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This is my 82 short bed I picked up for 800 bucks. I figured since I've done a good amount of work on it so far that I may as well throw up a build thread to document the progress and get some feedback. Im 16 and this is my first car... well truck, so being on a typical teenage budget of just about 0 I wanted to do more of a classic but cheap restore of the truck and improve its 4 wheel capabilities just a bit while keeping everything either original or 80s era. Here it is. Im finishing up a youtube series that ill start posting about the truck. Ill put a link soon on this thread.
Here it Is at the lady's house I got from
Here it is after i got it home. Now I got this vehicle through some peculiar circumstances. First I was originally heading out to this ladys house to buy an old dirtbike from craigslist. I had no intention of buying this truck or any truck for that matter. This lady had a ton of stuff on her property and said all of it was for sale, including the cars. I saw the pickup and immediately fell in love with the pile of crap. Now heres where things get interesting. The ladys husband was in jail in for spousal abuse and weapons charges. He was the owner of the truck but also never put it his name which was good for me because this guy could never report it stolen cus he has no record of ownership. The lady was going broke and needed money bad so she sold it to me. After I ran the vin to make sure it was clean I worked out a price with her and went out two weeks later and brought the truck, the bike, and a nice Echo backpack leaf blower home on a flat bed for 800 bucks. Because i never got the keys (the husband hid them somewhere) I took the door off and brought it down to a lock-shop to make a key for the door which I was hoping would match the ignition, which it did. After changing all the fluids and putting new belts on I got the thing running pretty well and drove it around for a few thousand miles. The thing would always run hot and over heat if I got on the freeway but I only drove it around town so that was fine, until the entire motor self destructed. Within a period of twenty seconds the motor destroyed all of its bearings, cracked a piston, broke the timing chain guides, stuck a valve, and was firing on two cylinders. So me not knowing much at the time decided I was just going to pull the motor and rebuild it. Well sure enouph within 3 hours I had bought a harbor freight cherry picker and had the motor sitting next to the truck
Now you might be thinking "How does a motor that only had 100,000 miles on it destroy itself?" Well when I pulled the motor and did a little research I found out the motor that was in my 82 truck was actually from 85, so I have a good feeling that the original motor was swapped and used for something else and the motor that was thrown in its place had well over 100,000 miles on it. I cleaned up the engine bay and made it look new and then the truck sat for a summer until I could afford a new motor.
After I got some money together I bought a rebuilt engine from davez offroad performance outside sacremento. I had him build me an 82 style motor and he was nice enough to accept the 85 as the core for 82.
I highly recommend anyone in california to check davez engines out. He builds them all in house, offers a good warranty (I had a pretty big oil leak out of the oil pump when i got it and he was willing to pay any mechanics fees down here in la to get it fixed, but I just had him send me all the parts I needed to fix it myself. The leak was just a fluke, it happens some times but its nice to know he stands by his product), and it was only 1500 bucks! I had him install a 268 grind cam, a new clutch and flywheel, waterpump and a few other options like new exaust studs.
I cleaned and painted all the parts that came off the old motor like the power steering pump, brackets, bolts, etc, threw some new ignition parts on there and got the new long block assembled and ready to go in the truck.
Then I got the new motor in
There will be more to come in the next few days so stay tuned
That's an Awesome buy for only $800. I would have paid twice that even with bad motor. Can't believe how nice the engine bay cleaned up to, good work! This reminds me of my first 1980 Toyota, I was 19 and thought it was the coolest thing ever. Wish I still had it. Will be watching your thread.
Thanks guys for the support. After I got got the motor in and running pretty well the next thing I turned to was the paint. It looked like some kind of rattle can metal flake blue, but thats not the worst part. The sanding job before the paint was done was with a wire brush on a drill. Seriously, if I had any close ups of it you could see and feel the swirl pattern under the paint. On top of that, the old motor had a bad overheating problem. So the PO decided to punch a hole in the hood and put a little air scope thing in to help cool it down, not that it really did much of anything.
So the first task was to get that fixed.
I welded a piece of steel to the bottom of the hood and figured I could fix the top with a grinder and lots of bondo. It actually turned out pretty good.
After that I used a stud welder and slide hammer to finish off the major dents, finished with the bondo, and stripped the car down to bare metal. Whats wired though is as I was sanding I noticed that some of the paint further down wasn't dry all the way, It was almost like the PO used some kind of 2k system but forgot the hardner
Then I brought the car the car down to maaco after I did all the prep and took advantage of their black friday sale. I got a single stage polyurethane paint job for just 500 bucks out the door!
I also got to watch them shoot the color, but here it is fresh out of paint!
Ohhhh that thing looked sooo good. I have to say though, for 500 bucks, its about the same price for me to paint it if i had bought all the materials needed to do so, and they did a pretty good job. Not saying its perfect (it is a 500 dollar paint job) but I easily would have been satisfied even spending twice what I did.
Next post Ill start getting all the body pieces on and show a little suspension work.
Wow, the paint looks great man. Really nice work! Any other plans for it, like lift/wheels tires ?
I just finished putting on some old man emu 2" lift springs in the front. the front sits maybe a little high now with the new springs but I want to throw 31s on it.
When the truck was getting painted I had some time to clean up the grill, headlight cowls and any other trim I had taken off. I also ordered a brand new chrome bumper cus the old one was trashed.
The thing that made the biggest difference though was painting the chassis and wheel wells with undercoat when I got the truck back from paint. This is when I really discovered just how clean and rust free this truck was. Just a quick pass with the pressure washer and it took just about all the surface rust off. I even noticed partts of the chassis and drive line still had some factory paint on them! It didn't stick that well anymore but it was there.
For the brakes I just used some rustoleoum high temp stuff and the undercoat was duplicolor bed armor.
Here's the truck once I got everything put back on. I can't believe how well it turned out for how little money I spent on the body work. I spent only about 850 total on everything and this is the result.
please tell me you are gonna keep it stock with those stock steel wheels.
It looks perfect.
and you got a deal.
Im going to keep them as long as I can but I do have plans for 31s. If I can mount them to the stock rims I will but it doesn't look likely. I am keeping it an 80s era restore though.
Truck looks awesome, you'll have to watch out for theft now. 31's will fit the factory 5.5" wheel no problem. I ran a set bfg 31 x 10.50 with no issues for abut 3 years. 31's would really set it off IMO.
Im going to keep them as long as I can but I do have plans for 31s. If I can mount them to the stock rims I will but it doesn't look likely. I am keeping it an 80s era restore though.
You'll have no problem running 31x10.5 on those wheels.
I love your truck and the color. You know we need some inside pictures. Are you lucky enough to not have a hacked up dash?
Unfortunatly no, I was not that fortunate, however, its not terrible. I have a CB I want to throw in and that will take up the space in the dash. Ill get a pice of black acrylic to make up the whatever space is left. Once I get a little more time on my hand ill do some interior restore pics.
04-07-2016, 11:20 PM
