The Wife's 88 CrewCab Makeover

[rhino]

The wife has always loved trucks especially the square bodies. She has told me on several occasions that she wanted me to build her one. This is that build. were Gonna cut the frame and convert it into a short bed, add 4 wheel disc brakes. Where gonna do all the body work and paint it right here in my garage. Install 03 Tahoe power leather seats, custom stereo, Rebuild the 5.7 and Im gonna try my first trans rebuild on a 700r4 and Im sure other things along the way. The truck is about 60-70% done now and I will post lots of pictures till you guys are caught up with the build. I do have a build thread going on the other forum as well in case some of you have seen this movie already. Please feel free to ask any questions along the way.

The truck started as a tan 88 1 ton crew cab long bed. It was a plain old work truck, rubber floor, two ratty tore up bench seats, hand crank windows, manual locks, non A/C 5.7 with a leaky th400. it rode like a log truck and not very cool, oh and a lift gate the kids rode like a carnival ride. needs less to say its not what the wife had envisioned has her dream truck. but she drove it any way. up until a little over a year ago. Thats when I put it in the garage and tore it apart.









I first started on ripping out the rear bench seat and tring to install the rear seats from the Tahoe. it took awhile lots of thinking which is hard for me. I wanted to keep the seats ablity to fold down. to this day im not sure why but thats what i did. I cut the Tahoes seat apart taking car to retain the piviot points and cables and then welded mounting points to the floor of the truck so everything would bolt into place. Now the seats fold up and down and will unbolt and come out fairly easy.

















The truck came with lap belts in the rear and i wanted to up grade to the shoulder belts. heres how that went down.















I then grinded the welds down. Im going to install all the plastic trim so all my ugly welds wont show.

I start on the front seats next.

[bake74]

     How did you get the bracket you made for the shoulder harness behind the post ?  I will be following this thread closely.  I have always wanted to build a crew cab 4 x4 and make it into a short bed.

[rhino]

dropped a string down the hole then tied string around it with a smaller bolt in it and pulled it up. when i go it up I held it tight to the c-piller and then put a tac weld in each corner. 

[Trimmy]

That's a clean truck to start out with. Looks like its a fun build and ill be watching it.

[gto109]

nice truck

[rhino]

The front seats wern't quite as easy.  with the hump in the floor it sat to high. Im not very tall and my head was almost hitting the ceiling. so I had to cut out some of the floor.

 





cit the mounting tabs off the Tahoe seats so they would sit flush







I tried to precise and calculating when marking where the floor should be cut, but in the end i gave up and just cut it where it look like it needed cut. I cut out about a 1.5 inches flattened out the top of the hump then cut the piece in half then welded it back to the floor.



























I did the passenger side a little bit different. Ill show you that and the bracing

[rhino]

On the passenger side instead of cutting a pie section out I cut the whole top off.  then put it on the floor and then beat the shoot out it until it was as flat as I could get it. Cut it to the shape I needed. Then welded it back on.
I think it worked out better this way.  Now the seats are sitting at the right ride height and should have plenty of back and forth travel.


















in this picture you can see how flat the floor is now.

[pholliday1]

Looks nice, What size wire are you using for your mig? .017 ? argon or flux core?

[rhino]

.23 argon/co2

[87454westernhauler]

nice build!

[pholliday1]

Cool keep the pictures coming, very interesting

[rhino]

I used some 3/16 steel plate to tie the floor together and make a nice flat surface for the seats to sit on.





























I pretty much did the same thing on the other side and supported the underside as well.
and put seam sealer on all the welds

[bake74]

     I was wondering if you were going to reinforce those areas in case of say a accident.  Glad to see the safety was thought ahead.

[rhino]

Yea supporting it and making it strong was always a top priority. I far from being a engineer, so I tried my best to give it the structural integrity it needs. I will fasten the seats down with 7/16 hardened bolts through steel plates under the floor that  run  perpendicular to the ones above.

with all seats mounted and bolted in, we all gave the a test ride. they are very comfortable and offer decent room in the back. as you can see in the pic. my wife and son (who btw is almost 6" tall and pushing 265) have plenty of room.












with the drivers seat in normal driving position, I sat in the back and took a photo of how close my knees were.

[83LWB convert]

This build is awesome.  Seeing what you're doing makes me want to pick one of these up.