The Hawaiian Blue 1978 GMC.

[HunterRotten]

It's been a little while, I plan on updating this later tonight. Happy thanksgiving!!

edit: I had trouble organizing my photos after transferring and organizing, I'm sorry guys. I'll get it together tomorrow.

[HunterRotten]

Hunter's 1978 GMC Build

Sooooo.. onto that "fun part" I was so excited about. The very first thing we did was jack the truck up in the air on some ramps and test fit some doors. We masked off the areas around the doors and where the fenders bolt up to protect the paint.

At this point, you might be wondering where those fenders came from. For one, those chinese ones in the box are GARBAGE. They needed to be slotted in every direction and the sharp edges nicked the paint and then me - so NOPE to those! A few months past I was browsing craigslist for parts and I found this truck that said it had fiberglass fenders. They were rough but they were cheap and repairable. I picked them up in a heartbeat - AND WOW DO THEY FIT GOOD! I'll look up the pictures I have of that truck and share them here.

[HunterRotten]

Hunter's 1978 GMC Build

Sorry for the low resolution photos but these are mostly from his craigslist ad, besides the bottom picture. I bought the fiberglass fenders and then he just started handed me things - he wanted it GONE! I brought some interior pieces and the door panels as well. I probably should have grabbed more and regret not doing so.

[HunterRotten]

Hunter's 1978 GMC Build

Now that we've taken the scenic detour there for a moment, back onto my blue truck. After doing some research on different sound deadening material I went with a cheap solution off ebay but made sure that the material was butyl instead of asphalt or whatever else they use. The company I used is called GT Mat, it was really easy stuff to apply and I took my time with it. I laid down a few sheets a day over the course of a week. The difference only one sheet made was pretty phenomenal. I cleaned up the edges with some 3M insulation tape.

After I got that project completed I took some leftover speaker wire from a different project and laid out how I wanted my speaker wires to run.

[HunterRotten]

Hunter's 1978 GMC Build

Now you might be wondering. "Speaker wire? Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself?" Yes I am!! While I'm not a big music person I do love some GOOD SOUNDING background noise. When I go this truck that old AM was long gone and that speaker was NASTY.

Since I am going to be using a stock type AM/FM (courtesy of the man who sold me a door stop engine we resurrected) I didn't need anything too fancy so I picked up some rockford fosgates from Amazon warehouse deals. Basically returned speakers for some sort of visual damage. (They didn't have any.) I got R169X3 which is a 6x9 and a R1525X2 which is a 5.25 round speaker.

First thing's first! Let's see if these "used?" speakers work.

CHECK! They do. I was born in the late 90's, I had no idea how to use that dang radio. I had it on AM thinking the switch worked reverse of how it really does and thought I had a dead radio, I was bummed for a good 10 minutes. (It's still rock and roll to me was on, by the way.)

Boom! Just like that they were installed. I had bought bigblock73's cab corner brackets for 6x9's and then got them painted to match. (Notice the new door strikers... oops.)

I had to sit and think if I was going to talk about the 5.25" speakers as I did them a few weeks later after some other progress was made. I'm going to apologize now if I forget and talk about them twice. All we did was take some scrap wood we had around and cut them to fit the speaker hole in the dash.

[HunterRotten]

Hunter's 1978 GMC Build

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
Time to back it up!

I really should update this thread as I go along, I just get so darn lazy about updating it. Instead I make it harder and have to go backwards and forwards. You may have seen a back window in previous posts. I wasn't sure if I was going to talk about it because I simply haven't been happy with it.

It's a slider from CR Laurence, it looks really good but it's absolutely TERRIBLE to use. The screws on the latch have fallen out, and the slider is so stiff the truck was to tip over before I get the window open. The latch, well that's a CR Laurence manufacturing problem - they sent me a new one free of charge. The window not working is a GM manufacturing problem.

My window opening is smaller than usual and has a nasty jut in the frame behind the driver. You can see it in the rubber inside of the cab. I don't want to cut it because the paint is fresh and I don't want to start a spot of contamination. So like any sane human being we took the window frame out and went at it. Unfortunately I don't have pictures of this, it was dark out and I was DONE with this thing! We installed it like 3 times that night. It still is a little stiff for my taste but it's 210% better after grinding.