1980 1/2 ton shortbed...

[hotrod24]

Ok well for the the last two years I have been seaching for a truck and I have found a few and went and looked at them but it seemed that none of them would work out till I called a local relative that has a few junk yards and asked him what he had and he said that he  had an 86 2wd short bed, but when I asked him how much it was over my budget.  So I asked him again if he had any other trucks and he said that he had a 1980 1/2 ton short bed custom deluxe straight 6 350 automatic for $800 bucks so i started gathering up some cash and i thought it was going to be another 3 weeks but yesterday my dad went and talked to him and gave him $200 down and brought it home for me and i dont have to give the rest till the end of march.  

[slammed79]

I hope your relative has some parts trucks you can pick! Can't beat the price man!

What kinda love you planning on giving her?

[Layne]

Looks nice, thats a good deal!

[hotrod24]

Yea he has a few more trucks i could get parts from   The truck needs a new floor, rockers, cab corners, kick panels and the firewall needs patched plus the bed needs some attentation...But the frame only has surface rust that makes me feel alittle better lol anyways my plans are to change the headlight bezels to 73-78 and grille and do maybe a bed gas tank filler conversion to match the bezels and just maybe lowerd some because i live on a mtn so not sure on that one and also a paint job...

[bake74]

     Good find, keep us posted on your progress.

[Yamaha74]

I like it and I think a 2wd might be in my future to go with my 84 4wd with a 78-79 frame.  I might look for a 73-79 2wd so that maybe I can do a body swap between the 2wd and 4wd.

[Slooby]

If you can source one out, I think the 73-74 grills look the best, you can get the center support from a 73 and side supports and yours might be indented for the the side supports like my 75 was then all you got to do is drill the holes.  But I do love the truck wish my bed looked as good as yours seems to.

[hotrod24]

Yea i like the 73-74 grilles to, but i am not sure what i am gong for yet. just depends what i run into. but yea the bed is in pretty good shape besides the arches...

Yamaha74 that would be a cool project to get into...

[hotrod24]

Well for the last two weeks i have been cleaning and inspecting the truck for things that was not working right or did not work at all. So yesterday I starting on it and found out that my dash lights were not working but my warning lights were, so that told me that some of the bulbs were bad.  I changed a few and presto dash lights and my radio was not working either, so I looked and it was not hooked up, I wired it all up and nothing happened so I switched to a jvc casset player that I had laying around and it works great...  






















 

[bake74]

     You almost got the whole interior tore apart, might as well go through it now. 

[BigRuss]

id redo the interior and cab now and focus on the rest of it after its all done...

[thirsty]

Maybe my dash isn't so bad afterall...lol

[80stepsideguy]

Shouldve held onto some of your parts there dusty like that blue dashpad you once had, ya couldve dyed it and wouldve been in a little better shape then that 1 that seen alot better days lol...Also i guess your truck was once yellow,Now that you got the dash out, get some masking tape, ,some newspaper, scuff sand the dash and paint it a color you`d like..

thanks
Pat

[hotrod24]

Yea right now I am just fixing things as this is just going to be a fixer upper while I am driving it.  Once I get my pontiac on the road I will get deeper in to it as it is in need of a tranny rebuild and tune up.  I would love to just strip the interior and paint but that has to wait    Pat you are right, it used to be yellow then white and then blue lol but yea I wish I would have kept some of the parts I had because I could have used the dash pad, like you said and some others.  Yall are right the dash has seen better days lol but there are others out there  Today I started putting my cluster back in and getting things back in line but I ran into a problem with my gear inducter and column, someone broke the bottom housing of it so now I have to fix that and I think I have a pretty good idea how, till I get a replacement.  I did fix my horn or should I say horns.  I was testing my horn relay with a test light and it was clicking so that told me the relay was not bad and the test light was lighting up so I thought the horn was bad, but nope.  I tested the horn with a wire to the battery and grounded it and it went buzzzz and then beeeeeeeeeeeeep lol so i guess it just needed the crap blowed out of it  but i also hooked another horn up that I had on the passenger side so now I have an A note and F note horn...

[80stepsideguy]

I also noticed your door post als ohas some rust issues, you gonna take a wire wheel and clean it up? Looks like a sweet lil truck to have n work on,I`ll be happy to finish mine soon, and then start on my convertible.

Thanks
Pat