Project "River Truck" - CCLB 4x4

[rusty76]

I've enjoyed reading this and I hope to see more.

[arrover]

The dash in my truck was really bad. I would have liked to buy a brand new dash but I didn't want to spend the money. After seeing Insidious '86's dash recover, I decided to that. Here are some pics of the process:

[arrover]

First step was to cut off the parts of the dash next to the cracks. This where the dash plastic was curled up and it would have made the new dash material not lay flat. Then cut out the foam in the widened crack.

[arrover]

A previous owner already has cut speaker holes all four lower doors so I'm going to use those locations. I welded in plates over the stock speaker locations.

[arrover]

Then I used expanding foam to fill the cracks and speaker locations. After it cured I cut it off almost flush with the dash and sanded it down the rest of the way flush. I used the regular expanding foam, not the big gap filler/high expanding.

[arrover]

Ibought 3 yards of material and some 3M "Foam Fast 74" glue at Hancock Fabrics. I chose a fabric that feels and looks kind of like suede. I figured that it would hide imperfections in the dash underneath. It's backed by a black felt so it helps hide bumps in the dash. The downside is that you can see the black felt on some of the cut edges. Hancock Fabrics also has some nice headliner material there that I'll probably be buying sometime....

[arrover]

And..... here it is sitting in the truck. The dash pad and gauges are just sitting there not screwed down. I think it turned out fair. It's fine for the purpose of this truck but its far from perfect. The project was harder and much more time consuming than I expected it to be. I probably have 10-12 hours in this but only $36.84. The hardest part of the project is figuring out the cuts and seams. I also minorly screwed up gluing the material down and it caused some small wrinkles on the top of the dash. I still need to paint the defroster vents.

[arrover]

I built a video that gives a little more detail on the dash recover project:

How to Recover Your Dash - 1973-1987 GM Truck -...

[rusty76]

Looks like you are making progress..

[Budman56]

I think if you did this again the process is good up to the material, thats were I would stop and take it to a shop and have them spay it with bed liner and then you can paint to match after that all done.

[arrover]

I read a thread somewhere where that was done and it worked well. I think they may have used bondo in the cracks. I just didn't want a bedliner coverd dash.

[arrover]

Nothing to exciting going on with the truck. I was changing the front and rear diff fluid and found that the pilot bearing in the rear (14 bolt FF) was gone. All of the bearing rollers were stuck to the magnet at the bottom of the rear end. Installing the new pilot bearing wasn't too bad.

Couple of tiny projects over the last couple of days:
I cleaned the shifter boot and painted the trim ring and screws. Do you like my carpet? It was originally red....

[Sodell]

It's the little things that keep you going! I will bring over a case of beer, and a bottle of apple pie if you will do my dash in black....

[arrover]

One of the previous owners had installed some threaded rings through bed floor in order to tie down loads. I need tie downs in the bed but having them in the bed floor won't let me use a bed mat. Today I bought some stainless threaded rings and replaced the bottom bolt that attaches the front bed panel to the side panel. I backed the rings with some large washers and nylock nuts. These won't be for holding lots of weight. Just to keep things from rolling around or sliding out the back when the tailgate is down.

[BONUSCAB]

Truck looks great! Subbing!

[arrover]

Thanks guys. Sodell, thanks for the offer but I really don't feel qualified to do a dash for someone elses truck, and honestly, I just don't want to do another one! Haha! We'll have to try to meet up sometime though.

[arrover]

Not much progress lately but a few things....

A friend of mine gave me his old bed mat. It has a flap cut in it for a goose neck ball but it's not bad for $0.

[arrover]

The GMC logo on my grill was pretty faded so I repainted it red. At some point I'm going to need to get a new grill but this helped a little.

[arrover]

Friday I stopped by a junk yard and found a Jeep Cherokee XJ steering shaft for $35. Saturday I installed it. It's a fairly straight forward install but unfortunately it didn't help my particular truck. The play in my system must be somewhere else.

[terrylgreenjr]

do you have any more info about the steering shaft swap? I need to replace my rag joint on my shaft but this looks like a good upgrade to factory stuff

[arrover]

There are some good threads on colorodok5.com. Some of them you may need to be a paying member. I'm going to build a video with some more information on it. I just haven't had a chance to do that yet.

Try this thread: http://coloradok5.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2932920

This one is about 37 pages long but I think you have to be a paying member: http://coloradok5.com/forums/showthr...steering+shaft

[arrover]

Here's the Jeep Cherokee steering shaft how-to video. Make sure and read the video description because there is additional information in there.

73-87 Chevy/GMC Truck Steering Upgrade - Jeep...

[Hoods69BadBowTie]

Cool build its looking great so far. Like the little things you have done that add character to it. Keep up the good work and have fun using it as well

[arrover]

I've been working on several truck projects this week and I figured it was time to update the build thread.

Apparently the truck has had a power steering leak for a long time.... It had a super thick coating of dirt and power steering fluid caked on the axle and steering components. I scraped it off, used degreaser and a power washer and most of the grime is off now. After that I was able to figure out that the steering box is leaking at it's input. It sounds like this is a fairly common problem. I haven't fix it yet. After the cleaning I greased all of the steering joints and found a broken grease zerk on the underside of the Dana 60 drivers side kingpin. Luckily it came out pretty easily with a screw extractor and I had a new one to replace it with.

[arrover]

Even though the Jeep XJ steering shaft install went well, it didn't make much difference in my steering looseness. I just misdiagnosed the problem. Even after the shaft swap I still had about 40-50 degrees of play in my steering wheel before the truck would start to turn. It was enough that I haven't wanted to drive the truck very far. All of the steering rod and tie rod ends seemed to be tight. No one else was around so I started the truck and turned the steering wheel through the wing window and the dang steering box was still moving quite a bit on the frame. I had tightened this up after I first bough the truck and it helped, but didn't cure it. After the steering box was removed from the frame, you can see how the bolt holes were ovalized. I decided to buy a weld in frame repair kit and the bolt in steering box brace from ORD: http://www.offroaddesign.com/catalog/steeringkit.htm . The total was $233 shipped and the install was what I consider to be difficult. Welding in difficult locations and bolting through tight holes in the ORD brace, frame, weld in plate, and the steering box.... It took much longer than I thought it would. The white paint on the frame is weld through primer. I figured I didn't want the frame and plates to be uncoated where they aren't welded. I did have to take a little bit of metal off the front of the weld in plate because it interfered with the bumper bracket. Oh yeah, I took the bumper off and it made working under the truck alot easier. The brace comes with bolts but you need to buy longer bolts if you use the weld in plate. Lowes has the grade 8 bolts, nuts, etc. I used three 7/16-14 x 3.5" bolts and one 7/16-14 x 2"??? bolt. I also loctited the bolts and used nuts on the outside of the steering box. After it was all welded I sprayed it black.