Rebuilding my 1977 plow truck
 

this is a project that has been going on for about year. I have owned this truck since 1983. Since I have owned it I replaced the body once(1989) and had it repainted with new panels once(1992). It has been getting really bad in the last few years as far as rust and just falling apart.
So I had to make a decision to either replace the truck or fix it one more time. I had bought a different cab from a friend of mine to replace this one but had not been able to find a box for it. The cab I had purchased was ok but it had had some of the panels replaced already and I wasn't sure of the quality of work that had been performed. I knew after last plowing season that I was going to do something because it was coming unglued so bad that there was no way it would make it much longer. So I was on the look out for either a parts truck with a solid body or a good box. I wanted to stay with the round head light front. So I was at the local swap meet and I came across a 82 chevy 1/2 ton 2 whl drive from Georgia. It is pretty rust free and has no engine/trans.
So this is the story on redoing my old friend for the last time, any one interested? Here are pics of the truck before I start.

Re: Rebuilding my 1977 plow truck
 

here is a few more. It may not look to bad in these pics but believe me there really isn't much left. The patches had patches welded on them.

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Plowing is always hard on trucks. Glad you saved it!!!

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Sweet truck. What are the specs on it? Salt is hell...

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Subscribed.
Looking to build a plow truck. I have bodies, just looking for that perfect chassis..

Re: Rebuilding my 1977 plow truck
 

The truck is a K2500 GMC, 400 engine, 350 trans, a/c, sliding rear window. It did have power locks and cruise which I eliminated both this time. I have no real use of power anything on a plow truck. I knew it was really rusty but didn't understand how bad it was until I started taking it apart. I will post a few pics every day to show what I went through to make this thing as good as I could. My problem is, when I build any vehicle now I always want every thing as perfect as I can make it. I had to keep reminding my self of what it is and what I am going to do with it. So I will start with some disassembly pics and go from there. Any questions speak up.

Re: Rebuilding my 1977 plow truck
 

Are you keeping the old plow contols ?
If not I would be interested !!!!!
Thanx.....

Re: Rebuilding my 1977 plow truck
 

Sorry but I would never give up my old style plow control. I buy every reasonable priced old style control that I see at the swap meet just so I have extra parts to keep repairing what I have.

Re: Rebuilding my 1977 plow truck
 

Is it a Western? I found a place back in the Midwest that sells about every part and piece that you could need on my Meyer E47.

Re: Rebuilding my 1977 plow truck
 

Super cool project! keep us posted!

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I have a 85 k30 chassis I need to do thing with. Idk if I want a bogger on 44's or a plow. Or get rid of...

Re: Rebuilding my 1977 plow truck
 

Just a teaser for tomorrow here is some pics of the frame under the donor body. if you look close you can see the factory stenciled lettering on the drivers side frame rail.

Re: Rebuilding my 1977 plow truck
 

So on with the build. I bought this 82 chevy 1/2 ton 2 whl drive at the swap meet for a fair price, I couldn't believe it hadn't sold already. The guy I bought it from said everyone wanted to buy the box not the whole truck and he wasn't going to separate the parts.
So I got it home and started disassembly. It was a really solid with just a few rust spots. The sad part was the vent window posts were broken so water had been coming in and soaking the carpet. It was a good thing I got to it when I did. I got the carpet out of it and dried the floor out before anything else.
So here is some pics of the disassembled donor truck.

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As you can see in the above pics I put the cab on a rotisserie so I could work on the bottom in comfort. If you look at the last pic above you can see how bad the water from the broken vent window has invaded the floor pan. This was the first time I ever had a body with more rust on the inside floor pan than the outside.The rotisserie was one of my better tool purchases. this is the third vehicle I have had on it. If you have one you will wonder how you ever got along without it.
Here is a few more pics with more to come. I learned a lot with this build as far as what it takes to put a newer cab with the older front and frame as you will see in the future posts. Also as you can see the box doesn't have a fuel filler on the passenger side were as the plow truck has dual tanks so we are going to have to fix that also.
The one thing to keep in mind as I am doing this truck I actually am getting the new body ready to go on the plow truck before I disassemble the plow truck even though I showed you pics of the plow truck being disassembled I actually did all the body and paint work on the donor body first then tore the plow truck apart. This may not seem important at this point but I can tell you it actually caused some problems later which you will see and hear about.
Any questions so far?

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I've gotta question: can you do two posts a day? The suspense is killing me! I always want to know how the story ends, like did you get the truck on the road before you had that snow storm.

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I could, but that would take all of the fun out of doing this thread. I think you guys will be interested to see how it all comes out, pitfalls and all. Believe me when you are under a deadline to finish something it seems like any stupid thing that could slow you down does and you will see some stupid things happen here. The old 1 step forward and 2 back.

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So with the cab mounted on the rotisserie we start repairing the bad spots that I found while looking at it. The most obvious spots are the one at the drivers side cab corner and the one on the top of the drivers side rocker. The one on the rocker must of had something laying on it and holding water. The strangest spot was the one at the bottom of the rear window. I didn't see it until I pulled the glass and rubber off. It didn't have anything that should have caused it to get rusty there, so my thought was it probably had the glass changed at one time and they scraped a bit of the paint off. Who knows.
So with rear window I had to figure out how I was going to repair it because of the tight bends in that section. so here is a few pics of the rusty spots and the repairs to them.

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So to repair the rear window area I had to figure out if I was going to make a piece to repair it or find something similar to weld in. I have a couple of metal brakes but sometimes I can be lazy and look for better/faster way of doing something. The other thing that I had to figure out was the cowl area. The cab was a 82 and my front end is a 77 so the cowl is different with the hinge pockets. I did a lot of research on doing this swap before I actually did anything. Most of what I read on here and other places was just weld some metal over the top of the hinge holes and call it good. That bothered me for a few reasons, the main thing to me as I said at the beginning of this thread was I have problem with things not looking correct. So all that being said my options were to cut up my plow truck to get the cowl pieces and the rear window repair piece I needed or find another 73-80 parts truck. Guess what happened? I was on my way home one day and saw the neighbor had pulled one of his dads GMC/Chev trucks out of the woods and parked by the garage. I have known this family since I was about 12 and I knew the granddad had went into a nursing home and the grand daughter was living there. But everytime I went by there was never any one around. So one Saturday I was coming home from work and I saw the garage door was open and there was a loader tractor running around the property. So I stopped in and the son was moving dirt away from the wall of the garage next to the GMC truck. So I finally got his attention and told him I was interested in the truck for parts. I asked him what his plans were for it and he told me basically that he was going to pull the engine/trans out of it and scrap the rest. So I ended up making a deal that I would pull the engine/trans out for him if I could have the rest of the truck. I came back to town and grabbed the tow truck from the shop and picked up the truck that afternoon. I towed it home and was going to back it on to my hoist so I could disassemble it carefully and take my time. The problem with that plan was I jumped out of the tow truck to open my garage door and saw a couple of mice sticking their heads out of the rusty cab corners. So I decided I really didn't want that truck inside of the building. This was the middle of October 2015 which thankfully was a very nice weekend and I cut the whole truck up in 2 days and got it out of there. I sadly didn't take any pics of that truck because I was in such a hurry to get it gone. It was a 79 GMC heavy half.

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So the 79 parts truck solved some issues for me without cutting up my plow truck before winter started last year. Had to make it through 2015/16 winter with the rusty patched truck.
I cut out the cowl pieces, rear window piece and the guess what? this parts truck the fuel filler was on the passenger side so that also solved the problem with the new body fuel filler pieces I needed.
I started cutting the cowl on the 82 cab to remove the hinge pockets and make it look like it was a 73-80 style cowl. What do you think? it was a few hours of work that most people will never see but it makes it look right in my IMO.
Any questions or comments?

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Nice work, looking really good!

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That OCD can really cause a guy a lot of work. It is worth it in the end to know it is done right.

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C.S.Hades, thanks for bringing us in on the story. This'll be fun to watch.

Re: Rebuilding my 1977 plow truck
 

Moving right along. it was time finally to start going forward with the body work. As most of you know square body trucks have a lot of closed areas and seams for all that nice salt and whatever else they decide to spread on the roads these days. So I decided I was going to do my best to stop or at least majorly slow down the process. So what I did was start by spraying the cab with an epoxy primer. I sprayed the bottom, outside and inside the cab. Then I seam sealed every seam, edge and made plates to close in the rear of the rockers. Then I poured por15 into every cab body crossmember, body mount and rocker. I kept rotating the body on the rotisserie until I had por15 running out any holes or any of the seams that were not completely sealed. It did make a bit of a mess on the shop floor but I wanted to make sure I had everything coated. I then used a product called Lizard skin on the floor under the cab and inside the cab. I had decided a while back that I wasn't going to run carpet or mats in this cab to hopefully keep the floors dry, even after getting in with wet boots I can just wipe the water up with a towel. The black is the lizard skin which is a ceramic product, there is a heat product and a sound product. I used both in this project and all of the other ones I have done.

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Extra post for MTCK today. To move things along here are the pics from painting the cab and cab floors. After reviewing the pics it looks like I painted the outside before the floor Lizard skin pics, but you get the idea. I had the local NAPA store mix the paint. The colors are Holly green and buckskin. I think the green is a little bit darker than the original that was on the truck but I like it. It is a base coat-clear coat. The floors were recoated with epoxy over the Lizard skin then painted. I am hoping with all the seam sealer, epoxy primer and base and clear it will keep the rust devil at bay for a long time. Plus I always like the look of body color on the bottom of something, It looks like real effort was put in compared to just spraying it black. What do you think?

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Hahaha thanks! Great progress and I love the colors. That is going to look great when it's done and hopefully will last a long time. Are you going to do some sort of conduit for your interior wires? Might consider running them down the trans hump instead of tripping over them along the driver's door jamb?

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So moving along to the box. As I said before the plow truck has dual tanks and the new box only had a tank on the drivers side. I called around a couple of junk yards to see if anyone had a box that I could get the filler door I needed but all of them told me that they had scrapped all of that old stuff. So I lucked out with the acquiring of the 79 parts truck because it had the filler door on the right side. I just cut a big area out of the box around the filler door area and then trimmed as needed to install it in the new box. I measured it about 5 times before I started cutting, it came out good. I welded in the new door, hammering and pulling as necessary to keep it as flat as possible. I painted and seam sealed the back of the panel and skim coated the outside, primed and painted.
I started on the doors after that, cleaning all the edges and welding the holes shut from the little mirrors that were on the truck. I drilled the mount holes for the bigger mirrors that came with the 77. Epoxy primed, primed, sanded, sanded some more and then finally painted.

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Here are some pics with the paint on the box.

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here is some of one of the doors. Any questions or comments?

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Looking great. Do you plow commercially or just your own stuff? What year did the gas fillers get doors? I recall my '77 didn't have them.

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I only plow my business property downtown which is 2 parking lots and front door areas, my driveway at home and a couple of the neighbors driveways which are more like roads back into the woods. I did at one time plow commercially, I would spend up to 19 hours in this truck at times. I finally had enough of that about 16 years ago and got rid of all my accounts.
As far as the fuel filler doors, the 77 had the fuel caps without doors, when we redid the truck in 92 the new box sides only came with filler doors. The 82 also had filler doors so I just stayed with that. It actually was interesting to get all of the pieces together for the right side filler necks, hoses and vent tubes. Everything was a different size, so I ended up making an adapter from exhaust tubing to get the 79 filler neck to work with the 77 90 degree filler hose on the tank. I used everything on the left side fuel system from the 82 so all that worked without any adapting.

Re: Rebuilding my 1977 plow truck
 

Super nice work!!! How many miles on the truck? Sounds like it has earned its keep!

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I don't know how many miles are on the truck at this point because of the body swap back in 1989 and I have replaced the speedo once or twice since then because of noise etc. Plus when you are plowing a lot of the miles are in reverse which actually takes miles off the odometer. The engine, trans and transfer case have all been rebuilt at one time or another. I have never done anything with the differentials. The front axle shafts and u-joints have been replaced a few times. I just keep fixing what goes wrong. I have bought other trucks in the past to replace this one, but I always go back to this truck. I know its faults and I know what it will and wont do in most situations. Its like that old pair of comfy shoes that you just cant part with.

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That's pretty cool! In a modern day of disposable everything it's nice to see old vehicles being used well and fixed up as needed. This certainly will be one nice plot truck! I get a lot of compliments on my rusty old 83 3/4 ton people just love that it's still in use.

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OK so next up. I don't know how many of you guys have had one of these trucks completely apart, but I can tell you they take up a lot of room. So I decided next on the agenda was to get the frame done and get the drivetrain back in the frame so it wasn't spread all over the shop floor. I believe that I sandblasted and painted the frame in mid june. I usually have a sandblast party in October every year but this was a special situation that I wanted done asap. I can tell you sandblasting in the summer time is no picnic.

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So after sandblasting I used KBS coatings on the frame. It is like POR15. I blasted the frame, treated with their rustblaster and brushed the coatings on. When everything was dry after about a week, I bent new copper/nickel lines for the fuel and brake systems. I also replaced all of the engine/trans mounts with energy suspension poly mounts. I replaced all of the rubber hoses on the brake and fuel systems. I also replaced the shocks while I was at it. I had replaced the springs on all 4 corners about 10 years ago, everything looked good there so I left well enough alone. I also bent up new heat shields for the fuel valve, exhaust pipe passenger side and the fuel hose shield on the drivers side from 16 gauge stainless steel with stainless bolts holding them on. I used all stainless clamps and bolts on the lines so hopefully nothing gets crusty again.

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After sandblasting and painting the frame. I reassembled the drivetrain in the frame as stated above. The thing I hate worse than the parts all over the shop, is having to push a project around by hand. So I decided my next step before I painted anything else was to reassemble the truck enough that it could be moved around under its own power.

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I had put the glass in the body before putting the cab back on the frame. That way I could do it on the ground without working on a ladder and working around the engine. I am very glad I did it that way. The new rubber is a hand full to get and keep in place before you install the glass. Then I had to figure out how to put in the windshield and rear window lock strips. I searched on this site and found enough info that I got it handled with just a bit of swearing and fighting. I also want to mention the body mounts. I got new energy suspension poly body mounts(I used the mounts for a 1977). I looked every where for rubber ones but had no luck finding them. I also had to rebuild some of the really rusty washer/spacers for the mounts. I used 1/2 inch pipe and welded them into the washer after blasting all the pieces. I painted everything and greased everything as I was putting it together. I also want to mention the difference in the box mounting from a 77 to a 82. The only problem I ran into was the 2nd bolt hole on the drivers side was in different spot. I drilled the frame to match the box and everything bolted down nicely. I also wanted to say that I used the wiring from the 82 cab. I usually always install a new wiring harness in any project that I am doing but this one looked perfect and used ATO fuses instead of the glass fuses and worn out wiring that was in the 77. The box went on nicely with the help of my hoist. I just used a block of wood and rags to cushion it. It balanced perfectly and I just backed the truck under the box and set it down. I was a little nervous doing it on my own for fear of the box tipping off the hoist but it stayed exactly where I put it. Any questions so far?

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If you need/want any NEW body harnesses, lemme know! I've got most of what you'll need to install-I currently don't have dash harnesses available but I have everything else.

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I also wanted to say that it is interesting to move a truck around while sitting on the floor. The seats were out to the upholstery guy getting redone. It wasn't to bad moving the truck around without the doors, but after putting the doors back on, it was much more difficult to see where I was going backing into the shop. It was also interesting without the box on the rear and high idle kicking in. Believe me these trucks do great burnouts with no effort not having weight on the rear.

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What does a harness cost? We redid a guys 85 in the shop that brought us a Painless kit. I wasn't really impressed with the gauge of wire and some of the circuits that were lacking and we had to make up. It also didn't have any of the factory style connectors with it. Somebody else had tried to wire his truck and had thrown away all of the factory harness so we had really nothing at that point. Luckily I was working on my truck at the time so we used some of my old connectors to finish his wiring. I usually use Ron Francis wiring kits for the hot rod wiring jobs we do in the shop. The Francis' kits are also pretty generic.