1989 chevy rclb "faded glory"

[Brando_o]

I've owned a few of these trucks throughout the years but I've never really put any work into them. I made the mistake of selling my 99 obs crew cab and my 99 tahoe and I bought an 04 chevy silverado 1500 crew cab. It's a nice truck and I still have it today, but I missed having an obs truck. So the hunt was on! I finally found this 1989 chevy k1500 for sale by the original owner! It was used as a farm truck so that mixed with being in Minnesota, it was in pretty rough shape. But it did run and drive good! And it only has 94k miles on it! Got it for $1200 and brought it home. Here's what it looked like when I bought it.

 

[Stumpy]

Welcome. Looks like a good project.
Always liked those wheels, you don't see them very often.

 

[Brando_o]

The first thing I did when I got it home was take the bed cap off. Then I took the bed off and power washed the frame. Man there has a ton of dirt packed in there!

 

[Brando_o]

I wire wheeled the frame and then sprayed on rust inhibitor and then painted it black.

 

[Brando_o]

Next up was the rear axle. I cleaned that up and painted it. The u bolts were in terrible shape. So I bought an U-Bolt flip kit as well as new brake lines, and Shocks.

 

[MrPink]

Nice work so far

 

[Brando_o]

After the rear axle was done, it was time to tackle the front end. I replaced the ball joints, idler and pitman arms, tierods, Shocks, and brake pads and rotors. I also cleaned and painted the frame. I tell you what, those riveted in Ball joints were a pain in the butt, but I eventually got them out! I replaced everything with either ac Delco or mevotech.

 

[Brando_o]

The bed that was on the truck when I bought it was pretty rusty and beat up. I was lucky enough to come across a rust free bed for 300 bucks! Although when I went and got it, I noticed that it had some dents, and some surface rust underneath but I still bought it. The wheel wells are super clean tho!! I cleaned up the bed supports and painted them.

 

[Supercharged111]

For being a MN truck all it's life, that frame is mind blowingly clean.

 

[Brando_o]

So since this is a budget project , I decide to tackle the rockers and cab corners myself. I've never done anything like this before, so it was a nice challenge. The cab corners were completely gone. I ended up using the whole replacement cab corners when I welded them in. Rockers weren't much better. But only the back of the rockers were bad. The front on both sides were still solid! When I cut the bad parts out I looked inside the good part of the rockers and saw no rust! I was surprised and confused. Like how does the back rot out but not the front?? Anyways since it was good I only replaced the bad part of the rockers. I think I did an okay job for my first time ever doing anything like this!