Project "River Truck" - CCLB 4x4

[arrover]

The bolt in brace kit has two braces. One large bracket that goes behind the front crossmember and one small one that goes in front of that crossmember. You have to take a small bracket out to install the small ORD brace and the instructions say that you can leave the stock bracket out or put it back in for max strength. I put it back in and I don't know why you wouldn't. It's easy. Some of these trucks come with oil coolers like mine and the oil lines are in the way of the main brace. I checked around and several people wrapped rubber hose around the oil lines to protect them so thats what I did.

The great news is that all of the work was worth it. The truck is MUCH tighter now. It's not quite as tight as my modern truck but it doesn't have much play at all. I no longer have to concentrate on steering and I will feel ok about driving the truck more now.

[arrover]

Since power steering fluid was covering everything for a long time, the rubber tierod and steering arm boots were either badly deteriorated or missing completely. I bought 4 new polyurethane boots from Classic Parts. I think they were $4.50 for two boots. They sent Prothane brand and they seem to fit well. I wanted to use poly boots because they are supposed to resist oils (power steering fluid) and chemicals better than regular rubber.

[arrover]

The previous owner had hit something with the passenger front fender and grill trim and it looked pretty nasty. The headlight trim was also broken and missing alot of paint/chrome. Classic Industries was having a 20% off sale so I ordered new headlight trim and a side grill piece. The grill trim was about $13 and the headlight buckets were $15 each. The bumper was off for the steering brace install.

[arrover]

The power steering fluid had gotten to my swaybar bushings also. The drivers side rear was totally gone and the others were really worn. The rear mounting bolts on the Dana 60 are big and take a 1 1/8 wrench. I used a press to remove the one rear bushing that was still there. The rear mount bolts for the front of the bar are hard to get to (one was right behind the steering brace I just installed). I decided to bend the bracket open just enough to remove the bar/bushing instead of taking off the whole bracket. It worked pretty well.

[arrover]

The new sway bar bushings are Prothane brand and came from Classic parts for $20.

[arrover]

A river truck needs a rack! That's where the canoes go. I chose to go with Thule over Yakima because I already had the bars from a previous car. The square profile kind of goes with the square truck I feel. The feet came from ebay, used for $50 and are Thule model 300. I wouldn't mind if they were a inch or two lower but this is the lowest that they offer.

[Greenlee]

Nice work! The truck looks good.
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[arrover]

Time for an update. It seems like I've been working on the truck quite a bit but no big results to show for it.... Lots of preventative maintenance. At some point the windshield cowl was painted on the truck and overspray got all over the cowl screen. The overspray really bothered me and it also needed to be cleaned out.

[arrover]

I've still got a mid/high rpm stumble that I'm trying to fix. Installed some new plugs, plug wires, fuel filter, and reset the timing but that didn't help.

[arrover]

Since this truck has 150,000+ miles on it, I wanted to replace the u-joints. I've never done u-joints before but with the help of YouTube, a press, and some big hammers, it wasn't that bad. Some of the u-joints really needed it. The new Moog joints are greaseable.

[arrover]

The previous owner had all of this wiring running to the back of the truck to two trailer wiring outlets. There were about 10 splices with about 5 wire nuts.... It's a little bit less of a mess now.

[07XCSBZ71]

Originally Posted by arrover

Time for an update. It seems like I've been working on the truck quite a bit but no big results to show for it.... Lots of preventative maintenance. At some point the windshield cowl was painted on the truck and overspray got all over the cowl screen. The overspray really bothered me and it also needed to be cleaned out.

I'm reading this post with the wife next to me, she looks and says " I thought you were the only person that was that anal about the cowl screen."

I too hate over spray and crap in the cowl. That's the first thing I do when I get a new used truck. Love your truck, its coming along great. Hope you get the stumble figured out.

[arrover]

Haha! That's funny! I'm not sure why the cowl screen bothered me so much but I'm glad that I fixed it. Problem is there are about 100 things on this truck that bother me but I guess that's part of the fun of owning an old truck! It feels great to fix these little problems.

[Sodell]

I know how you feel. I get started on one thing..hours later my wife opens the garage door and asks "do you know its 11?" LOL

[Sodell]

BTW, if you replace that rear sport bumper, please let me know...

[arrover]

I'll keep you in mind Sodell. I have thought about switching the rear to something else but I'm not sure yet.

[Sodell]

I have a work type bumper in the garage you can have. I took it off when I replaced it with a sport bumper. The chrome is faded but it would look good with some paint.

[arrover]

Just a couple of random shots. I was winterizing a jetski with the crewcab. The second shot I was just seeing how the truck box looked in the bed.

[arrover]

I know some people don't like it but I cut the dash for a JVC headunit. This isn't a show truck and I wanted aux inputs and eventually I'll use the RCA outputs for a sub amp. I used the Metra 87-99-3052 install kit which works really well. I also used these Posi-Product connectors and really like them. I made a little how-to video of the whole installation.

How-To Install a Stereo in a 1973-1987 Chevy...

[arrover]

I went to the U-Pull-It for the first time the other day. They just opened one near me about a month ago. It's a fun time walking around looking for parts! I only got a handful of things but I can see myself going back quite a bit. I got everything in the picture for $20. The parts should clean up nicely. My front turn signal les/housing was melted for some reason so the bulb socket couldn't be mounted even though the light worked. 30 seconds at the salvage yard and I had a replacement.

[arrover]

Tonight I replaced all of the cab lights and gaskets for $29! The cheapest I could find at the normal Chevy parts houses was $80. I posted the purchasing info here: http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...57#post6388957 . The gaskets were closer to plastic than rubber after being on the truck for so long. Very brittle and cracked so I just cut them off. Several lenses were cracked and they were all cloudy. The metal under the lights was pretty pitted and rusty. To bad these didn't get changed 10 years ago... The sockets are kind of tough to get into the rubber gaskets. The metal clips that are clipped onto the main hole under the light are the grounding points. Three of my lights didn't work after changing gaskets and I had to wiggle the grounds around to get them back on.

[arrover]

Couple more...

[arrover]

This is just a video of different views of the truck.

1982 GMC 3500 Crew Cab 4x4 - Interesting...

[BONUSCAB]

Truck is looking great! I like what you're doing with it. Keep the good info coming!

[arrover]

The truck got new speakers last weekend! The old Jensens weren't cutting it anymore. I wanted something with a real tweeter. Some previous owner cut the doors for 6.5"s so I'm taking advantage of the holes. The new speakers are Rockford Fosgate Punch 165s. My window seals haven't been replaced yet so I used baffles to keep water off of the back of the speakers. They were a hassle to install but they're in.... I don't think the speakers are really meant to be sealed in a small enclosure so I cut a hole in the bottom of the baffles so they can breathe and for the wires. A hole saw turned backwards by hand cut the foam easily. Anyway, they're in and sound good. They look nice and conservative compared to some of the terrible speaker grills out there these days....