#minijimmygmc Wifey's 1990 K5 Jimmy rebuild

[chevy3100truck]

Well, got the Off Road Design extended shock mounts for the front cut up & mounted in place. Ended up raising the mounting point for the new Bilstein 5125 shocks by 2 1/2" which should get the shocks close to the center of their travel at ride height and allow the axle to contact the bumpstop on the frame before bottoming out the shock.



Also installed the rear shock braces from ORD, well, just mocked them up and drilled the holes since the shocks need to get installed first, and I'm going to have to drop the rear axle again to correct the wheelbase & pinion angle, but need to have the engine back in the truck etc. first before I can do that.

[chevy3100truck]

So after getting the front shocks on (which was pretty much the last piece of the front end to be done for now) I figured I'd strip the trip off the sides of the Jimmy. Not sure what adhesive was used, but was 28 years old and still stuck very good lol.



The fun that trim can hide..... I won't be putting trim back on so this dent underneath the trim will have to get fixed. Have a bit of access from the rear, but if I can't straighten it enough I guess I'll just cut and replace the dented area.....



Lastly, decided to see how hard it'll be to strip the paint off. Just took a razor to the right side of this pic, couple minutes later and the primer was exposed. For the left side of the pic I used a bit of paint stripper and then scraped it off 10 minutes or so later. Might end up razoring a lot of the paint off and using the stripper for the primer, not sure. The stripped makes a massive mess though....

[chevy3100truck]

Spent a little more time this week on stripping paint. Just used a razor to get the topcoat off, the primer seems to sand off fairly easy with a DA, so not going to bother with paint stripper unless I need to.

About 3 hours total with a razor to get both sides to look about like this -



Since the top needed to be off for a while I figured I'd get it done & out of the way first. Started sanding off the old textured paint that GM had used on the fiberglass tops, it actually comes off much easier than I expected it too. The plan is to likely paint the top white both inside & out. Once it's painted I can get it out of the garage and tackle the bodywork on the Jimmy itself.




Also got around to sanding & painting the rad support. Just using good old Tremclad spray bomb on this like the engine bay so I won't be as pissed off at the inevitable scratches on it when I put everything back together lol. It's mostly re-assembled in this pic, just missing the headlight trim rings which are semi-gloss black.

[chevy3100truck]

well, lots of sanding later an 90% of the tub surface is now bare metal. Unfortunately the last 10% will probably take as much or more time than the first 90% lol.

At least there haven't been any hidden surprises yet, truck has never had a re-paint and hasn't had any real body damage other than what I already knew about (a dent in a crappy spot on the body line beside the fuel filler, a dent under the driver's side taillight, and two dents on the roof). The only other issues so far are a couple of small dings & dents and a broken spot weld on the drivers door.

[chevy3100truck]

Well, it's been a while since I've had a chance to post any updates.....

This was the dent that worried me the most on the body -


ended up with a bit of hammer & dolly work and a bit of heat I could get it 90% out. A bit of body filler and it'll be all good (this is just a daily driver after all). The photo seems to make it look worse than it is after straightening it a bit, the body line is back to being good, just needed a bit of filler below it.


broken spot welds on the drivers door - not really sure why this would have happened.


bit of welding & grinding and it's good to go

[Dads79GMC]

Great work on that dent!!

[chevy3100truck]

After that it was time to weld up the trim holes around the back of the truck since I'm not putting the plastic body trim back on it. Only 3 holes on each side which was nice lol



Then, since the Jimmy isn't going to get the carpeted panels back on the doors, I welded up those holes as well. I might just leave them painted, or maybe will make something to cover them, haven't decided yet, but it's always easy to drill new holes if I put something there.

[chevy3100truck]

There was lot's more of little filling stuff in the body, but nothing serious, just little dents, parking lot dings, etc. Just the typical stuff for an old truck, with the exception of the lack of rust on the body.

Figured I'd try to fit the new fenders (the originals had been trimmed by a previous owner, so it gets re-pops)


Of course one of the brand new fenders has a dent in it..... And they've been sitting in my trailer for a few months, so it's not going back to the shop.



Luckily a bit of hammering got it pretty much straight and a skim coat of body filler got it exactly where it needed to be.

[chevy3100truck]

got my assistant to help with sanding the hood down to bare metal. The hood was mint (other than horrible paint) prior to getting knocked over when it was leaned against the back of my garage...... only had a couple of dings from the issue, one on the front edge the other on the body line down the center. Luckily both were accessible from the backside of the hood as they were right at cutouts in the bracing.




Stripped the tailgate down to bare metal, again, just some typical damage near the top of the tailgate. Hammered out & a skim coat of filler ended up fixing it. I couldn't believe the rear window still worked though, the window channels inside the tailgate were basically non existent, they were only being held together by the felt liners lol.



Cowl panel - what a pain in the ass...... I wasn't going to sand this down to bare metal since the louvers are such a pain, but I couldn't leave it, so bare metal it goes...... I'm not sure how many hours it took, but it was way too many!


And the canopy - it'd been a while since I sanded the majority of it down to get rid of the factory textured paint. I had chipped out everything from the seams on it since it was loose anyhow, I figured I'd try just filling the seams completely with Everglas, hopefully that doesn't come back to bite me, but I've got another canopy and I was thinking of cleaning it up and painting it too (a different colour that this one will be). If the Everglas cracks at least I'll be able to get something else done and just swap them. Lots of little pinholes in the factory fiberglass, and lousy alignment between the two halves, I can see why GM went to using textured paint, hides it all so the quality can be crappy. What I am not doing is getting the top totally flat. It's now smooth, but the fiberglass top has waves to it where the bracing is inside and for something you can't see (it'll be about 7'3" or so off the ground), I'm not going to fix it.

[chevy3100truck]

so since it is getting closer to paint, I decided to make a list of things that still needed completing......


I shouldn't have done that lol

[chevy3100truck]

I decided to paint a few parts separately since a. I don't have a paint booth and b. it'll make it easier as I'm kind of space limited (and for obvious reasons I can't put any of this stuff outside in the pacific northwest this time of year). Good excuse to try out my new 3M Accuspray gun. Have to say I'm happy with it so far - the disposable liners & the changeable tips that take just a couple seconds to clean are awesome.

Hood, tailgate and some dash pieces I decided to paint separate from the truck.


2 coats of epoxy primer, then 2 coats of primer surfacer.
Unfortunately I had a fubar with the cowl panel during this (stupid mistake lol), so it got to get sanded down again later.....


After the two coats of primer surfacer, it was time to wetsand the primer with 400 grit...... whenever you think you're done, wipe it down and start again lol



Hood after sanding -

[chevy3100truck]

So for paint, my wife had decided on a gunmetal grey metallic colour. Nice and easy for a novice to paint lol. I'm obviously more than a bit worried about tiger striping etc, but hopefully the combination of laying down 3 coats (one across, one 45 degrees to that, and one 45 degrees to the original + a drop coat) will keep it all nice and even.



glovebox door


hood under lights -


and lastly - the day after painting it, taking the hood out in the sunshine to make sure that it doesn't have any tiger stripes (after staring at it for about an hour and a half thinking it did lol). Came out pretty decent, there are a few little flaws with dust, but I think sanding and polishing the clearcoat will get rid of everything that was there.

[chevy3100truck]

and to get up to date, the latest would be painting a couple of more pieces last night. The re-painted cowl panel, and the outside of the tailgate. I know the tailgate should be painted while vertical to keep the metallics in the same orientation, but I'm going to take my chances that it won't be too obvious when installed as it will be beside the tail lights and only the top part of the tailgate posts. Hope that doesn't bite me in the ass later.





I'm hoping to get the canopy painted this weekend if all goes well. That isn't going to be body colour and needs both the inside & outside painted, so hopefully I can wrangle a neighbour over to help lift it around lol. I still can't believe how heavy that thing is compared to canopies I've had on various trucks over the years.

[Jaysonb]

Looks great!

[SBTork]

Originally Posted by Jaysonb

Looks great!

Ditto! Looking very good, nice project!

[chevy3100truck]

Thanks. I've never tackled a project with this sort of scope before. Just trying not to screw too much up lol
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[Whamo]

You are rockin this build!

[LT7A]

A lot of work done in a short amount of time. And it looks great. You keep saying it's a driver, and I realize that you're not building it for show, but I wonder if your wife realizes just how high of a quality level you're building to. Obvious to us though, so keep on. Thanks for sharing.

[chevy3100truck]

Thanks for the compliments!

I've been working on it as much as I can since I last posted, the top is now painted inside & out

Inside before -



Scuff & Spray - I left the texture on the inside, which unfortunately meant leaving some of the cracks along the edges since I couldn't figure out a good way to fix them and keep the texture (they're just cracks in the original coating where the parts are joined together)

after - well - it's still white, but it's clean looking and coated with a satin clear coat


For the outside I smoothed the factory seams with fiberglass and sprayed a black with a satin clear coat. Not perfect - I'd never sprayed satin before, so I'll probably end up redoing it at some point, but unless you're 7' tall you can't see the top of the roof anyhow.




Basically the problem was because I had it supported too high and couldn't easily reach the middle section of the roof to get a consistent pass on the clear coat. The satin clear needs to be applied very consistently to get an even finish, so in the very center of the roof there are a couple of stipes where the gloss doesn't exactly match.

[Palf70Step]

That top is really nice!

[chevy3100truck]

Next up was the dash -
I didn't sand the dash down to bare metal as the original paint was all still sticking well. Basically sanded it with 180 grit, shot 2 coats of epoxy, 2 coats of primer surfacer, quick sand, then the colour & clear



and after the colour and clear - all the other parts were painted separately previously (glove box, ashtray, filler below column) Not the best way to do it, but easier to get it done this way and get all the edges etc.

[chevy3100truck]

primering the door sills & inside of the doors was next, these areas were mostly sanded down to bare metal, just the inner parts of the door that will be covered with the door panels weren't taken to bare metal. I filled all of the holes for the lower carpet panel as the plan right now is to leave them painted, not covered (I can always put a cover on them later if we want too, but it'd be hard to fill the screw holes and paint them if we wanted to ditch the panels later on)

[chevy3100truck]

After some final sanding to clean up the bare metal tub as well as remove the overspray from spraying the door sills it was finally primer time.



A couple coats of epoxy primer, then a bit more body work, then 3 coats of primer surfacer -




Also got around to spraying primer down on the new front fenders -

[chevy3100truck]

and to get up to date, I sprayed the colour and clear on the door jambs and inside of the doors.





I'm hoping to get the body completely painted by the end of May so I can start reassembly, but there is a lot of sanding left to do on the primer before it'll be ready for colour and clear. It's just a driver, so it doesn't have to be perfect, but trying to get it as good as I can.

[Greenlee]

Nice build! You have done a great job on this thing. It’s going to turn out nice!