In early 2021 my friend George and I found a 1986 pickup that had been sitting in a barn in east Texas for somewhere around 10 years. We decided this would be our first major restoration project, as we had both just graduated college and only done smaller scale automotive work up to then. We trailered the truck back to our house in the DFW area and started tearing her down. So far, nothing is in horrible shape, but it is obvious that the truck sat for a long time. We never tried starting the motor before pulling it, but we believe it had a blown head gasket when parked. The previous owner said that the truck smoked out the tailpipe the last time he drove it, and when we pulled the drain plug it was a well mixed chocolate milk (coolant/oil mix).

We have decided to do a full restoration and motor rebuild on this truck and bring it as close to factory condition as possible (maybe with some slight upgrades from stock, please recommend your favorites in the comments so we can do it right). We started by pulling and tearing down the motor. We measured everything and found out it had previously been bored out .020 over and still has straight cylinder walls, as well as the crank had been ground down .010 under. We honed the cylinders, cleaned the block very well, got the proper bearings, and then reinstalled the crankshaft, but right now we are waiting on new pistons, which are on backorder, so we are disassembling and cleaning other parts of the truck in the mean time.

I plan to document as much of this build as possible and continue to post it all to my YouTube page (McDevitt Machines). I have linked the video playlist for this series below,

86 Pickup Restoration Playlist

I am sure I will have some questions along the way, and I look forward to using my resources in this forum as well as talking to some of you about what you have done on your trucks. This is going to be a long project, as George and I are both working full time and have busy lives outside of work, but I look forward to showing the internet our progress on this truck. I would greatly appreciate subscriptions on YouTube, that will help me keep myself motivated and hold myself accountable to working on the truck and posting updates regularly.

If you would like to follow more of our day to day work on the truck, check out my Instagram (McDevitt_Machines).

Thank you very much for reading and I hope you enjoy the videos,

Nick

 

Welcome to Yotatech, Nick and George!
Interesting project, I like what you are doing.
It would be nice if you create a resto thread and upload photos in this forum also.

 

Thank you very much!

I will definitely try to keep Yotatech updated with pictures and continue the resto thread (is there somewhere else you recommend I create a resto thread? I looked around and thought this section would be best but wasn't positive). Y'all seem like a great community from the few hours I have spent browsing thus far, I look forward to being a part of it!

 

you are almost there! look in the 86-95 “builds” sub-forum under 86-95 trucks & 4runners. it is located near the top of the topics page.

 

Thank you! Its been a while since I signed on here, but a new video is up and I will be sharing in the build thread.