FoamyPirate : 1987 Chevy Silverado

[foamypirate]

We've got one in our shop with a Cummins.
But it's black where yours is gray, and gray where yours is black.


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Dude, that is NICE! One of my neighbors around the corner has an 82' with a Cummins in it, but I think he recently sold it.

I've only ever seen ONE other truck with the black middle and gray top and bottom, most seem to be like the one in your shop. Makes me think I got something somewhat rare, lol. Too bad I'm painting over it, haha.

[JoshM]

I've always wanted an old Silverado/C10, but I can never find any cheap enough. I want like $500-ish, but still driveable. lol
I'll find one someday.

[foamypirate]

I've always wanted an old Silverado/C10, but I can never find any cheap enough. I want like $500-ish, but still driveable. lol
I'll find one someday.

Yeah, I spent forever looking for mine! I can't even count how many rusted out, poorly modified $5000 trucks I had to filter through on craigslist. I finally found this one, 100% stock other than the seats, with hardly any rust, for $1000.

[foamypirate]

Progress at last! Even if it is fairly small. Finally was able to make a run to Home Depot to get some lumber for the bed dolly. I must have good luck too, because I got EVERY SINGLE BED BOLT out without stripping the square hole in the bed. Most came out pretty easy, and any resistance was mostly just crud build up. In fact, I had a bigger fight getting the rear bumper off than I did the bed bolts! Now I just need to find a couple of strong lads or rig up something to get the bed off the truck, but it is at least loose. They say pictures are worth a thousand words, so here goes! We'll start with the most recent truck teardown pictures:







Here is the bed dolly. Simple enough, just some 2x4s and 4x4s with 175lb casters (figure 4x175 should be enough to hold the bed, I can always go bigger/heavier duty if I need). I used a paddle bit to recess the holes so the lag screw heads wouldn't touch the bed at all. The bolt heads you can see on the crossbeam 2x4s are the carriage bolts I will use to hold the bed to the dolly. The 4x4 blocks at the bottom that the casters attach to are attached to the vertical 4x4 with 3/8ths 6" lag screws, so they are super sturdy:






I also finally settled on a color for the truck. I am going to go one solid color. The color of choice is Denim Blue from Kia (ugh, Kia, but a nice color!).

Here is an example pic:

[foamypirate]

So, I had a chance to go out with the camera and take a closer picture of the rust in the blower motor area. It's all pretty much located in the following spot:














Here, you can see what I assume to be the root cause of the issue. It appears that this small area (the small piece of sheet metal welded into the cab in above pictures) has gathered leaves/dirt/stuff over the years and held moisture, causing the rust.



This piece here should be pretty easy to fix. Most of this was caused by the foam attached to the cab in the door hinge area:



The other issue I'm seeing is along the seam in the cowl area, where the seam sealer has pulled backed, and it's beginning to rust along the seam.





What do you guys think as far as fixing these areas? I'm hesitate to just chemically treat and use rust encapsulator, because I want this restore to last a good long time, and I'm just not sure of their long term durability. However, the thought of drilling out 50 million spot welds to remove these panels for access is pretty daunting. What are ya'lls thoughts on how to repair this area?

The good news is that the rest of the cab is pretty solid. Here is a picture of the outer/inner rockers:

[foamypirate]

Well, I was able to start on removing the interior tonight. Got the seats, carpet, head liner, trim, floor padding and etc. out.

Made an interesting discovery. Hmmm, you think this truck had a bad heater core leak at some point in time?



Uhhh, yeah. It had a REAL bad heater core leak, it would seem. Hasn't gotten too far into the kick panel or rocker, but I'm thinking about maybe replacing them just for peace of mind. The floor damage isn't through the floor at least, so I can probably just grind it out and paint it. Not sure yet, I may end up patching it.

Here are the rest of the pics. Sadly, I don't think you can call this truck porn. :shitsweak:

[foamypirate]

Had a chance to get out and play stabby stabby with the floor tonight (poking it with a big screwdriver to check for weak sheet metal). Didn't break through anywhere; the floor seems pretty solid.

I also cleaned it up a bit more with the wire wheel to get most of the loose paint and scale off.

I think I am going to go the POR-15 route, but I had a few concerns. I've heard that POR-15 doesn't stick well to clean metal, even when prepped with their Metal Ready and Marine Clean. The problem that presents for me, is that in order to get all of the loose paint/scale off, I'm definitely going to have clean metal in some areas (you can see some in the pictures below, already). I don't want to leave any of the old paint behind either, as POR-15's instructions recommend against it.

Any of you that have used POR-15 on here; should I just prep how they recommend and hope it sticks to the clean areas?


Floor carnage:





This bit here seems to be the worst section of the floor as far as pitting goes. I think I'll clean this area out really well and run a weld bead over it to give it a little bit more meat. I don't like how thin it is here to just leave it as-is.

[foamypirate]

Woo hoo! Victory! Got the bed off at last.

Managed to get it off with just myself and my lovely wife. Just took a little thinking and a small amount of work. I jacked up the diff high enough to get the wheels off, and then supported the frame at that height with jack stands. I then let the diff down with the jack, which drooped the suspension enough that with the wheels off, the bed sides missed the drums. My wife and I then shimmied (har har) the bed backwards and worked it onto the dolly I built. I added rails lengthwise so we could slide it along easily. After that, it was just a matter of lining up the holes in the bed with the holes I drilled to attach it to the dolly, and voila, done.

Oh, and I really need to buy some pegboard....can you tell?

[Accrdwgnguy]

Dude, that is NICE! One of my neighbors around the corner has an 82' with a Cummins in it, but I think he recently sold it.

I've only ever seen ONE other truck with the black middle and gray top and bottom, most seem to be like the one in your shop. Makes me think I got something somewhat rare, lol. Too bad I'm painting over it, haha.

There is a guy down the road from me that has an 86/87 LWB C10, with your exact paint job. They made so many of these trucks, that very few things are rare.

Good progress and clean truck. Mine needs cab corners, front inner fenders and the back panel on the bed floor has some rust thru. Frame is kinda scaly and nasty too, its really not bad at all for a northern truck. The guys I take it to for inspection are amazed that some of the original frame paint is left, I've gotten an offer for it from most of the guys there.

[mtnbikaah]

I'm jealous of how clean this truck is!

That little bit of rust on the floor is no biggie. Just a little Rust Bullit and some roll on (or spray on) bedliner and you'll have no problems.

And that bed!!! It's whole! A bed like that would go for $600+ in New England.

The landscaper I use to work for who runs a small fleet of those 73-87 chevy trucks finds clean frames, heavy duty 4 speed manulals and engines (350's) locally, then buys cabs online from the south west then puts a dump bed or utility bed on (used). Puts trucks together for about $5000.

Anywho.

[foamypirate]

Thanks for the comments guys!

This truck was definitely a good base to start a build from. Other than some minor surface rust and one or two other spots, it's almost flawless. Even the body panels (minus the drivers door) are in great shape. Just one dent on the bed to fix and curing up those few rust spots, and it should be golden.

I'm going to be ordering a 4" shackle/hanger drop for the rear in a week or two hopefully. The front will be a 3" or 4" drop as well. I like the "stink bug" look, as some people put it, so I'm not going to drop the rear end enough to level it out.

[redlined302]

im not one for chevy but i love this style chevy truck good shit bro

[foamypirate]

im not one for chevy but i love this style chevy truck good shit bro

Thanks!


Made some progress on tearing down the rear suspension. I got the passenger side leaf pack off and started cleaning them up. Also got both bushings/bushing shells out of the main leaf. Now I just need to clean up the rest of the leafs, hit them with paint, and order some bushings.

Thursday is payday, so I will be ordering the bushings then.


Managed to get all the U-bolts out without destroying any of them. Lots of PB blaster, plus I wire wheeled the visible threads, which made it pretty easy.


Dirty leafs. They all still have a pretty good arch though. Anyone know where to order the leaf spring pads? Some of mine are pretty hammered. Can't honestly say I've looked for them, but I'm feeling pretty lazy today. :baby:


Die bushings, DIE!!!!


The end result after bushing removal and cleaning up the rest of the leaf. I still need to clean the rust out of the bushing area, then I'll hit it with some paint.

[foamypirate]

Long time no update, haven't made much progress, since I've been working on paying off my debt. This month has 3 paychecks though and a bonus at work, so I decided to splurge...


Bought a Hobart Handler 210MVP MIG welder (plugs into 110 and 230), an 80 cu ft gas cylinder full of C25 welding gas, a roll of .024 wire, .023 contact tips, a roll of .035 wire, two sets of gloves, two auto-darkening helmets (I want to teach the wife how to weld), a MIG tool (awesome pliers that do everything), nozzle gel, two extra nozzles, plus a cherry picker and an engine stand.

With all of the above, I can finally get the engine out and start working on replacing any rusty sheet metal on the cab and bed.

[foamypirate]

Well, I'll be damned if I didn't finally get something done on the truck.

I got the engine and trans out with the help of my friend who is visiting from out of state. Started about 9:30 last night and just chilled and relaxed while working on it. It came out without any issues, and I only missed one connector, but we caught it before we pulled it tight and broke anything.

I also turned part of my back fence into a large gate so I can move the truck bed out of the garage and into the back yard. That will give me the room I need to get my cab off and store it in the garage.


Piktarz!