Honch's 93 RCSB DD

[Honch]

Hi guys,

I was invited by a mod to post my build thread on your site. I started whats posted here around July of this year, this is a cut and paste from another forum.

I bought my truck new in 93, its a W/T with a "California" option that included A/C, Cloth interior, Tach and Silverado front end all for less than 12K.

This is what it looked like about two weeks after I bought it, de-badged, rear window tinted.

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This is it less than a year later, 2-4 drop, roll pan, hidden hitch, SS 454 mirrors, sound system and pre-commercial Budniks.

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17 years later and 110k miles it looks much the same with the only change being a Snug Lid hard tonneau. It has been the best, most reliable vehicle I have ever owned, with next to no maintenance required. I have yet to even replace so much as a bulb on it.

Last month I was driving home from work and part of my drive home is past little garage sale setups along the side of the road. Most of it is normally fruit, leather saddles and harnesses or junk from Mexico. Today a jump seat caught my eye. I had been looking for one to add a third seat back to my truck but they seem to be very desirable and regularly sell for 175-225 dollars on Ebay.

When I got out of the truck I noticed a matching grey leather seat sitting a ways off from the jump seat. I asked the guy standing there how much for the jump seat and he told me it was part of a set. I thought well if I can get it cheap enough I can just dump the oddball bucket seat, I should be able to get a good deal on this, who would want just one bucket seat. I finally got out of the guy he wanted 300.00 for the set, I told him it was too much for one bucket and a jump seat and he said "the other bucket is in the back of my truck". The seats were obviously second row seats, they all had quick release mechanisms on the tracks. I asked him what they came out of and he told me a 2010 Tahoe, they obviously weren't but the price was right.

I offered him 200.00 cash and he helped load them in my truck.

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After I got home and had time to look them over, it was apparent they were brand new but it took me a while to figure out they came out of a 2010 Honda Odyssey.

Initially I had planned on making brackets for them and retaining the quick release mechanisms. That plan went by the wayside when I measured them. The bases are seven inches wider than the factory buckets. I decided to unbolt the quick release mechanisms and attach my own brackets to the seat rails .

I pulled the seats and mat out of my truck and began measuring for the brackets when I noticed spots around the floor where the paint was blistered. I sanded one of the spots and it was rust from the factory spot welds. The rest of that day was spent sanding the floor and putting down a coat of POR-15.

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I had a quart I had purchased over 15 years ago and never used, it was when the only thing they sold was gloss black. I could not get a good answer from them as to shelf life of their product so I decided this was a good area to use it on.

After it had dried I was able to start the seat adapter fabrication. My truck is a factory bench seat truck and I will only drill holes / cut wires as a last resort. So the plan was to make adapters that would connect to each other, utilize the factory seat mounts and pick up the seat belt mounts for additional security. The Honda seats have the buckle end of the belts attached to the seat instead of the floor so the mounting of these needed to be strong.

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If you are familiar with OBS floor pans you can see how much wider this is than the factory bucket locations. The drivers side has plenty of room for this bracket, the passenger side was going to be much harder.

Another issue I ran into once the seat was in is that the seat back is much thicker than either a factory bucket or bench. I am just under six foot and drive with the seat fairly close to the steering wheel. With the new seat all the way back it felt a tad close and a bit low. I decided I would work on the passenger side and make adjustments to both when I was done.

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For the passenger side I made a mirror image of the driver’s bracket and then made offsets to move the seat one inch outboard due to the floor pan being narrower on that side. The nice part of projects like this is it gives me a chance to practice my welding.

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With both seats done the passenger seat would only move forward an inch then hit the transmission tunnel. Raising the front of it one inch would allow it to clear the tunnel and actually made the seat much more comfortable to sit in. I cut off the offsets I had put on the passenger side and adjusted them up giving the seat a five degree incline. Because it felt so good I raised the front of the driver’s seat to match. This also helped with the feel of the driver’s seat being too close to the wheel, the front of the seat being raised raises my legs in relationship to the pedals making them farther away.

Next it was time for the hardest part of this project, the jump seat. These seats were from a vehicle that is front wheel drive, meaning there is no transmission tunnel and the jump seat was as tall as the buckets. To make this work I was going to remove six inches or the height of the transmission tunnel in the truck.

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This pretty much eliminated any of the storage area in the seat but it still remains functional as either a seat or a console. I also decided the easiest way to mount it would be with the quick release brackets. The jump seat did not have the clearance issues I had with the buckets and making brackets for it to attach to was fairly easy.

The final framework to adapt the seats looks bulky but it only weighs around twelve pounds and as I said before it needed to be fairly strong because of the seat belts being mounted to the seats.<br />

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If you look closely at the small diameter rods at the top of the picture you will notice they are actually hinge pins from the door, they were the perfect diameter for the latches on the jump seat.

Two weeks ago I made a trip to the one and only U-Pull/Pick-a-Part type yard I can find in Tucson and out of the huge selection of two OBS pickups I found some seat belt buckles from the back seat in an extended cab. These are a good length for the belts to be mounted in the seats, for some reason the person I bought them from cut the belts that were there with a knife. Unfortunately I have not been able to find grey shoulder belts and even if I did the condition after 15-20 years would be most likely poor. If any of you know a place that sells new factory style shoulder belts please let me know. I have found universal types but would be more comfortable using the factory piece.

I put a coat of POR-15 on the framework a few hours ago and once it is dry I can mount it back in the truck. I'll post some pictures of the seats once they are back in along with what I have done to make the grey seats work with the blue interior.

 

[Honch]

The first step in tying the grey seats to the blue interior is going to be the headliner. The current one in the truck is perforated white with blue sun visors. The headliner in the truck was coming loose from the cardboard base and starting to sag in numerous areas.

Last weekend my wife and I went to a fabric store and found some felt of suitable thickness for $3.99 a yard, cheap enough to buy plenty extra for any mistakes.

After pulling it out of the truck the vinyl covering pretty much fell off of it, leaving a thin layer of deteriorating foam which was relatively easy to remove from the cardboard just time consuming. This sort of work is much like painting, the more time you spend and the better job you do in prep the better the end result. Removing the foam and cleaning up the surface took me about an hour to do.

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I wasn't able to get a good "before" shot because of the vinyl falling off but here is a shot of what the original perforated vinyl covering looked like.

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Here is a shot of the finished headliner, it took a bit longer than I thought it would and I made a few errors with it. I pressed out the felt on the floor after gluing it down with 3M contact adhesive this de-arched the headliner a bit and I didn't realize it until it was too late.

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Overall though it came out very nice, I was able to dye the trim around the dome light and found some grey trim retainers at the local NAPA. The biggest cost was the 3M contact adhesive at $15.00 a can.

The visors were simple to cover as well with the same material. I will post some pictures of them once I have everything installed and some fresh batteries in the camera.

 

[Honch]

I had some surgery done to my left foot so was unable to work on this the last two weeks. During that time i did some reading on sound deadening and came across some threads where people had used "Peel N Seal" as a cheap alternative to the name brand sound deadeners. The only negative posts I found on this product was some people complained about it not being sticky enough. I had no issues at all getting it to stick, you actually better get it in the right spot the first time.

Because my foot is still very sore, I only did what was necessary to get the brackets I made installed back in the truck. I will finish up the foot well areas next weekend along with the lower door skins.

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Coverage of this amount took just under two rolls at 16.95 each, I should be able to finish the front and doors with another two rolls.

Friday I got some carpet samples from stockinteriors and hopefully the carpet I ordered will be here by next weekend.

Here is a shot of it with the seats installed and the jump seat with the six inch section taken out.

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I still have not decided what I am going to do with the seat belts as far as their color, the belts coming out of the seats are from the jump seats in an extended cab. With a small amount of modification to their attachment plate I was able to bolt them up to the factory location inside the seat bottom.

I took it for a drive just a few hours ago, it has a Gibbons style catback with a 40 series flowmaster exiting just in front of the passenger side rear tire. This type of system is very loud and tends to drone in the cab. Without explaining any of the sound deadening to my wife she commented right away about how much quieter the truck was. This was with the front not being done and the carpet not installed, I am looking forward to how much more it will help with the rest of it being complete.

 

[Honch]

My ACC Carpet from stockinteriors came in Wednesday, I purchased their base carpet with a mass back upgrade. I think the shorter nap carpet will be easier to keep clean than the plush.

Saturday I finished the peel &amp; stick in the footwells, and put in the new carpet. The installation was painless, the molded backing made placing the carpet in the correct spot very easy.

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The only complaint I had over the carpet was the amount of oil or oil residue that came off of the mass backing.

A few months ago I found a tool at Lowes that was very similar to a cutter Makita sold years ago only at 5x the price. It was a Skill Powercutter and for projects like this it works awesome, they can be bought for under 30 dollars and cut through carpet like butter. They are also great for cutting those annoying blister packages.

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Today I got the items I needed for the next part of my project from a forum member. Some loaded doors with power windows, locks and mirrors off a 97, along with some of the seat belts and trim.

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Next weekend I plan to go through the harness for the doors and start moving everything into the passenger door.

 

[Honch]

I decided to try something I had been thinking about for a while. I wanted to make a mount for my vice that allowed me to move it out of the way if I wanted to put something large on the work bench. I had read somewhere before about someone using a truck hitch mount and decided to give it a try.

After a quick trip to Harbor Freight I bought a few things pictured on my Hoosier couch (pickup seat in the garage).

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My plan was to use a hitch mount vice and attach a reciever to the bottom of one of my Lions benches. The reciever I purchased is 18&quot; long, this I can cut in half and place it in two different locations on the bench.

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After I removed the ring at the inlet end and cut it in half I had to reinforce the corner of the bench. It obviously was not designed for this and the forces this would apply to the corner would have not allowed the vice to be very solid. I used some scrap metal to make a stiffener that went from the edge of the table to the upper portion of the leg mount which would support the aft end of the receiver.

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With the reciever welded to the bottom edge of the table you can see how the vice is posistioned in relationship to the bench.

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This design also allows the vice to be moved a ways out from the table which will be nice for holding long pieces of pipe or metal.

The main advantage of ths setup is the vice does not take up valuable space on the end of the bench. If it is in the way of items I want to place on the bench I can simply pull the pin and place the vice on the shelf under the bench. The hitch vice plate was cheap enough (18.00) that I may use this for a bench grinder as well.

I got some belts from a 97 extended cab two weeks ago when I bought the doors. The problem is extended cabs used quite a bit different seat belts than the standard cabs. They mounted in much taller pods next to the "B" pillar so they would not be in the way when people tried to get in the back.

My options were to wait until I could find some grey ones for my truck or move the extended cab belt webs into my retractors. After a good soak in some oxyclean the webbing looked nearly new.

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The hardest part of this was having the right twists in the right spots on the belts and putting all the retractor mechanisms back together correctly.

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The retractor rollers are staked together and the belt webbing is held in with pins<br />

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This reel on the passenger side has a splined shaft which drives a mechanism which appears to lock the reel once it is extended to a certain point, I am no expert on this sort of thing but it appears to me that it is designed to allow the use of a car seat on the passenger side. It has an indicator on the housing that allows you to index it before removal.

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The finished belts look much better with the grey seats.

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I also got the "A" pillar covers, kick panels, and the close out panels aft of the seat belts painted.

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While I was at Harbor Freight I picked up some heat shrink tubing so I can start repairing the door harness. The one I have was cut in four places when it was removed. It should not be hard to fix and I need to remove the airbag wiring from it anyway.

 

[Honch]

While it would be really cool to try and adapt this as my new gauge cluster, I wasn't able to convince my wife it would be.

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Her car like every other GM plastic interior had some creaks and rattles I worked on this weekend, one was the cluster itself. The rattles have gotten much worse since the dealership replaced the HUD, when I tore into it I found a few screws that were loose but the main rattle still existed.

The culprit was the lower left corner of the dash which has no supporting structure, I fabbed up a small bracket tying it to structure just above the emergency brake. This appears to have eliminated all the dash rattles.

On the truck I spent most of the weekend working on the harness for the doors. It was cut in five places when I bought the doors and needed the seat, airbag and courtesy light wiring removed. I spent a few hours trying to find wiring diagrams for a 97 with no luck until went to Alldata's website and found the "Try the demo" vehicle was a 98 chevy truck. I was able to download all the wiring diagrams for the harness and doors.

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After a little testing with the fluke I found my truck has the needed wiring from the fuse box to the "courtesy center" so the only thing I have left is to get some small connector ends. The harness I have is from a 97 and uses one plug, the 93 courtesy center has all singles.

I was able to hook up some jumper leads and test the door locks, windows and mirrors. Everything worked but the window control on the passenger door. A couple shots of contact cleaner into the switch and it started working fine.

Next weekend I plan to start moving everything over to my truck.

 

[Honch]

This weekend I got the doors on the truck gutted and applied some more Peel N Seal inside.

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Transferring everything from the 97 doors was fairly simple. I was surprised by how different the doors actually were. Had I tried to put the 93 panels in 97 doors it would have been much more of a problem due to the indentation at the top of the door that housed a grab handle on the older trucks.

I took the Delco speakers and cut the centers out to use as retaining rings to hold my Pro Series Bostons in the door. The cutouts were too big in diameter to screw the speakers into the panel.

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Before I installed the new door panels I had some body panel mylar tape that I cut into strips and stuck around the edge of the door where the door panel comes into contact. I hate the squeaking sound that plastic panels make when they rub against something.

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The wire hookup went well and the difference between this and the work truck interior is night and day. I am still debating on the dash and what I am going to do, my next plans are for the carputer and that will dictate what I decide on the dash. I would like to put a touch screen where the stock radio control panel was. I currently have a wide screen GPS there and like its location and usability.

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The last thing I need to figure out with the doors is the passenger side mirror, its not connected along its horizontal axis and basically flopping around. I've never messed with power mirrors and have no idea how it comes apart.

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[Honch]

This weekend I had a bit more luck at the 3 acre pick and pull, in the form of a 2000 Suburban. When I got there the professional junkyarders were in the process of destroying the interior to get the door locks and window motors. I did manage to get the overhead console and Temp/Compass mirror.

Unfortunately the yard itself cut off the front clip to pull the motor and the temp probe and harness were gone.

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The console is in very good shape but once I got it home I notice that someone had disassembled the map light switches internally.

I decided today to mess with the passenger side mirror, it came off with a large screw driver and prying against the pivot point in the center of the mirror. Once it was off I found one of the pivot balls on the adjustment screw was broken off. Being a Sunday afternoon buying the part was out of the question and since it was already broken me trying anything to fix it would be no loss if I failed.

First I drilled out the center of the tiny pivot ball and the center of the screw itself with a #40 drill. I really need to get a drill press someday.

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After it was drilled I filled the holes with epoxy and screwed in a wall hook to hold them together.

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I cut off the end of the hook and put the everything back together, the mirror works fine and is probably stronger than it was new.

I test wired up the new rear-view mirror and the compass appears to work correctly. Tonight I am ordering the temp probe and connector, tomorrow I will run the wiring and put the mirror in.

 

[Honch]

Small update, no pictures.

Last weekend I installed and wired up the Compass/Temp mirror, it works good and the compass changes perfect compared to a GPS I borrowed to test it.

I also did the 4-high mod, something I have always wanted to do. It took about an hour with wiring the relay on the firewall in the spare relay spot next to the fuel pump relay.

Tonight I ordered some Elegante headlights and markers along with a DDM HID kit.

I also did some measuring on the overhead console to see if my heater control panel would fit where the rear A/C controls are located, I'm planning on moving them to free up a 7"x7" area in the dash to put in a carputer touchscreen. I'm tired of reaching to the middle of the dash to use the radio.

 

[Honch]

Today I put in the TYC lights and DDM HID's. I had quite a bit of trouble getting the passenger side light to fit correctly. Many of the pictures I see after people have replaced their lights show them sitting at angles in relationship to the opening in the grille, now I know why. After I modified the headlight bucket and made a spacer for the upper inboard mount it placed the headlight parallel to the grille opening. For some reason the factory buckets have a spacer molded into the plastic that does not exist on the buckets that came with the TYC lights.

The DDM HID's are very impressive for the cost, they took less than 10 minutes to hook up and 30 minutes for me to figure out I needed to plug the headlight connector into them backwards to make them work.

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The amount of light they put out is pretty amazing. With all the lighting laws they have in this area of Arizona these will be great on all the streets that have no street lights.