C30 Project Buildup

[exilous]

Ok I'm new to this site but here is my project. I will condense the story as much as possible Because its rather lengthy. It's call the C30 Project a 1985 GMC C30 mason dump 350 ith a SM465 trans. The bad cylinder 5 is dead transmission leaks like heck i have broken springs front end is worn like heck and the cab is rotted, thats typical though. The good, it was garage kept so all the rot is not soft and flimsy so its repairable, the truck was free. Uhm thats all the good. Ok So I got the truck from my uncle for free due to it being in such horrible shape. It started his roofing business about 15 years ago and I taught myself how to drive stick on it so it means somethign to me just as it does him. Hopefully I can start my own home improvement company with it when I'm done buil;ding it.That is the story in short. I figured out all the crap I needed to rebuild the truck buying it all used with the exception of certain things. So I went and bought cab mounts cab corners and rocker panels along with a rubber floor mat and insulation. That is the only stuff I bought new so far. Here is what I needed to find used:
-Doors
-Hood
-Genuine 1985 GMC Grille
-Heater fan
-Engine
-Rear Springs
-Extra windshield
-Front grille trim
That is everything I needed to get the truck running again. So instead of spending a small fortune buying from junkyards and local chevy guys I started looking for a whole truck. Low and behold I found a 1985 K5 Blazer with the silverado trim package. So I compiled a list of upgrades from silverado package stuff I wanted to integrate to my truck. That list includes:
-Tilt wheel
-Chrome door handle cups
-Chrome dash
-Headliner with all plastic pieces
-Aluminum Wheel well arches
-Aluminum trimmed fender signal lights
I picked up the K5 for $250 i towed it home with my pickup it was engineless but had a trans and a plow. Needless to say I got all the silverado trim package stuff off that truck parted the rest out made my money back plus $200 and still have the plow and a ton of other stuff. So I made out good. But I was still missing my most important part the front the grille and other miscellaneous things. So I went looking again. I found another 1985 K5 Blazer with the silverado trim package 305 carbureted 700r4 trans not running along with a 1987 GMC jimmy bone stock 305TBI 700r4 and someone painted the exterior with rhino lining i talked the guy down to $550 with him towing BOTH to my shop a few towns over. And the Jimmy AKA The armadillo had the 1985 GMC grille I wanted. I was happy when I found that. SO I got both home started tinkering around. someone recently did plugs wires cap rotor on the silverado and of course the distributor was 180 off. I got it running but I forgot to clamp down the distributor down cause someone flipped the hold down upside down...the engine died and refused to start again I talked to a local mechanic and he said the distributor wasnt grounded properly shorted out adn a solenoid or something went bad...all in all it needs a new distributor to run. Ok so I stripped most of the good easy things off of that truck put it in storage. Moving on to the armadillo I got that running it too was 180 off still runs awesome but the transmission is bad in it. Doesnt like moving very much. So i began my local advertising trying to sell parts...i sold small things here and there not accumulating to much. And then I began playing with ideas. I looked at the bucket seats in both trucks adn the bench in mine. I then took the bench out and measured and measured the silverado seats adn the armadillo seats. Armadillo seats were closer to fir with less mods because they are base models. So while i was dismantling these blazers I was working on the C30 I removed fenders wheel wells  the complete interior the hood and some other things...First thing I worked on the fenders I got them all bondoed and primered up 2 days ago I finished that. I then moved onto the wheel wells they had that one rot spot on them which I went out and bought a little welder and taught myself how to weld on the wells. The first well came out bad the second was much improved. I moved onto the cab corners and rockers got those in then I took a sheet of steel and welded up a floor pan. Back to those seats. That was mondays project I spent 5 hours on the drivers seat cutting grinding and measuring and cutting then welding. Got it fabbed up and fit in. Today I did the passenger seat and I modified the headliner from the K5 to fit. I just need to do finishing touches on the back where the dome light goes and the headliner will be complete. Everythign else I did so far to the C30 was shocks and cabmounts.
All in all the project is going well I started the project in january and worked 2 hours a day on it until this past friday when i got laid off ive been there all day everyday. Between the blazers and the C30 ive got over 120 hours invested. OH dang I forgot I bought another mason dump awhile back. I bought a 1978 mason dump with a 350 Sm465 trans good springs good rearend. And it has 6 good rims. So basically What I'm going to do is take each component out individually an drebuild it or just freshen it up real quick. engine trans rearend and i think I'm just going to unbolt the whole front end and rebuild that then slide it right into mine.
I will work on getting pics up in a few minutes I have tons of pics. Hope to hear some input from yall if yo8u can think of anythign I should add to the truck or get rid of. I love getting ideas from other people. Speaking of ideas well I'll get into that later. I'm customizing a lot of the interior of the truck I worked with a motorcycle guy who builds his bikes with shoot around the house and he gave me some realyl good ideas I'll just put that out there for now. Pics are on the way!!!

[exilous]

Here are pics of the 78 parts truck.Yes that is a gas can on the passenger seat. and yes that is how the gas gets to the engine.




 I don't know how many pics each post can hold so I'll just make a few more posts.

[exilous]

Me doing some final sanding after I finished welding up the cab corner. That is one of the bucket seats before I modified it and installed it into the truck.

Me doin the last sand on the fenders before I prime them

Thats the hole on the driver side floor. not too bad thats after I cut it out of course.

Stock straight column on the right. Tilt column on the left...i already did the swap and I gave that grant steering wheel away i put the GMC one back on.

Empty dash very dirty.

[exilous]

Armadillo to the left of my dodge silverado to the right of my dodge.

That is the better of the two patch panels I made on the wheel wells That one spot up against the firewall that always rots out. I used 4 pieces to repair it. I cut all the metal out of one of the glove boxes from one of the blazers. I waste nothing here...haha.

Ok To the left you can see a pallet sitting on top of a garbage can with tools on it...thats workbench #1 Workbench #2 also known as my body work table is a small piece of plywood ontop of a garbage can as well...Sometimes I use the tailgate of my pickup too.

My buddy is a photographer and takes really cool pics. This one came out especially good. Back when I first started welding last week using flux core wire. I have recently upgraded my welder to use 75%argon25%Co2...I'm a learning.


Ok so thats a bunch of pics for now I need to buy a camera instead of using my buddies everytime i need it. Today I finished up bth bucket seats and got the headliner nearly complete hopefully I'll get to the store tomorrow and get meself a digital camera and take a whole ton of pics and post them up. hope you guys enjoy I will keep you all posted as I make progress.

[choptop]

Cool project. Keep us updated

[hotrod24]

yea man great work

[Just-speed]

Dude. Great stuff.  These are my Fav threads.  Trust me I read every bit.  Your not wasting your time typing. 

Keep it going.

[exilous]

Ok today i wasnt very motivated it was rainy cold and dreary. so i took all the windows out of the 3 blazer caps i had put those in storage in hopes of selling them. i took two of the caps and cut them up put them into my pickup along with some door plastics and a bench seat out of one of the blazers brought them all down to transfer junk station and got rid of them. by that time i just stopped got some lunch went back to my shop and did a lot of thinking. called a few people had them come down we threw some ideas around. I decided that I'm going to hopefully sooner rather than later get the cab off the truck put it in the bed while i redo the drivetrain. it would make it much easier to take the engine and trans out with the cab off then i can clean up the frame and paint it while im there. Makes sense right? Ok so my buddies left i am still waiting to get a few numbers of reupholsterers in the town to send out my bucket seats. I finished up modifying the back part of the headliner which wa the hardest part holding it up by myself making marks drilling holes cutting it grinding it and redoing the process. finally got it up and hanging looked pretty good i was happy with it. i took out the seats removed the hardware from them and put them up in storage until i get a guy to reupholster them. put all the brackets and mounts in a bucket with the seats so i can sandblast and paint them up. i measured up the gap between the seat frames so i can make a flat plate for a center console. just so happens that it is exactly 2 feet from the front and back of the seat brackets. that makes it easy. I talked to a home improvement guy in the building next to mine adn he said he'll make me a nice oak center console cup holders and everything. So i got stuff done today not much. Waitin on a buddy of mine to go find me a camera so i can get some pics for you guys. I'll update ya tomorrow.

[exilous]

Found some pics of the fenders when i finished the exterior of them...i still have to do the engine compartment side of them... I did 1 coat of primer wet sanded with 400 grit did a second coat of primer wet sanded again with 400 then i did a 3rd coat of primer and didnt wet sand it again but i plan on 1000 grit sanding the 3rd coat





i'll get some pics taken of the interior that i made tomorrow. i finally bought myself a camera. so i can take tons of pics...haha

[hotrod24]

keep them coming man

[exilous]

Alright today was another great successful day. I got a whole lot accomplished. Well a lot more than I ever expected to do. I went to home depot this morning and bought a wire wheel that apparently didnt fit my grinder, and I bought some paint and rust stripping wheel. Oh my God that thing was dang awesome it worked great. Kinda glad the wire wheel didnt fit cause this thing worked wonders. And I bought a new sawzall. My old one was so far worn out and leaking oil and stuff it needed to be replaced. So I got back to my shop I dismantled the interior again. I removed the seat brackets and I removed the headliner and the plastic pieces. I wired up all 3 of the floor lights. So instead of the factory 1 I have 3 now. Then I proceeded to open my blue paint remover grind wheel and wround down the roof. And While I was grinding it kept heating up the roof and popping some of the dents and cooling and stuff. So I figured I would give it a whirl and give the roof heck. Well I made 3 pulling tools 1 was a paint roller that I cut for pulling the hard creased dents and 2 smaller pullers for some small softer dents. I pulled all the hard creased dents around the cab lights then worked my way around the side and back of the cab grinding and heating then tapping. I pushed a lot of metal from the hard seam of the back window up onto the roof and as I did that I watched the big "oil can" dents push themselves right out. I was amazed it was totally awesome.Then I carried metal up from over the doors and pushed that towards the center and all the big stretched spots pushed right out. I pushed on the roof in a bunch of spots and it is pretty darn rigid. There are 2 hand size spots that are a bit soft but I am so happy with the way it came out I nearly crapped my pants. I even had a body guy stop by and take a look at it and he said it would take a whole day for him to get it looking good. Now I'm not trying to sound cocky but I got it done in about 5 hours of grinding and banging and for me its 100 times better than what it was. Although there are lots of small dents but those are a lot easier to fill with bondo then big dents so I can very happy. I am going to have to skim coat the whole roof to make it come out good. So first thing tomorrow I'm going to work on those 2 soft spots get those hardened up then its bondo time. I gotta bondo the roof then bondo all the seems around the cab corners and rockers. I left my camera at the shop so I have no pics of the finished roof or my tools but I will get those up tomorrow. Here are some of the before pics of the roof that I took.

[CruzinHigh]

Great work!  Looks like you're on your way!

Gonna keep the sm465 tranny??   

[80stepsideguy]

You are right bout that roof being pretty messed up.If your up to the challenge i say swap roofs from your parts cab.Just make sure you take  measurements, double even triple check before you do any cutting.Or like blazin said you can use the stud gun as it pulls and shrinks the metal at the same time. But looking good man keep up the great work.. 

thanks
pat

[exilous]

Ok well i'm up in massachusetts for the weekend with my girlfriend on her laptop to make a quick reply so i can't post aby of the pics but I spent hours banging and pulling yesterday and spent a few hours today doing some finishing touches and i got the roof its shape back. I looked through a couple auto body books i had and a few my dad had and got a few ideas. I heated it up with my blue paint stripping pad on my grinder and pulled a  little tapped a buunch and just kept repeating. then to get the big dents out of the center I "carried" a bunch of the metal from the seam above the back window and pushed it towards the center. Then carried more metal from directly above the doors towards the center. And I watched the center slowly pop itself out. Although now the roof is littered with tons of small dents its much improved over what it was. Its to the point where I can bondo it and call it done. I had the body guy I know come to look at it and he said I did a really good job for something that difficult. So that made my day. Can't wait to get it bondoed and primered then i can really see what "shape" the roof really has. Other than that I bondoed up all the seams for the rockers and cab corners today and left it to harden till sunday when i get home. So Sunday I will have a ton of finish shots of the roof.

[exilous]

Ok I came back i sanded down the roof and all the cab corners and rockers, I did another coat on the cabs adn rockers gonna get those sanded tomorrow hopefully then those will be all set and finished for bondo. i recoated the passenger side of the roof and started on the driver side. I sanded down the second coat on the pass side and it was close to good. i 3rd coated it and let it sit. i did the 1st coat on the drivers side and let that sit.im not gonna get crazy with the roof because id go through just too much bondo and i'm not horribly worried about it. so long as it looks good where the edges are that people see more often and the drip rails sit fit i will be happy other than that...here are a few pics of the roof before the 3rd coat went on.i havent even gotten to the middle of the roof yet...hahah.