72 SWB STEP "Army truck" Budget Build

[WIDESIDE72]

Originally Posted by sduckworth13

First time I checked out your build and it looks awesome. Nice work.

Thanks! My 75 yo dad did about the same anount of floor repair to this truck as you did to yours. He has no clue (or interest) in working a digital camera so i dont have any documentation!

Your truck is lookin great as well. It has only taken me a year to get ours to where it is!

[sduckworth13]

That's real cool you guys got to work on the project together. Thank you also for the compliment. I'm pretty new to welding and I took a lot of pictures because I searched a lot of build threads and alot of build seem to skip the small parts to show us guys that had never welded before how to do a certain repair and I wanted to document and photo as much as I could for a newbie doing the same repairs. I was really excited to post pictures of the repairs I did because of how much I learn from reading the builds here on the forum and able to apply the information to my build. I didn't think it would take this long for my build I'm right around a year working on it too, but I didn't imagine I'd be going with Porterbuilt A-arms, bags and Accuair either. I was planning on doing just a simple restore with 4/6 drop. It's been a lot fun though when parts get fitted or repaired to a acceptable level that I can be proud of. I really like the color of your truck also, I'm debating on a burgundy wine metallic the color my 1978 Z-28 I bought in 1989 when I was 16.

[WIDESIDE72]

I recently sold the rallys (kept caps and rings) with the 235 75 15 all terrain tires seen in the first photos. I used that money to buy a set of four 275 60 15 Cooper Cobra tires and moumted them on another set of 15x8 rallys. I have changed direction once again and will be selling the wheels and caps. I got a set of 15x8 wheel vintiques series 62 steelies for christmas. I have a set of 67 chevelle poverty caps on the way. I still have to decide what color to paint them. Narrowed down to cream silver or black. Any suggestions?

[jondancer]

I want to see it with the new wheels!

[WIDESIDE72]

Here are a couple of shots of the bed wood with the first coat of polyurethane.

[WIDESIDE72]

Originally Posted by jondancer

I want to see it with the new wheels!

No time to get them mounted yet. I don't have a photo of them on my wife's kindle and when I saved it from this thread and tried to load them here, I got an incompatible file message. I believe it was a .pnp extension (?)

http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=609196

[WIDESIDE72]

"Cream...get on top!"

[Bomp]

Nice lookin rims

[WIDESIDE72]

Changed my mind on the wheel color.

[WIDESIDE72]

Argent silver

[WIDESIDE72]

Photo op!

[WIDESIDE72]

I have the tailgate off to make working on the bed wood easier.

[WIDESIDE72]

I had to have the 700r4 rebuilt, but Im back on it! I still need to install the Vintage Air hoses, sway bar, headliner, radio, etc.

[WIDESIDE72]

Today i worked on getting my bucket seats installed. Here is what i started with.

[WIDESIDE72]

Luckily the foam was good so i bought some covers from truckseats here on the forum. I also bought a front brace from a Blazer that a forum member parted out (i forget who). Its not possible to install it on one piece with the cab on the frame. I thought about removing the cab mount bolts and raising the cab but I decided to cut it in half to install it and will weld it back together before i install the carpet. Right now its just screwed in with a few sheetmetal screws underneath. I bought the rear braces from Roger koop. On the driver side, I measured over 1-3/16" from the existing outer front bench seat hole. On the passenger side, I used the existing outer front hole bench seat bracket hole as the bucket seat mounting hole and drilled three new holes. Using this method, all of the underbrace holes lined up! I used a 3/8" bit to give a little wiggle room.
Heres the seats mocked up.

[WIDESIDE72]

Console before

[WIDESIDE72]

Console after stripping old paint. It took two cans of aircraft stripper and part of a can of oven cleaner!

[WIDESIDE72]

Although its not "correct" i plan on using the cupholder insert. I have a new repro console trim ring and oem chevy emblem for it. The gmc emblem, driver quality trim ring along with driver quality lid and lower will be on the parts board shortly.

[WIDESIDE72]

Got the seats and console in a while back

[WIDESIDE72]

Actually it took me a month to get everything buttoned up. I got the carpet back in last weekend. I now have the front floor brace out of a blazer and rear brackets from Roger Koop all installed. Last night I got the headliner and trim installed. not fun in a truck not originally equipped...

[swamp rat]

Thats one pretty looking truck! And i like the cup holders too, where else would i put my coffee....

[WIDESIDE72]

I finally got all of my original gauges working! The amp gauge wasn't working, but I fixed it with a volt gauge conversion from tbone a while back. The temp gauge was the last one giving me fits. Turns out the temp sender was the wrong one. Never moved off cold. Installed sender and works like a charm. It wasn't cheap, but what cha gonna do?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/261580097652...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

[WIDESIDE72]

Next up is installing the shorter intermediate e brake cable I got from oreilly auto parts. The one I got from lmctruck is too long.

[WIDESIDE72]

Another interior shot.

[WIDESIDE72]

Engine shot