterRotten]

HUNTER'S 1978 GMC C15 SIERRA BUILD THREAD

If you weren't able to tell in the last post, that cool thing in the corner of the photo was a part of some caltracs I am fitting onto my truck!

After letting the springs dry for a day and repacking them, we ran into an issue on the install. The overload was in the way on the bar of the caltracs. I for one have some small plans to still use this truck and I didn't want to take the overloads off my new springs, so I had my dad cut them. The clearance right now is scary but it will do for now until we see what it looks like with some weight on the front end.

[HunterRotten]

HUNTER'S 1978 GMC C15 SIERRA BUILD THREAD

There are two more Christmas goodies to share! The next one are the bedrails, and man do I love the bedrails. Believe it or not, my dad and I had run into a set of bedrails prior to my knowledge about the truck and starting the restoration process. The conversation went a bit like this.

Dad: "Look, those are bedrails - and they're for your truck!"
Me: "Bedrails, why would I want bedrails?"
Dad: "They're cool and original?"
Me: "Do they need holes in the bed?"
Dad: "Uhhhhh... yep."

Annnnnnnnd... then they got left for garbage. Few months later I'm buying a set for $100's on ebay. This set hasn't been altered but the driver side set isn't equally spaced and there's about an inch difference for some reason between the posts. It did come with every gasket however the bolts are mixed and need to be replaced. Some are hex and some are phillips.