My '95 RCLB C1500

I'm sending back my seatbelts and purchasing the set from LMC that's a lot more expensive but should be a direct built-in of better quality. They'll arrive early next week.

While I wait for the belts to arrive, I got busy and rebuilt my seats. The wires and springs on the adjustment hardware all snapped from rust degradation. Got some springs from the spares bin in the basement, a spool of wire, and reconnected it all so the seats adjust again. In Ontario you need an adjustable drivers seat to pass safety, so I had to get that checked off.

After a hour long detailing to get the stains and years of dirt out, they remounted in the truck pretty easily.



They are the wrong colour for my interior, but since I bought the wrong replacement upholstery by mistake they'll stay like this until I can figure something out.

I opened up the doors to fix what I thought was a minor rust issue -- they look alright from the outside -- and discovered yet another massive rust hole in this truck. Hooray.




The inner and outer door panels have completely separated along the bottom because most of the inner has rusted away. The damage was hiding behind the weatherstripping.
I looked into patch panels, and they're around $250 a side to replace the rusted portions. But there was a nice man about a half hour from my house with southern doors for sale at the same price.



Went for a drive, liked the doors, but he'd already sold the driver's side. Grabbed a passenger door in excellent shape, though.
Swapped my Cunningham Machine bushings over, vacuumed the broken glass out of the door, and had the thing hung inside of an hour.

I figure I came out ahead on the door, since I didn't have to burn any time or argon to patch it.

Now I continue my hunt for a driver's door. I'm getting close to having every colour option available represented on this truck!

Canadian Rust Bucket said:

I'm sending back my seatbelts and purchasing the set from LMC that's a lot more expensive but should be a direct built-in of better quality. They'll arrive early next week.

While I wait for the belts to arrive, I got busy and rebuilt my seats. The wires and springs on the adjustment hardware all snapped from rust degradation. Got some springs from the spares bin in the basement, a spool of wire, and reconnected it all so the seats adjust again. In Ontario you need an adjustable drivers seat to pass safety, so I had to get that checked off.

After a hour long detailing to get the stains and years of dirt out, they remounted in the truck pretty easily.

You must be registered for see images attach

They are the wrong colour for my interior, but since I bought the wrong replacement upholstery by mistake they'll stay like this until I can figure something out.

I opened up the doors to fix what I thought was a minor rust issue -- they look alright from the outside -- and discovered yet another massive rust hole in this truck. Hooray.

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

The inner and outer door panels have completely separated along the bottom because most of the inner has rusted away. The damage was hiding behind the weatherstripping.
I looked into patch panels, and they're around $250 a side to replace the rusted portions. But there was a nice man about a half hour from my house with southern doors for sale at the same price.

You must be registered for see images attach

Went for a drive, liked the doors, but he'd already sold the driver's side. Grabbed a passenger door in excellent shape, though.
Swapped my Cunningham Machine bushings over, vacuumed the broken glass out of the door, and had the thing hung inside of an hour.

I figure I came out ahead on the door, since I didn't have to burn any time or argon to patch it.

Now I continue my hunt for a driver's door. I'm getting close to having every colour option available represented on this truck!

Click to expand...

Truck of many colors....or the technicolor dream truck

HotWheelsBurban said:

Truck of many colors....or the technicolor dream truck

Click to expand...

I've got the blue grille, black cab, green and sandstone door, grey hood, red tailgate, and a white box... I don't think there's many more colours out there!

Canadian Rust Bucket said:

I've got the blue grille, black cab, green and sandstone door, grey hood, red tailgate, and a white box... I don't think there's many more colours out there!

Click to expand...

One piece at a time....

HotWheelsBurban said:

One piece at a time....

Click to expand...

It's an 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95

Just got the notification this morning that my new fenders and grille will be arriving shortly, so I pivoted away from the doors briefly to get the hood ready to install. It's been in the basement for 15 years since we scrapped the Burb, and is dirty as hell.


So I pulled the insulator pad, vacuumed the pile of dirt trapped behind it
And took a wire wheel and needle scaler to the rusty patches that were hiding under the pad. The holes in the gussets were the worst spots.

All shined up, I gave it a few coats of rust converter and then a coat of black primer.

Once the paint dries, I'll reinstall the latch hardware and it'll be ready and waiting to go on the truck.

Some progress pics from today. My Holley branded fenders came from Taiwan and they fit well, but they are definitely way thinner than the stock fenders.

Also got the hood and bumper mounted. They both need some shimming and adjustment, but they really make the front end look like a proper truck again.

Still lots to do, though!

My LMC seatbelts arrived and immediately went into the truck. Direct bolt-in, perfect fit, well worth the money. And they're the right colour!

The truck gave me some grief shifting from park while it was running, so I'll be swapping the shift lock solenoid soon too. Just waiting on a parts delivery and the free time to dig back into the dash. Thought I was done in there, but I guess not. C'est la vie.

Pulled the bed out of the woods, needle scaled the underside, and prepped it for media blasting this weekend

After a long hiatus, got back to the truck over the last few weeks. Quit my job so I could focus on it more and get the damn thing done. Needed new bedsides and I made my own wheel arches to save money. Still needs bondo and body work for the 30 years of dents, but she'll get there.

Installed a new hitch receiver, and mounted a spare tire winch off a 2014 since it was way cheaper. This pic is just a temp mock up for fitment, I ended up using 3/8" bolts to hold the winch in place, after I filled it with Krown to hopefully stop it from seizing.


Took the rear bumper apart, did the usual rust removal / tremclad paint job on the internal support bracket. Also cleaned up and reinstalled my slightly modified spare tire braces.

Also installed an LED high mount stop light. This one had decent reviews, and hasn't leaked so far. I'd have rather used the original, but it was rusted internally and no longer functioned right.

It's not exactly pretty, but I made my own shaft to drive the spare tire winch. Takes a half inch drive, so I can hook up the impact and run the tire down in about 10 seconds. Takes maybe two minutes to do with a ratchet. I'll be putting this behind the seat with a couple hold down clamps on top of the sub box.

Going down the provincial safety checklist and working on one item at a time until the truck will pass.
Today's bear to wrestle was the parking brakes. I'd previously replaced all three of the cables and the adjusting hardware, but it never really worked. Ran into some issues with the rear brakes not working because of the bad master cylinder, and testing the parking brake went by the wayside.
Compounding my problem, i was not certain of the routing on my replacement cables because of my homemade cab mounts being beefed up compared to the originals. They're in the same locations, but the vertical webs are significantly larger.


I played around with the brake for a bit, figured out how it was supposed to work, consulted many forum posts and dug back in to the rear wheels.

I have the dreaded JB5 leading/trailing drum brakes. So I disconnected the parking brake to make sure it wasn't a factor, used the self-adjuster nut to set the shoes correctly, bled the brakes again, and after that I had the rear service brakes in good working order. Good firm pedal, etc.
Got new shoes and drums while I was at it. I don't want to have to do this again for a long while.

Then the parking brake. I followed the steps outlined in the manual, and thought I had the problem licked when I set the PB and the tires wouldn't spin. But the passenger tire had slop in it, I could get it to rock back and forth. Why would the passenger and driver tires not react the same? I set the shoes the same, the drums are the same, the equalizer at the adjuster nut makes sure they're pulled the same.

Once again I have been the architect of my own problems. My new cab mount was effectively shortening the driver's side cable by just enough.

As the cable went through the grommet, it was being pulled against the top of the rear opening, showing that it's current route was slightly longer than the intended.

To fix this, I changed the mounting bracket to the rear of the adjuster, allowing for more length on the cable and letting it pass through the grommet on a less extreme angle. This fixed the problem and that's one more item checked off on the safety inspection!

I also splurged and got new rims and tires for the truck, as the mismatched set I had weren't holding air reliably anymore. They're nothing special, just simple winter steelies, but every step towards the finish line counts.


Tomorrow I will find and fix the exhaust leak, fix the shift solenoid locking the truck in park all the time, install my new trailer wiring harness, and maybe do a little body work to keep busy.