95 C2500 pancake

Alright, been tacking some load of stuff again. To start, I finally plugged in the side mirror heaters. Until now I just had the wires rolled up with a zip tie dangling in the engine bay, so I decided now's the time finally. Just wired them straight to 12 volts with a 20amp fuse, off to a switch in the dash and from there on to the mirrors. When I finally get off my ass and track down a nice relay box with fuse slots I'll add those and a whole lot of other stuff in there and really clean up the wiring, until then I'll just tidily half ass the wiring stuff Thought it'd be smart to put them on a lighted switch because otherwise I'll just forget them on every time... But turns out the switch is blindingly bright during dark, which isn't exactly ideal... Also my roof markers are ******* about again... First the middle one went dark and then the driver side corner one started flickering like ain't no tomorrow. Tackled the corner one today, and opened the middle one but didn't do anything to it due to unforeseen circumstances, had to put it back on and hit the road, but that works now too, which is fun. Then a project that I've been working on for 3 days now: front wheel alignment. Some of you may have noticed that my front wheels were some few degrees on the plus side of camber, which really ate up my tires and made cornering a gamble, so I finally took a poke at that. Just a small poke though. With a hammer. Once. Very gently. Most problems I actually had with the passenger side tie rods, those ******** were seized up gooooooood, even compared to all the other ones. Finally managed to break them loose tonight, but boy oh boy did it take a whole lot of penetrating oil and gentle persuasion. Now I have both wheels at exactly 1 degrees minus camber, but the angles might be a little off, though I tried to get 'em pretty straight, but well, the adjustments weren't in the most spacious areas. Now I've also got the toe at tolerable angles, but the truck still pulls to the right pretty severly, must be the tires that are so worn from all the wrong places. Why do I suspect the tires? I cranked the toe to the roof, so that the passenger side was pointing left and driver side straight, so there was no possible way the truck could pull right, but somehow it still managed to, pretty forcefully too, so I took the toe back to normal levels and said **** it. Tire pressure could be a factor, but at least there wasn't no significant difference, both tires were over 3,5 bars, because that's where the pens chart ended and I couldn't be bothered to drive by a gas station at that time of the evening. Sorry no pictures this time, the site's whining that they were too big, so I'll make another post with the pictures later on.

This evening I changed out my brake fluid and while it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, it was pretty damn black. The rear drums were a true pain in the ass, but thankfully GM engineers made up for that with the front caliper bleeder positioning. Used a whole liter of DOT 4.

ODO: 183370km


I'm thinking tomorrow I'll drain the coolant.

Well, I sure made an attempt to, but didn't manage to flush the cooling system. First problem I ran into, my drain plug is apparently clogged; Opened up but nothing came out. So that was fun. Then I tried to accomplish my goals by detaching the upper hose from the radiator and shoving a garden hose in the radiator, but my truck had cooled down enough to close the thermostat. Tried to run it back up to temp, but even when it opened, for some odd reason chugging cold water in an engine cools it down, who would've thought... So while I got some load of stuff out and a little new stuff in, I just threw a bottle of Motul radiator clean in the reservoir and decided to try again on monday, because I want to make sure my local parts store has a correct thermostat for my application, because if I gut the old one and they don't have 'em, a new one will take at least two weeks from the US. I'm sure they got 'em, but for once I'm gonna try and play it safe instead of do first think second like usually...

I think I might need a little help y'all, for some reason the page won't upload my pictures, on laptop nor on the phone. The files shouldn't be too large, as I've uploaded bigger pictures without trouble. Also tapatalk done gone took a shittier route, would have to buy vip to upload pictures bigger than 704x528, which is just bullshit. So has there been something done to the page or what's going on?

See if you can upload them to the media section, you can make your own album, then link them to your post.

Nope, don't work. So that sucks. I guess I just gotta keep it verbal for now... So, continuing from the flushing, things finally took a weird turn when I noticed that the water would run the wrong way, if I stuck it in the pipe, heading to the thermostat (which I had gutted after finally getting a new one) it would flow beautiful, gush on out of the radiators upper hole. But if I turned the engine on it would then flow to the correct direction. Water pump, maybe? Would need force to "roll" the engine, but spins freely the wrong way should something happen? I dunno, aaaaanyhow, I got to flushing and it worked pretty good, so I stuck in another bottle of motul radiator cleaner and a little bit of red coolant because the weather had been getting a little zippy. Then I think it was a day or two after that, I went to visit my local US parts shop for a new driver side interior handle, because mine wouldn't work anymore, thank goodness for the electric windows... But when I left the shop, the low coolant light illuminated. Just thought that it was low, the system had got the air out the system, so I drove to my parents's place which is just a few km's from the shop. When I shut the car down in their yard, I smelled a funny scent of coolant and heard water drippling rather aggressively. I don't know had it come undone by itself or did I not tighten it properly, but the upper hose had popped off decided it was a good time to flush the system again, and so after a small while I got clear sparkling water out the engine so I called it good and stuffed in what little red coolant I had left. This time I tightened that hose on down good and it's worked perfect ever since. On the following weekend I changed the interior door handle, which didn't look that bad, it just had a small crack, but when my father grabbed it to take a look, that damn thing just crumbled in his hands so that was pretty due, although not too long lasting a fix... Fast forward to last sunday, I heard a clunk from inside the door and the thing went loose. This time I'm pretty sure tho it was the rod that came off of the handle, but I can't be bothered to fix it before the passenger side interior handle has arrived. Because like the next day after we got the handle changed, the passenger side went limp oh, one more thing about the driver side handle, it had been replaced at some point, there was a small sticker on it with a date, 23.10.2004, so it had lasted 16 years, which I thought was kind of impressive when you take into account how bad a reputation they have.

Next thing I started working on, was the bed cap. I had a guy come pick up the old plastic bed liner for his truck, and so once I had space in my garage, we took the cap off, and I took the windows off. Cleaned all the nasty gunk from them, and came to find out that actually 3 of the 4 windows are actually glass. And someone had tried to glue one in, with some weird construction mass that doesn't dry. It's just sticky and annoying. I found that when the damn glass tried to kill itself by falling off of the frame. Boy did I have a good time removing all that gunk, because someone had also insulated the outside of the frame with the same stuff. But not everywhere, thankfully, just shorter and longer dabs here and there, on both windows... After that was all done, I attached the glass with some silicone and stuck the outside rubber seals on. And thus began my journey of sanding down the whole outside of the topper. Tried to do it whenever I could inside normal business hours so that the least amount of residents above my garage would be affected by the infernal noise, that 20€ chinese sander sure made its existence known... Finally got all that done yesterday just before 16 o'clock, so now all that's left is I gotta clean up the garage tomorrow and start laying on some paint and doing all the wet sanding necessary. On another note, I think I told y'all at some point that I bought an overhead console, and it's been just sitting in the garage for a proper while, but finally last weekend I gave it to my mother so she could track down the proper colored fabric as mine was grey and my interior is tan. Well, even she could not find the correct shade of tan in fabric, but she did find a fake leather that is almost the exact color. I was hesitant with it, but finally said to hell with it, let's do it, can't be that bad. So I spent an evening cleaning off the old fabric and most of all, all the glue. Next day I went and applied the new topping on the cake, which was a proper old fight, and it didn't turn out as good as I wanted it to, but it's not really noticeable for anyone without OCD, so I guess it's fine. Still bothers me a little, but I just try not to look at it too much I installed it that evening, but for some reason, even after trimming the headliner from under the map light thingy, it still won't sit flush with the roof. Better than before, but still bothers me like hell. Most important is that it's on tho, finally, and today I wired the map lights in, which was the biggest reason for the console anyway, and I am really happy with that now! Well, not the wiring, that was a pain in the ass and really unlogical, but it works. IT WORKS. That's enough for now. Now I only need the block off plate for where the rear HVAC controller was, I have a piece of black ABS martio plastic already, but I haven't cut it to proper shape yet, have to get around to that soon. That'll be nice for when I start to put in switches for miscallaneous things, like air horns, extra hi beams and beacons and whatnot, can't wait for that project!!! I have to tho, looks like most of my money from next summers salaries will go on a front suspension rebuild and new tires... Oh well, one thing at a time, now I just have to get that topper ready for the trip to Denmark. That's gonna be an adventure for sure!

This overhead console seems to be a constant struggle of making it 80% of the way... Got the block off plate for the ac controls cut to shape and the 10mm thick plastic plate isn't thick enough, it leaves about a 2mm strip visible beneath it.



Does it bother the **** out of me? Yes, but I can't deal with it for now, so it's another thing to the list of "done for now, to be fixed later".





Probably should start ticking things off that list sooner than later...

So as of today, the topper has clear coat on. Paint is done. For now. Because I found that the plastic primer I used was not meant to be used like I did, what I should've done with it, was coat a time or two and then throw on some normal primer, after which comes the paint. I only used the plastic primer, so now all the sanding marks are visible, each and every one of them. And of course, since the primer was clear, I only found this out when I laid on the color. And I sanded it after every coat, didn't do jack, except of course rid me of orange peel, which obviously wasn't my biggest problem. Shoulda just done flat black after a wash, woulda turned out better that way But it is what it is, it'll suffice for now. It's bad, but still better than before so I guess I should be happy... Gonna start putting on the fans and windows tomorrow, try and wrap this up quickly as possible as I need to have it on the truck by friday.

Time for an update again, me thinks. I got everything put back together, installed the 3rd brake light and whatnot and set off for my trip. Checked all fluids and tire pressures and went off, on an evening ferry to Sweden on the 20th of december. Drove off the ship at 6:10 in the morning in stockholm and set on my way, drove all the way through sweden to copenhagen Denmark via the øresund bridge. Truck didn't miss a beat and drove beautiful, kept the temps precisely and got me 11l/100km's. That's one thing why this was the perfect vehicle for the travel, only had to stop a few times to relieve myself in the bushes, no need to fill up tank or stop for any other reason. Granted it's only 666 kilometres (nice) but it's still around 8 hours almost non-stop when you're travelling at 80km/h. Out here she's mostly been parked, but we've taken all sorts of day trips around Sjælland and she's been doing good. Also my suspicions are raising, because today we filled up for the second time and she did 13,5l/100km's. That's fine, that sounds about right since we've had to do quite the bit of city driving to get anywhere, even out of town. But back home, after repairing the turbo, she gave me first 16l/100km's and then twice 18,6l/100km's for consumption. There have been no puddles under the truck, nor does the oil smell like diesel, nor has the amount gone up or stayed the same, still leaking the same as it did, so I have a bad feeling that somebody has been sipping my fuel. By my calculations, there has been roughly a 30 liter difference to normal, and that would get a small city car a long way, hell they rarely have much bigger tanks... Going to look into a lockable fuel cap or something in the near future...
Anyhow, now we're just waiting here, my prettier half still has some school stuff going on here for a few weeks, and then we were supposed to head back, but Sweden shut the Danish border on the 22nd of december because of the 'rona. Now that's all fun and games, but they also don't let transit travellers through, several Finns have been turned back at the border even though they've had ferry tickets and all. So this is an interesting time for us

Here's how the truck sits today. The topper color is a little off, and the shine is waaay off, but it's better than before, which will do for now.



And here's a real clean 4 door tahoe we found on the way home, sadly couldn't take better pics but it was nice.



Also here's what I got for christmas, gonna go out and get some roof rails off a suburban, cut 'em to length and install on my roof, then I can mount these things on there, boy oh boy am I excited for that! The lights aren't exactly what I planned, but nobody really makes the kind I wanted anymore, they're so obsolete with all this led technology, and these were the next best choice and should actually offer some decent light output too, especially when i cram LED bulbs in them There's 2 of them both, so hellas in the middle and the beacons on the edges, gonna look nice.