NICE! "Straight outta the 80s" like you said, I dig it. Awesome truck and awesome story about it. I'd likely do the same.

For your chrome, I recommend Nevr-Dull. It's wool impregnated with a paste polish, stuff works pretty great.

 

Thanks man I'll have to pick up some of that stuff. I still have a lot left to polish

 

Luckily after a few hours of polishing the grizzly roll bar came out looking like new still. The rear axle housing cleaned up well too

 

This is a sweet truck and cool story! Beyond needing carburetors, does it run?

 

An Awesome story and an Awesome find...I often wonder what became of my 81, and all of those show trucks that found their way to the cover of truck magazines from the eighties. Good luck and can't wait to see it finished.

 

theres a handful of things it needs. I will keep posting all the stuff I've done to catch you up to speed on it. It's not far

 

Man yours has gotta be out there somewhere. Sucks that so many were turned to mud trucks or parted out. Mine was slowly being parted which sucked but luckily still in existence. Be cool to start a sort of registry for old monster show trucks so we could find history on these special builds

 

All the shocks were in pretty sad shape so I took them off and cleaned the boots then compounded the chrome. Boots luckily came out looking new.

 

The biggest priority was getting those ugly skinnies off the truck. I got ahold of the weld scorpios I sold recently with one of my xtra cabs. Tho I didn't want anything but 15s I had a set of 35" fierce attitude mud terrains laying around and the scorpios were the only old school wheel I could think of that would fit and look good. It was a rare size because it was one of few 17x10" wheels with that far of an offset and I needed as much offset as I could get.

 

Before and after on the hubs.

 

 

Mid-late 90's

 

Luckily I was able to find the guy who bought the polished tunnel ram off the truck. I was able to talk him out of it so it's now got THE tunnel ram that I saw it with. So I took it, the valve covers and exhaust and had them re polished. Also took the shock hoops and lower shock mounts and had them re chromed.

 

All the wiring from front to back was coming apart and to avoid any troubles I ripped it all out and started over. The main harness runs in the chassis so you cant see it but was a nightmare to get out. It was filled with great stuff and wouldn't have come out with any amount of force. I had to dig thru the chassis with a 6 foot rod of all thread for hours til it loosened up. The new harness runs all the way up to the cab and enters where an ecm would sit in an fi truck.

 

Since the bumpers were sold
off long before I got the truck one of the first things on the list was to replace them. The rear was a smitty built double tube which is hard to find but not impossible. The front was a Ramsey chrome winch bumper which you can't even find a picture of on google. Was worried I would have to make some custom bumper to fill the gap since a tube bumper would be out of place next to the custom lower valence. After months of searching the previous owner found info for the guy he sold the bumpers to and so I contacted him immediately. I ended up giving him the cost to replace the bumpers with some new ones. Drove an hour to get them and I couldn't believe I actually had THE bumpers in my truck that I saw 20 years ago on the monster. It was like bringing home long lost treasure.

 

It took a ton of aircraft paint stripper to get all the rhino liner crap off but it worked

 

After using some 3m rubbing compound they came out looking like new

 

After weeks of buffing and reassembling the truck was finally starting to come together

 

Wow!!! Love this restoration you're doing. Great work on the bumpers, saved them from the scraper!

 

Thanks dude