1996 centurion k1500 slow rebuild

[96-1500-crew]

I originally bought this truck back in early 2010, bone stock, 5.7, 4l60, push button 4x4, few flaws but overall a good looking truck. Soon after stuck a body lift on it.

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Prolly one of the worst things I ever did to the truck, body lifts just tear things up IMO.

Found a set of wheels with tires that were too small..

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And then drove the piss outta it, which resulted in the already-rebuilt 4l60 in the truck to die. I didn't have enough $ back then to have it rebuilt so I wandered around the local junkyards looking for transmissions and came across a 5 speed (nv3500) with all the goods (32 spline tcase, pedal, master, slave and line) and got it all for around $200 if I remember right. Bought a new clutch and flywheel, and tore into it.
Like I said before I didn't have alot of money, or knowledge on obd2 systems so I was kind of winging it on doing this to my dd.
So I put the Trans in the truck, mounted the pedal (hardest part IMO), and swapped the tcase to the 32 spline one.
I was out of money after buying all that, so I took the shifter position box off of the 4l60s shift linkage, put it in the park position so that the truck would start and left it at that. Worked up until now (as I refurbish the truck now that I have it back I am going to finish it all the right way)

 

[96-1500-crew]

So after that I had the truck for another 8-10 months, added a few things and some 33s.

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I came on some hard times and was forced to sell the truck, I hated doing it bc I had a bond with the truck, but you gota do what ya gota do.
About 8-10 months after that I started looking for it, I searched Craigslist, hoosiertopics, eBay, just plain google and came up with nothing but from 2010 on I searched the Internet every few weeks. Finally a few weeks ago I found it, unfortunately it's in terrible shape..

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Believe me it's alot worse in person. One guy had a light bar on the roof (fastened with self-tappers of course) and water got underneath, and caused the paint to flake off the roof. He also thought 36" swampers with just a body lift would fly, and they destroyed the front fenders and inner fender-wells. To add insult to injury to the poor truck he gave it a new black rattle-can paint job on the inside. Even the carpet material on the door panels!
And to top it all off a big ass tach with a shift light!

The ad the guy I bought it off of said the engine had a "slight miss", well it was far from that.. I drove 3 hours to get the truck and when I got there it barely ran, smoked like a freight train, and sounded awful! But I had to have it back so I talked him down from 5500 to 3000, and started the longest drive home ever lol. My poor fiancé was in a cloud of smoke the whole way home, we had to stop every 45 minutes to clean the oil and gas off of her windshield lol. 3-4 hours and 3 quarts of oil later we made it home. The next day I started tearing it down.

 

[96-1500-crew]

There wasn't much holding the driver side fender on (I was replaced at some point because 90% of the bolts were missing).

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And the front bumper had 3 bolts holding it on as well.

Few more tear down pics

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And out came the tired old 350

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And then that terrible dollar store paint interior

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I have everything for a oem grey interior now except the carpet, new fenders and fender-wells, and a new bumper.
So I started tearing down the engine. The last owner told me he put new gaskets in the top end and he did, but NOTHING was torqued to spec, so go figure there were leaks.. I'm surprised we made it home!

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Right now I think I'm going to stick a used motor in the truck while I take my time building this one. I want to build a 383, but we will see. And I'm also gathering parts for a sas, idk if I will go with a ford dana 44 with Chevy knuckles, and a 14 bolt sf 6 lug or go with the 8 lug front and rear. I'm just not sure if 8 lugs would ruin the uniqueness of the 1/2 ton crew cab or not? When the sas happens the body lift is DEFINATELY coming off.