Author Topic: 73 Shortbed Stepside Complete Rebuild (LOTS OF PHOTOS)  (Read 57558 times)

Offline cowboy63645

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Re: 73 Shortbed Stepside Complete Rebuild (LOTS OF PHOTOS)
« Reply #30 on: August 13, 2009, 10:22:14 AM »
The truck looks incediable!!!!  I am diggin the old school steel wheels with the trail boss tires  8)

Offline Captkaos

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Re: 73 Shortbed Stepside Complete Rebuild (LOTS OF PHOTOS)
« Reply #31 on: August 13, 2009, 03:08:41 PM »
Looking good?!

Offline team39763

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Re: 73 Shortbed Stepside Complete Rebuild (LOTS OF PHOTOS)
« Reply #32 on: August 14, 2009, 11:54:08 AM »
That color really grabs your attention...it's real nice.

Offline BigHemi353

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Re: 73 Shortbed Stepside Complete Rebuild (LOTS OF PHOTOS)
« Reply #33 on: August 15, 2009, 07:51:04 PM »
awesome looking truck! glad to see your doing it right. How did you get your tranny so clean?  I've been working for hours on mine and cant get it that clean!

great job
andy
-1986 Silverado K-20 6bt Cummins / NV4500/ np205- under construction

Offline mattevandavis

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Re: 73 Shortbed Stepside Complete Rebuild (LOTS OF PHOTOS)
« Reply #34 on: August 16, 2009, 10:02:14 PM »
awesome looking truck! glad to see your doing it right. How did you get your tranny so clean?  I've been working for hours on mine and cant get it that clean!

great job
andy

Mineral spirits, green scour pad.  Just kept it wet. It took hours to get off all the dirt and grime, but the mineral spirits worked in.

Offline mattevandavis

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Re: 73 Shortbed Stepside Complete Rebuild (LOTS OF PHOTOS)
« Reply #35 on: August 16, 2009, 10:07:31 PM »
Bit more progress.  Got the steps on.  got the tail gate on. Several other misc. parts.  The dash is in Horrible condition.  Got a cover for it, but it needs repair.  The cover apparently got damaged during shipping.  It needs repair too! ???















« Last Edit: January 28, 2018, 04:07:22 PM by mattevandavis »

Offline BigHemi353

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Re: 73 Shortbed Stepside Complete Rebuild (LOTS OF PHOTOS)
« Reply #36 on: August 18, 2009, 02:18:10 PM »
Thanks, I'll try the mineral spirits tonight. Great progress!
-1986 Silverado K-20 6bt Cummins / NV4500/ np205- under construction


Offline mattevandavis

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Re: 73 Shortbed Stepside Complete Rebuild (LOTS OF PHOTOS)
« Reply #38 on: November 12, 2015, 02:58:43 PM »
It has been quite some time since i last posted to this page.  I have not made a bunch of progress as my wife's grandmother had some health difficulties leading to her passing this year.  Over the last few years we have mounted the doors, basted the vent window frames and refinished them, and a few odds and ends.  If all goes well wor will resume in full swing in 2016.  I'm ready for this GEM to hit the road!

Offline Jr.

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Re: 73 Shortbed Stepside Complete Rebuild (LOTS OF PHOTOS)
« Reply #39 on: November 12, 2015, 09:58:43 PM »
It has been quite some time since i last posted to this page.  I have not made a bunch of progress as my wife's grandmother had some health difficulties leading to her passing this year.  Over the last few years we have mounted the doors, basted the vent window frames and refinished them, and a few odds and ends.  If all goes well wor will resume in full swing in 2016.  I'm ready for this GEM to hit the road!
Your truck is awesome!!  How much did you pay for the truck initially? Also I'm a fan of the steel wheels Part# (12-5005042) from Summit Racing. I just purchased  (2) 15x10 smoothies to go on my rear and I'll keep the 15x8s up front. I'll run 295/50r15 in the rear and 255/50r15s in the front.

Ok still working on what to do about rims.  I have found rally rims new at Summit for about $70 ea. rim only.  Bout 430 for the whole setup.  Or I could throw some alloys on there.  I was hoping for feed back.

As it stands I need 15x8 rims that will be fitted with Pirelli Scorpion ATR's.  It is tall tire 235/75R15




Sent from my SM-T217S using Tapatalk


Offline mattevandavis

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Re: 73 Shortbed Stepside Complete Rebuild (LOTS OF PHOTOS)
« Reply #40 on: January 24, 2018, 06:34:34 PM »
It has been quite some time since I have worked on this truck.  Light progress has been made in the years since I last put in a full day.  Mostly family related events with health related issues and then the death of an uncle and a grandmother.  Both of them are significant people in my and Dave's life; a brother-in-law / uncle to me and his mother / grandmother to me.  Dave is the original owner and brains of the restoration.  While both are still missed daily working on the truck hopefully will give us more bonding time and a source of positive energy.

We were able to put in a full day last week.   After Atlanta was shutdown for a snow storm during the week the weekend was sunny and BEAUTIFUL.  We decided to install the core support and fenders.  The painter foolishly decided to use gloss paint for the core support and inner fenders.  I do not want to repaint them at this stage as i doubt it will be the first thing most will notice.  Also there are a number of not stock decisions I have made with the truck so we can say it was intentional.  ;D.

















« Last Edit: January 24, 2018, 06:56:21 PM by mattevandavis »

Offline mattevandavis

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Re: 73 Shortbed Stepside Complete Rebuild (LOTS OF PHOTOS)
« Reply #41 on: January 28, 2018, 11:17:35 AM »
Some light progress this weekend.  We planned to mount the hood, but it was raining and the hood was in storage in another part of the property.  Rather than get it and us wet we decided to focus on some smaller projects and take an inventory of a few items for upcoming projects.

Dave had already mounted the hinges loosely to the fenders, and mounted the new battery tray.  The hinges were stuck open from being painted.  We removed the springs and bolted some u channel an carefully worked the hinges until they finally started to move.  After they started moving we applied some anti-seize and now they move with ease.






We also mounted the fender side markers, and installed the new stainless tailgate chains.  Oddly the chains had a standard thread but a 12mm nut.  We opted to use a rubber backed washer and a SAE nylon locknut instead instead of the metric nut and lock washer. 





Sadly that is the best of 2 blurry shots of the tailgate.

Offline mattevandavis

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Re: 73 Shortbed Stepside Complete Rebuild (LOTS OF PHOTOS)
« Reply #42 on: February 11, 2018, 01:57:30 PM »
Another work day yesterday.  It was raining hard, so we again chose to focus on several smaller projects rather than move the hood from the basement.  We are still rebuilding the vent windows, which has been one of the more complex tasks.  The hardest thing we have found is seating some of the rivets. We have a few different rivet tools, but some just need an extra love tap from a "bfh" to seat.  We also routed some of the wiring harness in mounts on the fender.  Finally we tackeled installing a new regulator and window on the drivers side.  This also proved to be a task.  Dave has not done this in years, and I have never done it.

The regulator was easy for Dave to install.  He had it ready to go in less than 10 minutes.  The glass proved to be a bit harder.  First we taped the door and then tried a test fit.  W quickly found that the rear regulator roller would not go into the track as it was too tight event with ample Lubriplate.  We pulled the glass back out and used some duckbilled pliers to open up the rear of the track.  After testing the fit with the passenger side regulator we Tried again to fit the glass.  This time the roller went into place with out issue, but we found we could not see the cutout for the front wheel.  We resolved the issue by removing the glass and adding some green painters tape in the location of the cutout  to the glass.  The final issue we found is with the glass on the bumper and in the forward most position the front roller was too far forward unless we rolled the window regulator past where the bumper was.  It took a while but we were able to angle the glass past the bumper and use a block to push the roller into place.  I am not looking forward to installing the passenger side glass.










Offline mattevandavis

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Re: 73 Shortbed Stepside Complete Rebuild (LOTS OF PHOTOS)
« Reply #43 on: February 28, 2018, 12:57:40 PM »
More work completed. We installed the hood this weekend  With new rubber and bumpers it was hard to tell what was preventing us from getting the hood where we wanted it, but we kept at it.  Still a bit higher in the rear than I'd like but at some point I'm just being picky.  We did decide that the new springs are a bit stiff.  The hinges moved with little effort before the spring install, and now we only move the hood from the sides to prevent bending it.







Offline mattevandavis

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Re: 73 Shortbed Stepside Complete Rebuild (LOTS OF PHOTOS)
« Reply #44 on: March 04, 2018, 04:50:37 PM »
Some more progress today.  Mostly smaller projects so not many photos.  We did some test fitting of the lower part of the grill where the marker lights go.  We would have installed it, but the 5/16" body bolts that we ordered have not come in.  You will see some old rusty bolts used for the test. I am glad that we did the mock up.  We found that the replacement core support is universal  for 73-87 but the 73-74 had different grill mounting hardware.  This is the link i found;  http://forum.73-87chevytrucks.com/smforum/index.php?topic=29462.0 Thanks Captkaos for the great info.

I also blasted the old washer nozzles and the old ash tray.  The nozzles are copper, but they are soldered to brackets that had significant pitting. The rest of the day was mostly locating all of the needed pieces for the next few projects; passenger side door glass, front bumper, etc.