#minijimmygmc Wifey's 1990 K5 Jimmy rebuild

[chevy3100truck]

So my wife decided late in 2016 that she wanted to ditch her Trailblazer (truly hated that thing) and get a square body Blazer/Jimmy or Suburban. I ended up trading her Trailblazer for an 86 Suburban (which has parts from at least 3-4 different trucks on it) and some cash to buy a project for daily driver.

Finding a K5 that wasn't completely rotten around here is virtually impossible, so I just took the best I could find at a sane price ($2500 - Canadian). From the records I got with it, it looks like it had 1 owner from 1990-2012 who kept all the service records. It was then sold to a guy who added the lift & tires as a weekend mud toy. Had 160,000KM (100000 miles) on it. Typicaly 350/700r4 setup, dealer installed AC that sort of worked (I really didn't think dealer installed AC was still a thing by 1990 but apparently it was....)




My daughter decided it would be called the "Mini-Jimmy" since she thought it was small and cute lol. Well, it is a lot shorter than the Suburban but it was sitting on 38" Swampers with a 6" lift......

Needless to say, it didn't look too bad, but I knew it had it's share of warts.


It was really fun to drive home on snow & ice covered roads with the swampers and a stuck drivers side front brake caliper....

So - first things first - gut the interior - how I hate red interiors.....

[chevy3100truck]

So out comes the interior, not much left of the floors & sides of the cab behind the front seats as expected (there were some lousy attempted repairs by the previous owner).






I was surprised at how good the rest of the floor looked however considering it didn't have a tailgate window (who knows for how long) and being as it was winter when I picked it up, the inside was full of snow & ice lol. The drivers side tailgate post was also a mess......

[chevy3100truck]

First things first - have to fix this mess -




Cab mounts were replaced on both sides from where the material was good (not all the way across the cab, but a decent portion from the rockers in towards the center) For the floor panel replacement I didn't bother buying repop panels as the worst area was a flat section with a drop off towards the rocker. I would have just ended up cutting up new panels and then still having to fabricate a bunch, it was just as easy to just patch everything together - it's not a show truck, just meant to be a daily driver.




A bit of grinding to clean up the ugly stich welds and some seam sealer to make sure it's all water tight



I put back a seat belt mount where it was rotten on the passenger side (rot was cut out below the mount on the drivers side) however I wasn't going to be using these mounts after upgrading the seats.

[chevy3100truck]

The rotten tailgate post was the next thing to get attention -


a bit of cutting and using a trimmed up patch panel and we get this -


Some more repairs in the taillight cavity, not too concerned about looks since this will never be see with the taillight in the truck. Just had to be functional and cut out all the rust that was there. This side had a bunch, the passenger side was completely clean.

[chevy3100truck]

Next up - getting the seat mounts in for the 2005 Yukon Denali rear seat. This was a split 3rd row that I picked up off of craigslist. One of the issues with a 1990/91 K5 that separates it from the earlier ones is that the rear seats have 3 point seat belts with an attachment on the roof. Basically - you can't take the roof off and have seatbelts.... (and using 2 point belts in the back would lead to issues if we ever had to take it through inspection).

Being as my wife wanted a K5 for the ability to have the roof off we needed a different solution for summer time. The Yukon seats with built in 3-points were the best solution, and being leather was a bonus for sure. It helps that they are about the perfect width for sitting between the wheel wells on a K5.

These pics just show the patching where the old seat mounts were, but there are 1/8" thick steel plates underneath the floor spanning all the way across the tub under both rows of mounting brackets - if the seats come out they are taking the entire floor with it. Where the floor is raised there are spacers between the floor and the steel backing plate, I wasn't going to try to make the backing plate conform with the corrugated floor.






The front seats are out of a 2001-2007 Chevy Silverado for now, picked up some cloth power seats for $20, then found $12 in the console lol. Not the ones I want, I need to find 1999-2000 3-door truck seats that have the rear lever for tipping them forward, but the price was right. I actually took a pic of the steel backing pieces for underneath the floor for these seats, 2 pieces for each seat, bolted from the bottom to the factory seat mount bolt locations, and then the seats are bolted down from above through the floor and the 1/8" thick plates.

[chevy3100truck]

The floor now needed to get a bit of paint, so I used Duplicolor roll on bedliner to coat the entire floor since a local liquidation place was selling it for $5/quart. I wouldn't have trusted this stuff for an actual truck bed, but for the interior it adds some mass to the floor to help with acoustics and block a bit of heat.




Added some Eastwood X-Mat acoustic insulation, their equivalent to Dynamat, to some areas of the floor before covering it all in a cheap aluminum backed polyurethane heat insulation material.




Vinyl floor went in (no more carpet!) & the rear seats dropped in. (The vinyl floor need to relax more, I was installing this at night when it was cool outside)

[Palf70Step]

The mini-Jimmy is coming along very nice. Can't wait to see what else you do to her.

[chevy3100truck]

so when the truck has a 6" lift, 35" tires and you have old school swing out doors that only have about 6'6" clearance you have to get creative to get it in the garage for the winter - and not care about the beat up old asphalt driveway too much lol



Drove it in on it's own that way on just the junk wheels. Only left a few grooves in the asphalt..... didn't hurt the concrete floor in the garage at least.

Once it was clear of the door I could put it on dollies and move it around - just have to be careful not to hit the tracks for the garage doors as they are bloody low.

[chevy3100truck]

so the truck had an oil leak, and had the typical blue smoke on startup, so I figured this was the appropriate way to deal with it



Got my trusty assistant to give me a hand.....


and tear down the engine

[chevy3100truck]

Just a quick and simple rebuild on the 350 - new rings & bearings, new slightly larger than stock cam, and freshened up heads. The bearings that came out of it were all in good shape with the exception of the cam bearings - they were ugly. Being as I'm leaving it with the factory TBI for now, not a whole lot I can do to the engine without having issues (well, not without throwing money at it which I don't really think is worth doing with the factory TBI)



mostly complete - accessories, water pump, brackets etc. will go back on once the engine is back in the chassis


Sandblased & painted the accessories etc as needed. Had to get a friend to weld up one of the accessory drive brackets as it had a crack in it. Also learned a valuable lesson - after you degrease & pressure wash a bracket that still has the tensioner on it don't leave it outside for a week, the bearing will rust up really nicely lol (I can't believe I did that - I meant to bring it inside, but forgot it with some parts I was storing outside)

[chevy3100truck]

I had pulled out the funky ARA dealer installed air conditioning, it sort of worked, but I think it had as much leak sealer in the system as it did refrigerant. I didn't realize that dealer installed air was still a big thing in 1990, but the Jimmy was pretty bare bones with manual windows & locks, only a power rear window.

So I sold this pile of stuff to a guy who just wanted the engine compartment box that adds AC to a non-ac inner heater box.


Since it is the wife's rig, and she really wanted AC (even though the top will be off most of the time when it's hot out.....) I ordered a complete Vintage Air kit for it. It will be way cleaner in the engine compartment, and quite frankly I hate dealing with the vacuum operated doors on the factory stuff...

Block off plates for the vintage air installed -


Interior also got gutted again -

[Palf70Step]

Work looks good. Your mini miget looks great.

[chevy3100truck]

Installed the rearend in the truck for a test fit, it'll have to come out again once I figure out the wheelbase adjustment needed due to the shackle flip kit and the pinion angle once the engine is back in (stupid me didn't bother to check the angle at the transfer case before I pulled the engine).



Finally removed the rear bumper & tailgate, someone at some point had thought it was a good idea to weld a bumper bolt in place instead of, I don't know, replacing the bumper bolt or finding the right nut for it....... Ordered up new bumpers anyhow as this truck had the style with the rubber strip across them which I'm not really fond of.

[chevy3100truck]

more detail stuff - with the tank out I scraped off all of the old undercoat & cleaned off all the mud so I could repaint the tank & straps.



Figured I might as well pull the filler neck out now since it's coming out for the repaint anyhow, ended up having to wire wheel out some rust around the filler neck & primed then sprayed it with a bit of undercoating. It can be ugly since no one will ever see it lol

[chevy3100truck]

Hopefully this weekend I'll get all the new steering parts in as well as the Off Road Design steering box brace. Then maybe get the bumper brackets painted, get the tank installed as well as the trailer hitch then eventually move on to bodywork.....

[chevy3100truck]

Well, Saturday was one of those days when you seem to work all day but don't really get what you wanted done accomplished....... Removed the windows, 2 out of 3 successfully lol. The windshield had a chip in it which became an instant spiderweb crack as soon as I put a bit of pressure on it to get it out of the seal, so I guess I'll be getting a new one of those ordered in

Gas tank and hitch got installed, taking way longer than it should have (had an argument with the gas tank straps, for whatever reason they were very hard to get stretched out enough to get the first thread started on the bolts - operator error I know)



Sunday, well, at least we finally got around to putting in the new steering components as well as the steering box bracing kit from Off Road Design. Unfortunately, we also figured out that I had ordered the wrong front shocks from ORD, and now would either need to return & exchange them or add mount extensions. Since I'm in Canada, return shipping is going to be pretty much just as much as getting the F250 shock brackets, I figured I'd just order those, hopefully will have them for next weekend.

[Dads79GMC]

Awesome stuff!!! Looking good!!!

[chevy3100truck]

Well, got the Off Road Design extended shock mounts for the front cut up & mounted in place. Ended up raising the mounting point for the new Bilstein 5125 shocks by 2 1/2" which should get the shocks close to the center of their travel at ride height and allow the axle to contact the bumpstop on the frame before bottoming out the shock.



Also installed the rear shock braces from ORD, well, just mocked them up and drilled the holes since the shocks need to get installed first, and I'm going to have to drop the rear axle again to correct the wheelbase & pinion angle, but need to have the engine back in the truck etc. first before I can do that.

[chevy3100truck]

So after getting the front shocks on (which was pretty much the last piece of the front end to be done for now) I figured I'd strip the trip off the sides of the Jimmy. Not sure what adhesive was used, but was 28 years old and still stuck very good lol.



The fun that trim can hide..... I won't be putting trim back on so this dent underneath the trim will have to get fixed. Have a bit of access from the rear, but if I can't straighten it enough I guess I'll just cut and replace the dented area.....



Lastly, decided to see how hard it'll be to strip the paint off. Just took a razor to the right side of this pic, couple minutes later and the primer was exposed. For the left side of the pic I used a bit of paint stripper and then scraped it off 10 minutes or so later. Might end up razoring a lot of the paint off and using the stripper for the primer, not sure. The stripped makes a massive mess though....

[chevy3100truck]

Spent a little more time this week on stripping paint. Just used a razor to get the topcoat off, the primer seems to sand off fairly easy with a DA, so not going to bother with paint stripper unless I need to.

About 3 hours total with a razor to get both sides to look about like this -



Since the top needed to be off for a while I figured I'd get it done & out of the way first. Started sanding off the old textured paint that GM had used on the fiberglass tops, it actually comes off much easier than I expected it too. The plan is to likely paint the top white both inside & out. Once it's painted I can get it out of the garage and tackle the bodywork on the Jimmy itself.




Also got around to sanding & painting the rad support. Just using good old Tremclad spray bomb on this like the engine bay so I won't be as pissed off at the inevitable scratches on it when I put everything back together lol. It's mostly re-assembled in this pic, just missing the headlight trim rings which are semi-gloss black.

[chevy3100truck]

well, lots of sanding later an 90% of the tub surface is now bare metal. Unfortunately the last 10% will probably take as much or more time than the first 90% lol.

At least there haven't been any hidden surprises yet, truck has never had a re-paint and hasn't had any real body damage other than what I already knew about (a dent in a crappy spot on the body line beside the fuel filler, a dent under the driver's side taillight, and two dents on the roof). The only other issues so far are a couple of small dings & dents and a broken spot weld on the drivers door.

[chevy3100truck]

Well, it's been a while since I've had a chance to post any updates.....

This was the dent that worried me the most on the body -


ended up with a bit of hammer & dolly work and a bit of heat I could get it 90% out. A bit of body filler and it'll be all good (this is just a daily driver after all). The photo seems to make it look worse than it is after straightening it a bit, the body line is back to being good, just needed a bit of filler below it.


broken spot welds on the drivers door - not really sure why this would have happened.


bit of welding & grinding and it's good to go

[Dads79GMC]

Great work on that dent!!

[chevy3100truck]

After that it was time to weld up the trim holes around the back of the truck since I'm not putting the plastic body trim back on it. Only 3 holes on each side which was nice lol



Then, since the Jimmy isn't going to get the carpeted panels back on the doors, I welded up those holes as well. I might just leave them painted, or maybe will make something to cover them, haven't decided yet, but it's always easy to drill new holes if I put something there.

[chevy3100truck]

There was lot's more of little filling stuff in the body, but nothing serious, just little dents, parking lot dings, etc. Just the typical stuff for an old truck, with the exception of the lack of rust on the body.

Figured I'd try to fit the new fenders (the originals had been trimmed by a previous owner, so it gets re-pops)


Of course one of the brand new fenders has a dent in it..... And they've been sitting in my trailer for a few months, so it's not going back to the shop.



Luckily a bit of hammering got it pretty much straight and a skim coat of body filler got it exactly where it needed to be.