Bought this 81 last July to originally just make a beater truck. Found out the transmission was bad in it, and the motor had a bad rod bearing. Discouraged, I went back and forth on whether to sell the truck or not. Well I ended up just rebuilding it. Rebuilt the motor from the crank up, had the block bored .20 over, head redone, and all new internals. Found a G52 transmission for cheap and put it in along with dual transfer cases, and 4.7 gears. Went with Yukon Zip lockers and 5.29's in the front and rear ends. 4" lift springs and high steer. Went over the whole truck with raptor liner, OD green and fabbed up a front winch bumper. Threw in some Honda civic seats and fabbed up some diamond plate door panels. Just got it drivable last weekend, does pretty good on the streets and flexes like a champ. Thought I would share a few pictures from the build.

 

Great job, man! Love it when someone chooses to save an old ride over scrapping it.
could you post some pics of your front bumper, including how it is mounted to the frame? I haven't had much luck finding aftermarket bumpers I'm willing to pay for for the first gen trucks...

 

Looks like you are making great progress on getting it back on the road. Great job.

 

Very cool. Subscribed
7 years ago there were a lot of these getting built on YT, now just a few. Another 7 from now the 84-88 will be rare builds. Keep up the good work.

 

Thanks guys, here are some pictures of the bumper as requested. I welded a 2x4 piece of square tubing to the frame with drilled plates on the end of the tubes. The bumper is bolted to that with 4 grade 8 7/16" bolts. The bumper started as a 6' piece of 2x6 U-channel. I notched and bent it and capped it with 1/8" plate. Just made a center console today out of a few ammo cans I had laying around, I'm proud of it.

 

Just realized today that my input seal on my transmission is leaking gear oil. Kicking myself, that's the only seal I didn't think to replace while I had everything out.

 

Great job bringing this old pickup back!

 

That ammo can center console is so nice. Well done sir, clean ride.

 

Looking good. Keep up the good work.

 

Thanks fellas, I got the trans back out, fixed the seal and got it going again. Since then, I've pulled all the carpets and put 2 gallons of black spray in scorpion liner in the floor. I'm not sure it was the best idea cause now I'm dealing with heat. Looking for solutions, if you have any ideas, I'm open. The transmission hump gets pretty warm. We were running back during the summer and it really heats up the cab just creeping trails. I've got to get something to at least go over the hump but really don't want to go back with carpet. Any thoughts? Here's a picture of her out on the trails.

 

MAN! That thing looks great! What brand of leaf springs did you use? my truck is lifted about the same with 35's, and rides like a log wagon, and doesn't really flex as well as yours off road, even though somewhere along the line, i think it got chevy 63" springs, since the frame bracket was cut off and welded further forward....

 

Nice work, wow!

 

Thanks! I went with the trail gear springs 4"kit front and rear. Mine rides pretty good. I had to play with the rear shackles quite a bit to get the ride/flex right but I finally got them set right.

 

Dag dude. For someone that was on the fence for getting rid of it, your sure did it right. That things awesome. Well done.

 

Thanks man I appreciate it.

 

Nice rig. I like the body work done to it.

 

Maybe this might work? https://jet.com/product/detail/1eebc...4-4c009c7e6fe7 Saw on car build off show where they used a similar product. I have never tried it, just an idea.

 

Rockauto has molded vinyl flooring as well as carpet available for these trucks with different types of backing.

 

Thanks for the suggestion fellows. Fireyota, thanks for that link. What I should've done was put a material like that on the transmission tunnel underneath the truck when I had the motor and transmission out. After much research, I'm gonna put carpet back in. stockinteriors.com has pretty good reviews and they make a premolded kit for the ole 81, I'll just have to trim and cut all the holes. I found a vinyl kit too and was kinda torn between that and carpet. You can get the carpet with the mass backing and jute padding premade on the carpet. The vinyl doesn't have the mass backing option. I like the idea of vinyl and being easier to clean especially with what I'm using the truck for but I want the heat issue gone. I haven't ordered it yet so I'm still open to thoughts on it.

 

If you want vinyl go vinyl. I got the carpet kit from ACC I believe, and while I love it, it is still carpet, which means its really hard to keep clean. I wish I would've saved some money and not bought the rear section for my 4runner.