Dennisch' Pickup! Rolling project.

[Dennisch]

A box of ball joints!

Freshly painted control arms!

Removal of old icky parts!

To go from old on the left to old new on the right!

And as a bonus, something I didn't notice until I had a really close look:

The old spindles are drop spindles and they go down a good 6,5 cm. So that's another bit of raising the car, together with the bigger wheels.

I can already feel the driving comfort .

 

[Dennisch]

It fits! That's the C2500 control arm mounted to my c1500 chassis.

*and the crowd sighs in relieve*

 

[Dennisch]

Shiny white spring is shiny. It was already white but it was a sad white. A new coat makes it happy white again .

How to press in a new lower ball joint.

From bottom to top: wood - steel plates - pipe - control arm - ball joint - pipe - hammer.

The difference in size for the front. Old in front. Together with the spindles it raises the front by 15cm.

BUT THE JOB IS DONE!! Short bed pickup with heavy duty suspension parts .

 

[Dennisch]

Raised the rear by 4 centimeters by using the lower hole. Going to look for original shackles so that it raises the rear even more, and then sell these together with the lowered spindles from the front.

Also.

We've reached equilibrium, well almost, mine's a centimeter lower still.

 

[Dennisch]

It has a new face. Original 1976 GMC grille.

I should visit this thread more often, as I have a giant pile of parts for the pickup ready to be bolted on.

 

[Dennisch]

The time has come. This winter will be the time for the cab restoration. The bed is all but done and ready for paint and assembly.

Driver side cab corner will be the first to go and return in new metal.

And while it is inside, I might as well bolt on the new drop spindles that needed some modification to properly work on the pickup.

The ears where the caliper sits in-between weren't cast properly so I had to add a bit of metal, because the caliper would move too much when braking.

And as it went for its final inspection in October, I also replaced the brakes front and back.

I had a leaky axle seal on the rear so those have been replaced too.

New discs, calipers, hoses and bearings on the front.

And as I'm probably going to take the engine out for painting of the engine bay, I might as well start with placing the headers, PU motor mounts and the othe pile of parts I'm sitting on.

Edit.

Completely forgot the tires.

And I painted the wheels black with new large chrome lug nuts, but I apparently haven't made a proper picture of my car since I did that.

 

[Dennisch]

Cab corners that have been in my possession for quite some time now. It's not quite OEM spec but it will work, I have hammers and cutting tools to make them fit. What I did not have was the inner panel.

Not that difficult to make but time consuming nonetheless. And the holes in the panel give me the opportunity to show off my fancy tool that I should have bought a long time ago.

Hole punching tool, combined with a tool to create an offset in a panel so that you can stack them on eachother for welding.

But I don't use it because it creates a point where debris can accumulate that will definitely start to rot from the inside out.

This is by far the biggest hole on the entire car, including on the bed panels. I'll have to clean it up to see if I can salvage this or it's time for a patch panel too.

The wheels with the new lugs. I'll wait until I have the car all back together and painted to see how it actually looks and if I'm pleased with the black I'll have the wheels powder coated in high gloss black.