'80 stepside swb retromod project

[ofnaman]

Well it's been a bit since I've updated this. Between the holiday's, me being sick and then my buddy getting sick, this thing has not had a lot done to it. On December 22 we did some engine assembly, ran new stainless hard brake lines, new brake rubber hose's, installed the new brake proportioning valve, and started on the fuel lines. Would have finished the fuel lines, but we got the wrong fuel tank sender, and needed to figure out how we were going to run the line up to the engine. I'm sure I'm for getting a few things from that day as well.

[ofnaman]

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[ofnaman]

On Jan 5th we finished up the fuel lines, ended up flipping the fuel rail and running the line up from the front. Built a transmission crossmember out of some very heavy duty c channel, painted it and installed it. Started tearing down the cab, did not get any pic's of that for some reason. There is some other stuff I am forgetting as well I'm sure.

[ofnaman]

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[ofnaman]

And that brings us to today. Removed the a/c compressor, not going to run it at this time. Then took the cab completely apart, and pressure washed the crap out of it, inside and out. I wasnt planning on taking it all the way down, but it ended up getting tore all the way down. I'm glad we did take it all the way down, because now we know exactly what we have, and we are pretty happy with it. Not sure why we did not get any before pics, but here is the after.

[ofnaman]

That's not rust on the inside floor, it's carpet adhesive. What a pain that was to get somewhat cleaned up.

[Sodell]

Very clean build, nice...

[walkerb]

looks really good. Cant beat a solid cab! How are the bed fenders? Just as nice?

[Hankster]

Looks as if yall started out with a pretty solid truck! Can't wait to see the finished product

[ofnaman]

Originally Posted by walkerb

looks really good. Cant beat a solid cab! How are the bed fenders? Just as nice?

Bed fenders are in great shape. The truck as a whole was very solid. We discovered a a rusted through spot near the windshield, which I'm sure is a product of a very crappy aftermarket windshield install. Other than that it's almost rust free. The only "bad" part of this truck was the cab. The previous owner hacked a hole through the roof of the truck to run a cb cable, hacked up the doors to install 6x9's, very poorly cut out the radio hole to mount a din style radio, and there is a small dent in the dash from a cb smacking into it. We will be tackling those issues next, then the cab is going back on.

[ofnaman]

Originally Posted by Sodell

Very clean build, nice...

Thank you. We are very proud of the work that were doing, it's taking longer to do, but the end result has been worth it. It will be a very nice truck when it's done. The only thing we are not doing at this time is painting the truck. There is just no room in the budget for that right now. We will be painting the underside of the cab with undercoat and will be painting the engine compartment black.

[ofnaman]

January 19 work. Did not seem to get much done, but looking back we actually got more done than expected. We got the silicone removed from the windshield mounting area, which took a while to do. Then we patched up the only rust hole in the truck that occured due to the crappy silicone job on the windshield. Next we coated the underside of the cab with undercoating. That came out really good. After that we patched up the hole that the previous owner cut into the back of the cab to run a cb cable through. Also filled about 6 screw holes in the cab and dash from the previous owner's accessories with weld. Started putting body filler on the cab then we ran out of day.

[ofnaman]

More pic's, did not take many on that day. Hopefully we'll have some after pictures on sunday.

[ofnaman]

Last picture is right above the inside cab light, it had a matching hole on the outside of the cab as well. I did get the patches welded in, we did not get any after pictures of that either. The hole in the windshield area started out small and I was just going to fill it with weld, by the time I found good metal it was the size of a quarter. After a couple of hours of welding and grinding it came out pretty good. I really did not expect that to take as long as it did. For those wondering, the undercoating we used was rustoleum brand spray cans. It comes as a roll on style also. The cans worked great and came out really good. We used 3 cans on the bottom.

[ofnaman]

Worked a bit on the gauge setup this weekend. Got about 3 hours into this. The bezel is out of a '74, I like the '80 model better, but the '80 bezel was cracked in a few places and the '74 was good, and free. Gauges are 2 5/8" and 5" autometer phantom electric gauges. The 2 5/8" fit perfectly after cutting the cones out of the bezel. The 5" gauges are not a great fit, because the bezel holes are oblong. I ended up cutting more out of the top of the bezel for the 5" gauges and set them in towards the top. There is a little gap on the bottom, but you cannot see it without looking. I'm planning on putting some black felt or some kind of backing there to make it even less noticeable. The '80 bezel would have worked better because the '80 bezel is made a bit different and the gauge holes are flush with the bezel, verses the '74 bezel where the gauge holes are recessed.

[ofnaman]

Painted the bezel with SEM brand "trim black". I love that stuff.

[ofnaman]

Sorry, had trouble with loading these two.

[nekkidhillbilly]

looks great

[jpnh]

just curious,what headers did u end up usein?-jeff

[ofnaman]

Originally Posted by jpnh

just curious,what headers did u end up usein?-jeff

They are s&p custom built headers. Well worth the money.

[naphtali5725]

nice build! what gauges are those?

[ofnaman]

Originally Posted by naphtali5725

nice build! what gauges are those?

Autometer phantoms.

[ofnaman]

Originally Posted by ofnaman

Autometer phantoms.

The speedo looks a little different than the traditional phantom speedo because it's the gps model. No wires or cables to hook up other than power and ground. It's a little more spendy, but no one makes an interface that will work with the 6l90e that I know of. On the other hand, Jegs has a online price match gaurantee and they matched Amazon's price on that gauge, so it was really only about $40 more than the non gps model.

[Ofnaman1]

Well, its been too long since an update to say the least. I ended up moving across country, then moving back, and then when I finally got around to finishing up the truck, my account here locked me out (2 years ago....). I just did not feel like dealing with that so I let it go until now.... I ended up just creating a new account. Anyway, we finished up the truck like we had intended about 2 1/2 years ago with the L96 6.0/6l90e/12 bolt. I will say, if your thinking of running an ls..... Do it!. The truck was awesome, to say the least. The only thing on this truck that we did not do was the exhaust, and the "best exhaust shop" around managed to screw that up...… We did not really do much with it other than drive it, and it was great. We took it to a couple of Hot August Nights events in 2017 in that form and got great feedback from people. We put about 1600 miles on it (really hard miles....), and then my buddy came up with the idea that he wanted more..... I'll post more on that later, its pretty much another rebuild of the entire truck..... Here are the pics from the original rebuild form.

[Ofnaman1]

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