1989 C2500 ECLB Build (The Little Big Truck)

[Colorado2500]

Here is what I started with: 1989 C2500 ECLB, 155K on her, TBI 350, 700R4, 14 bolt SF with 4.10s. Story of my truck is that it was bought by my parents in 1999, and I started driving it the day I got my license in August of 2012 and have been ever since. It has lived in western Colorado its entire life, and left outside so the paint is crap, but has zero rust (we don't use the bad salt here).

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This is her, about a year after driving it. On tiny LT225/75/R16 Sumitomo All-terrains (Terrible tires btw), Air dam & bug shield still on, and before I plasti-dipped the wheels (Old 2000ish American Racings).

Other mods already done by this point are:
Redid stereo with a new JVC head-unit, pocket where the old one was
Replaced all 4 speakers with 4"x6" JVCs
Put in a 8" Sound Ordnance powered sub
All in about $300 for the whole new sound system from Crutchfield

 

[Colorado2500]

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Here she is a few months later, right after I got new tires which are LT265/75/16 Cooper Discoverer ATPs (fantastic btw)

 

[Colorado2500]

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This was earlier this year. I had taken off the Bug Shield and since it had been on so long without being cleaned in there, leaves and stuff had sat and gotten wet, so the paint along parts of the leading edge of the hood had eaten the paint and rusted the surface.

I also ripped off the Air Dam, as I don't like the look of them, and they reduce approach angle and ground clearance.

By this time, I had put my new cat-back exhaust on, which consisted of a 3 foot section of tubing after the cat into a 6.5" Dynomax Bullet Muffler and then to a turn-down. Cost about $60 bucks and sounds good, surprisingly quiet, and doesn't drone either. About after a week I put in on, I did a little 4 wheeling and somehow bonked the turn-down and bent it pretty good, so I'll redoing that eventually.

 

[Colorado2500]

Over the summer this year, I did a ton of work to the truck because I thought I was going to sell her to fund my Blazer project, which I ended up selling anyway since it needed too much work.

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Showing off her factory oil cooler while i was painting the grille. I just painted the grey portions on the grille black, it turned out okay, but I'm thinking I''ll just take and paint the whole thing black in the future.

I also painted the diamond bed caps gloss black for a nice black and red look, plus they were looking hammered.

Other stuff I did was a full tune-up, brake job, repacked front wheel bearings, new reverse light switch, thermostat, hoses, PCV, and a few more things.

Also, put in a little SunPro tach on the dash, because moonie guages don't have one, and besides why not?

After a couple months of trying to sell her, I changed my mind on selling her due to her not being worth much, plus the large amount of sentimental value. I plan on keeping her forever and doing some huge mods in the future.

Months later, when I was back in school, I got a work study job so I could get more mods!

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I got some tow hooks from a scrapyard and painted them, so I can finally have a front recovery point, but I didn't notice one was bent until after I put them on :/

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I put on a short-ram intake, the kit came from ebay and only cost $50 and it's not too bad of quality, but the filter that came with it was complete junk and broke when I tried to put it on. So I just went ahead and put on a nice AEM Dryflow filter. This intake setup is actually pretty decent overall, I kinda wished it had more induction noise like a lid-flip, but this doesn't make annoying sounds like that did.

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Replaced the interior bulbs with red LEDs, just to try it out, turned out okay, but I'll probably go to white ones in the future. I did put a white LED on the underhood light which is pretty bright, all from SuperBrightLEDS for about $25.

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And, a Summit Racing HO coil along with NGK V-Power plugs to try to fix a stumble I occasionally get. It stumbles way less often now and runs much better.

 

[Colorado2500]

It was getting time to do a oil change, so I went all out also decided to do the rear end and tranny fluid and filter at the same time.
I went to all synthetic fluids, Mobil 1 High Mileage 5w-30 motor oil, Valvoline High Mileage ATF, Valvoline SynPower 75w-90.

The diff hadn't been done in an unknown amount of time, not since I started driving her at least.
I'm real glad I did, the fluid was gross and smelled terrible, and whoever did it last time put about a full tube of RTV on the dang cover! The gears and everything looked good in there though, and I went ahead and cleaned up the cover and painted it red, with new stainless hardware as well.

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Here she is as she sits now, you can kinda see the red diff cover which turned out great, and that's that for now!