Family Truck 95 Z71

[Aaron Poston]

Hello! I'm new to this site and I'm still kind of figuring things out. I stumbled across the site by researching how hard it would be to convert a long bed to short bed for a 88-98 Chevy. I'm only 20 but I love these trucks and I've always wanted a crew cab short bed 4x4 but I mainly only see long beds so I thought I'd just get one of those and convert it. Love this site though. I have found out so much more about these trucks than I ever thought I would. It's awesome! Anywho, the family truck is a 95 z71 Silverado and it's still pretty stock but it's slowly but surely getting updated. My grandpa ordered it way back when and I grew up with my cousins so much in this truck. In 2010, my grandpa bought a new dodge ram because he hated the 2010 Silverado body style and he just wouldn't get a Ford. My dad bought the 95 from him and we've been upgrading and having fun with it since. I posted all this in a build thread but I would love to get feedback and get some ideas from other people so I'll post it all here too. Here's the picture my grandpa still has in his garage of the truck the day it came home.

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[Aaron Poston]

I like to say that my dad and I have joint custody over the truck because we both buy parts for it and drive it. I usually take it offroading and stuff and my dad just drives it around town looking cool lol. We didn't do much to the truck the first couple years though other than change regular maintenance stuff. The first things we upgraded in about 2013 was change the stereo system because the factory speakers blew and we wanted more bass and louder music. So we put 2 12s under the back seat and replaced all the speakers. We put led taillights because the stock ones were cracked and faded. We also put dual batteries and changed the air intake because the stock one was broken. That was just about it until last year. We weren't crazy about upgrading stuff but once we started seeing what other people were doing and I found this site, we started thinking about what we wanted to do to the truck.

 

[Aaron Poston]

So we had the motor and tranny rebuilt last year. The truck had about 190,000 and it was showing its age. A family friend gave us a throttle body spacer so we put that on but I couldn't feel a difference. We also put a full flowmaster exhaust because the old system was rusted holes in spots. I worked at a led company doing mainly kitchen cabinet and commercial truck lighting so I put a strip of leds under the hood. I just wired it into the reel up work right because the bulb base was broken and it had a switch.

 

[Aaron Poston]

We don't drive the truck much because it only gets 12 mpgs but one day my dad took it to work, I usually just take it off roading in the Arizona deserts. Well he just left our house and the hood flew up and got all bent out of shape. He says he closed it the night before when he was working on it but anyway, we needed a new hood. A perfect excuse because he's always wanted a cowl hood.

also put new headlights and parking lights on as well

 

[Aaron Poston]

That's about all we've done until last week. I got the truck some goodies. Tow mirrors and led switchbacks. I had to replace the parking light sockets because the old bulbs were corroded so bad and the sockets broke getting them out. I soldered them after I tested everything with butt connectors. Just an OCD thing I guess. Also had to replace the anchor clips for the parking lights so while I was ordering from LMC, I ordered the 4hi harness from them because I wanted it to be really clean and neat under the hood. Also my friend gave me his 30 in light bar so I mounted that on the bumper as well.

 

[Aaron Poston]

Yesterday, my friend gave me some stuff to tint the taillights and I've done it on my hyundai and I liked it so doing the truck was so easy. Took like 5 minutes to take them off, mask, and spray them. I love the look. I also picked a different friend up from work because he didn't have a ride home and he thought I was in a newer style truck because of the led switchbacks. That made me feel good lol

 

[98BlackSierra]

That’s awesome that you still have it. I’m also working on my dads old ‘98 that he bought new.

Looks pretty good still, but not a fan of the light bar at all lol. Any plans on painting the cowl hood?

 

[Aaron Poston]

Thanks, I love your truck. Yeah, the roof needs painted too so later this year we were gonna try and do it ourselves and if we mess it up then we'll just get it done. It's just way too hot to try and do it now. It's like 115 here in az most days now.

The light bar I got for free and I take it offroading at night a lot so I figured it would be good. I'm not crazy about it visually, but the amount of light is awesome.

 

[Suburban1500]

Liking the build man! I'm from Tucson but currently in NY.

 

[Aaron Poston]

Thanks!