'89 Stepside "Way Cool Jr."

[Erik the Awful]

I made good progress on the truck today. First off I had a broke-off bolt on the passenger front side. It was flush with the hole, and the bottom side felt like someone had already tried to vise-grip it from the bottom. I tried an extractor, but it was stuck bad. I drilled it out and tried using a center punch to collapse the remnants into the hole. Instead the welded nut broke off. The rust was stronger than GM's welding.

View media item 32070I painted a bunch of the interior pieces black. Some time next week I'll disassemble what I can of the dashboard and paint it black. I took a pic, but the lighting was terrible and it all looks funky. Edit: I suppose I ought to tell how I'm doing the recolor. I'm using Dupli-Color "Vinyl and Fabric" Specialty Coating. It's readily available in any auto store around here, and since I'm going to black, it should be readily available for the life of the truck. I don't have any Comet handy for scrubbing the parts, so I've been using Barkeep's Friend. I've had a little bit of trouble with fisheye, but a second coat always covers it. I painted a few parts a few weeks back and they're holding up well with mounting and removing repeatedly. I scratched the glovebox cover hard enough to scratch the plastic, but a quick spray touched it up. It dries incredibly fast, which is good for getting second and third coats. So far I'm impressed. It's also suitable for painting the carpet! The factory carpet has cigarette burns, so I picked up a tan carpet from Pull-A-Part yesterday. Once I get it to a car wash I'll power-wash and color it.

Finally, I put several hours of work into a driver's seat mount. I have to re-drill two of the mounting holes and weld on the nuts that hold the seat.
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[Erik the Awful]

I was working on the driver's seat mount today, and my shop jacket caught on a piece of the rusting-out cab corner. When the rust fell out, I found a wasp nest.

View media item 32072Also, started getting exhaust parts in. Apparently I ordered the wrong ball flanges, I got 2.5" male flanges and 2" female flanges. Doh! The mufflers should arrive Monday or Tuesday. Tomorrow I'm going to work on installing the headers. The U-bend is going to be chopped in half to route the driver's exhaust over to the passenger side. The cats will be offset from each other, then ball flanges between them and the X-pipe. I have one of the collector reducers on my bench right now with a hole and an O2 bung. I'll dremel the hole a little larger tomorrow since I didn't have the right size hole saw, and weld the bung in place.
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[98chevy2500SS]

Them dirty f**kers, hate wasps. Was it a vacant nest?

 

[Erik the Awful]

It was 40* today, so if there were any wasps in there, they weren't showing themselves.

The big progress today was the passenger seat frame. I went from raw materials to a mostly-finished frame. Here's a how-to, with my passenger seat frame as an example. I'm not including much in the way of adding your own storage drawer as a lot of it will depend on how deep you want it, what slides you use, etc. I will recommend making the drawer shorter than your brace between the frames. It was a pain getting mine to fit correctly.

You will need:
4 18" pieces of 2" square tubing, .060" thickness
4 3" pieces of 2" angle iron, 1/8" thickness
2 2" pieces of 2" angle iron, 1/8" thickness
2 2" pieces of 2" flat steel, 1/8" thickness
2 12.5" pieces of flat steel, 1/8" thickness - I recommend 2" for consistency

8 M10x35 bolts, 1.5 pitch (factory seat mounting bolt)
6 M10x20 bolts, 1.5 pitch
2 M10x16 bolts, 1.5 pitch
8 M10 nuts, 1.5 pitch - these need to not be nylock as you will be welding them
4 M10 nylock nuts, 1.5 pitch
8 M10 lock washers
6 M10 body washers

The bolts that hold the seats into our trucks are M10 bolts with 1.5 pitch. I went ahead and used the same size and pitch for all the bolts in the seat brackets. Some people may insist on using metric 10.8 bolts, which are a bit shy of grade 8 hardware, but the factory bolts are only 8.8 hardness. I'm comfortable with that. Just be sure and use wide, thick body washers on your two inner nuts when bolting to the cab.

Cut four 18" pieces of square tubing. Two of the pieces need to end up 17.75" overall, with one end cut at a 45* angle to clear the transmission tunnel. Technically, you could cut two 18" pieces and a 34.25" piece, then cut the long piece in half with a 45* cut and use two inches less metal, but I'd screw it up, so I started with four 18" pieces.

One inch from an end on each piece, drill 1/8" pilot holes on two opposing sides. I recommend putting the tubing's seam weld on an undrilled side. Drill the bottom holes to 13/32", and the top holes to 1.25". The 13/32" holes mount your frame to the floor of your truck, with 1.25" access holes to get a socket onto them.

If you are going to build a drawer under the seat, now is the time to drill the holes to mount your drawer slides. After the next step you will not be able to fit a normal drill between the seat frames. Alternatively, you can weld your drawer slides in place as I did.

Cut a 12.5" piece of 2" flat steel. This will tie your frame pieces together and also shims the transmission side to the correct height. One of your seats will have the angled side of the 17.75" piece on the right, the other seat will have it on the left. Measure 13.5" down the tube from the flat ends that have holes and put a chalk line for your 2" flat steel. You will be drilling a hole at the 14.5" mark, so the flat steel should be centered where you are going to drill. Tack weld the flat steel in place so the tubes are 8 5/8" apart. Measure carefully and use a square to ensure your pieces are flush and parallel.

View media item 32073Measure 14.5" down each tube and drill 1/8" pilot holes on the same sides as your original holes. Drill the bottom holes to 13/32", and the top holes to 1.25". Note that you are drilling through two pieces of metal.

Test fit your frames. The holes on the door side should line up exactly with your bolt holes. You can mark and drill the holes in your floor for the inner holes. Note there is a heat shield under the passenger side. It has a ready-to-remove plug you will have to pop out.

If everything fits you can finish weld what you have so far and move on to adding the seat mounts.

Each tab you add will be added to the front side of the frame. The flat top of each tab will be flush with the top of the frame. Be sure and grind your welds smooth so the seat rails can lay flat.
View media item 32074The two 3" pieces of 2" angle iron will weld flush with each end of the front frame. The vertical side of the angle iron will face the door. Note that the open end of the inward angle iron will match the 45* cut. The 2" piece of 2" angle iron will weld flush with the inner end of the rear frame. The vertical face will weld flat against the frame. The 2" piece of flat stock will weld flush with the outer edge and top of the rear frame. I used flat stock here to give clearance for my drawer. If you don't include a drawer, I suggest using 2" angle iron as in the inner mount. If you use the flat stock, weld both sides for strength.

If you're adding a drawer, now is the time to construct and install it. I was planning on using 18 gauge, but Patriot Steel had a couple pieces of 14 gauge scraps cheap. Too thick for me to bend on my bench with vise grips and a mini-sledge, so I cut and welded it. Then cut it back apart and rewelded it. Then ground it more to fit. Then finagled the mounts to minimize rubbing. Then ground it some more. Then I couldn't breath and realized it was the fumes from my shop jacket being on fire. I patted the fire on my chest out and continued. I put phillips screws in from the outside and welded nuts to the inside of the drawer.
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More to follow - I'm writing these instructions as I complete the tasks so I don't lead you astray.

 

[Erik the Awful]

It just struck me that I haven't made any of my test fits with carpet and trim installed. I sure hope the drawer works with the sill plates installed!

 

[Dubs]

DOH!!

 

[Erik the Awful]

Whew! The sill plates sit far lower. I'll have to set the outer mounts on a pair of 2" square 1/8" plates. I'll probably weld those on and drill them when I drill the seat mount holes. The carpet will be my worry, especially since I will be including a thermo/sound barrier. If worse comes to worse I'll cut out the carpet under the seat.

My wife was welding this evening, so the O2 bung will have to wait. I also got the B-pillar trim painted and ordered the correct 2.5" female ball sockets.

Time for a rant on headers.

The cheapest full-length headers for my truck are $198. They come painted, but it's a "temporary protective coat to protect the headers during shipping". If I want them ceramic coated the price raises to $449. That's a $250 jump. The comments on the cheaper headers say to strip the cheapo paint and repaint with a ceramic spray paint for $20. Several people report good, lasting finishes with these paints.

I bought the cheapies and cleaned the paint as best I could with wire wheels, but I don't have a bead blaster yet, so some of the original paint stayed in between the pipes. Emory cloth clogs real fast and doesn't take much of the paint off. It's really only good for polishing the pipes after wire wheeling them. I went ahead and put the $20 1300-2000* paint on them. I'm hoping it holds over the crappy paint in the nooks and crannies.

I'm sure if I ask why the manufacturers don't use a better high-temp paint they'll say it's not as good as their ceramic coating. The truth is they want you to buy their overpriced ceramic coating. I know it's overpriced because I had a set of mid-length Cadillac headers HPC coated in 2002 for about $150, including sandblasting, and that was back when everybody still had patents on their proprietary coatings. Everybody has coatings now, they're a whole lot cheaper, and the manufacturer can ceramic coat them before they have a chance to rust.

Why don't they sell the headers with no paint and a thin film of pickling oil smeared on them? The truth is they want header paint to be a pain in the butt unless you pay them an extra $250. If it was that important to me I'd pay the $250 for a bead blaster. Instead I took my chances and I'm rolling the dice on a few hours of elbow grease and a $20 can of ceramic paint.

 

[Dubs]

Whew! The sill plates sit far lower. I'll have to set the outer mounts on a pair of 2" square 1/8" plates. I'll probably weld those on and drill them when I drill the seat mount holes. The carpet will be my worry, especially since I will be including a thermo/sound barrier. If worse comes to worse I'll cut out the carpet under the seat.

My wife was welding this evening, so the O2 bung will have to wait. I also got the B-pillar trim painted and ordered the correct 2.5" female ball sockets.

Time for a rant on headers.

The cheapest full-length headers for my truck are $198. They come painted, but it's a "temporary protective coat to protect the headers during shipping". If I want them ceramic coated the price raises to $449. That's a $250 jump. The comments on the cheaper headers say to strip the cheapo paint and repaint with a ceramic spray paint for $20. Several people report good, lasting finishes with these paints.

I bought the cheapies and cleaned the paint as best I could with wire wheels, but I don't have a bead blaster yet, so some of the original paint stayed in between the pipes. Emory cloth clogs real fast and doesn't take much of the paint off. It's really only good for polishing the pipes after wire wheeling them. I went ahead and put the $20 1300-2000* paint on them. I'm hoping it holds over the crappy paint in the nooks and crannies.

I'm sure if I ask why the manufacturers don't use a better high-temp paint they'll say it's not as good as their ceramic coating. The truth is they want you to buy their overpriced ceramic coating. I know it's overpriced because I had a set of mid-length Cadillac headers HPC coated in 2002 for about $150, including sandblasting, and that was back when everybody still had patents on their proprietary coatings. Everybody has coatings now, they're a whole lot cheaper, and the manufacturer can ceramic coat them before they have a chance to rust.

Why don't they sell the headers with no paint and a thin film of pickling oil smeared on them? The truth is they want header paint to be a pain in the butt unless you pay them an extra $250. If it was that important to me I'd pay the $250 for a bead blaster. Instead I took my chances and I'm rolling the dice on a few hours of elbow grease and a $20 can of ceramic paint.

Did you read the back of the ceramic spray can and make sure you didnt need to bake the headers in an oven at 350 after you sprayed them? Some of the high temp paints you have to bake.

 

[Erik the Awful]

Bake at 250* or idle for 10 minutes, cool completely, and idle for 20 minutes.

Edit: It might have said 350*, I didn't have my glasses on. I have an oven in the workshop, but it's not big enough for long tubes and the 220v wiring isn't hooked up yet.

 

[Dubs]

Bake at 250* or idle for 10 minutes, cool completely, and idle for 20 minutes.

Edit: It might have said 350*, I didn't have my glasses on. I have an oven in the workshop, but it's not big enough for long tubes and the 220v wiring isn't hooked up yet.

That should work good enough.