My nameless '89 sierra

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Slowlaned

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Hey guys, I've been on the forum for about 3 days now and have received a few requests for a complete build thread on my truck, so here it is.

I don't have a cool name for it like most of you guys do, I guess that's the first thing you do before joining a truck group and I just can't come up with anything. Even after spending countless hours in the garage, getting countless cuts, knuckle scrapes and bruises from crawling around on my very neglected gravel driveway, and overall spending more time with the truck in the last year than any human being should. In fact it seems like what I call it most is son of a b*:)&@, or motherf+%*^$... But that's not very catchy, and my other choice of a name, "pussybeat-armaggedon-chainmaster-texasranger-deluxe" is too long to fit on the windshield. Oh well, enough with the rambling and onto the build, if u have any questions just send me a message. I am always looking for new ideas and suggestions too so send those as well. Now, here's more details than you would ever want to know!!! and then some pictures!!!

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I mentioned this in my headlight build thread, but it is an '89 Sierra c1500, 4.3l tbi, with the manual tranny, short cab and box, and 2wd. A rare combination to say the least. I picked it up from a coworker in spring of 2017 for $1000 cash with 207k on the engine and I believe 90k on the rebuilt tranny. My coworker got the truck from his grandfather, who was the first buyer from the dealership in 1988. I even have the original receipt from 1988 somewhere that I will post a pic of when I find it. before I get on with the build and the pictures, there is plenty of things that should be mentioned, just skip ahead if you aren't interested.

THE GOOD:

The original owner was a diesel mechanic at frieghtliner for 30some years, so the upkeep on the truck mechanically was better than I could ever imagine. The oil was easily the cleanest I had ever seen, even in a new car. It had been changed RELIGIOUSLY every 3000 miles, and I have the stack of service orders from the freightliner diesel shop to prove it, as well as every other service ever done to the truck. The engine fired right up, and has never even hesitated to start for me, the engine sounded great with no knocks or unusual noises and the tranny itself shifted smooth, with a firm clutch pedal, though the gas seemed very touchy at first which only took a day or two to get used to. My coworker tells me the guy was very meticulous when it came to mechanical maintenance, and it showed.

THE BAD:

It really was in great shape for an '89, but there were, expectedly, a few things that had broken in the last few years of its life which my coworker didn't have the time or skill to deal with. Mostly little things like the blinker/wiper switch on the column was broken halfway down the plastic shaft, so if you put your blinker on u had to pull it from the base, otherwise the wipers would turn on. The 3rd gear syncro was going bad, so you would have to ease it into 3rd using a steady pressure, then it would slide right in at the perfect rpm. That was a fun thing to work around as I had to teach myself how to double clutch if I wanted to downshift into 3rd. The windshield had a large crack along it but it didn't leak. Also the driver side door wouldn't close, which I will explain.

THE UGLY:

Unfortunately I never took a lot of pictures of it when I first got it, but if you know about these trucks you know that quite a few had problems with the paint peeling off for the first few model years and this was no exception. The drivers side was good paint-wise, but the passenger side had big patches of primer exposed, they hadn't rusted any yet so it wasn't so bad. I was planning on painting it eventually anyway. It also had a huge dent in the door from my coworker closing it when he shouldn't have... The bushings on the door pin went bad so instead of buying the $3 bushings, he shouldered it shut, denting it majorly in the process. it was the only visible dent in the entire body. The paint itself was in pretty rough shape even without the dent or peeling, and that is something I did manage to save a picture of.
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THE BUILD:

It should be noted that I have only done cosmetic work to it so far with the exception of a few small things and the suspension. I don't really see much point in overhauling a 4.3 engine on one of these trucks, especially when the 350's are pretty much direct bolt-ins, so I have just been working to make it into what I wanted it to look like, then sometime this coming spring or summer I will start planning a heart transplant.The second day I had it home I immediately started with the planned alterations.

The first thing I did was ditch the canopy and give it a wash and wax.
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You could really see the dent after it was clean and shiny.
 

Slowlaned

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The next few days I worked on changing a few small interior details. First was doing something about that ugly steering wheel and stick.
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I cut the rubber off the spokes and sprayed them with hammered black spray paint, then took a chrome plumbing flange and sinktop hole cover to cover the center bolt. The tricky part was cutting grooves into the flange that fit snug around the oddly shaped spokes, but it worked out fine and I even got the horn button working with a few more complicated modifications.
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The stick had a rubber cover that formed into the giant numbered ball, which had a nice big chunk broken out of it, so I cut the ball off, removed the rubber sheath, painted it black and used some fishing rod handle parts for the top. I used a graphite foregrip and an aluminum butt-cap, all filled with 24-hour epoxy to make it all rock solid and finish it up.
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Slowlaned

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Next I painted the grille. The fake chrome "plating" was peeling back around the corners and looked horrible, so I painstakingly peeled it all off and smoothed it with a couple grits of sandpaper. Then I used hammered black spray paint again where the chrome was...

-side note: I end up using hammered black paint a lot on restoration projects, it gives flat, boring pieces some texture so they stand out a little more, and can save you hundreds of hours of sanding if used correctly, and it actually looks good on finished products. The rustoleum cans are very forgiving of spraying a little too thick. Here is a closeup of the black rustoleum brand sprayed on a fabbed fibreglass piece without any sanding done beforehand.
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Returning to the grille, after spraying the Chrome parts with the hammered black I sprayed the inserts with a semi-gloss black, and alternated colors on the "GMC" emblem
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Oh yeah, at this point I had also put on smoked front and rear plate covers with regular black frames, and chopped the antennae to be level with the roof, capped with a black dice I had laying around (not pictured)
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The next weekend I started work on the dash. I always forget to get before pictures, so here's one of the dash being taken out. It was already in good shape, it was just an ugly faded blue, like the rest of the interior was. It was just going to get a simple gloss black base with hammered black accents. I did two coats of gloss base, one coat of hammered on the trim and two more gloss clear coats to finish. It still looks like new to this day too.
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Slowlaned

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At one point in time the showroom at my work was throwing away an interactive shower display, (I work for Keller plumbing supply, so you might see plumbing parts incorporated into my builds more than once.) it was a large kiosk thing that hung on the wall and had a screen and several remotes used in our accutemp shower systems. It also had a lot of backlighting around the edges. I had a suspicion that the backlighting may be leds, so I salvaged it from the trash, took it home, opened it up and found 14 FEET of white Led strip. And they were connected to a.... 12v DC transformer! I had gotten about $200 worth of lights, wiring, switches and speakers from this free display, even a couple good rheostats. So naturally my next act was to somehow put them in the truck. I ended up diffusing them with some blue translucent plastic and turned the white leds into blue. I put them under the dash, seat, in the upper dash speaker buckets, the dash cubby and in my cupholder that I put on the floor in front of the shifter
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Around the same time I did the leds, I also paint my valve covers, just to give the engine bay some color
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I also took the factory black paint off of the air cleaner cover and generally just cleaned up the engine compartment. I was going to polish the cover too, but it was taking forever. I figure I'll buy a new one when I do the engine swap anyway.
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Slowlaned

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I think its probably obvious at this point that I redid the interior first, probably because it's the cheaper space to make look good, since most things you need are leather/fabric material, paint, dyes, etc. Which are usually cheaper than a set of wheels or fender flares. So next up was the door panels.
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These were the original panels, again the faded blue blah. And the armrests never seem to hold up on these trucks, so I did something about it.
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As u can see, i cut out the basic top and bottom shape of the armrests out of some 1/4" plywood and used some stock 3/4" stainless pipe I had laying around as spacers. Then layered foam padding on the top piece, wrapped them both in some fake leather and bolted them together. I also painted the plastic on the panel, took the upper vinyl wrap off and covered with the same faux leather. Then added a little diamond plate veneer on the lock plate and behind the rest.
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Continuing the work on the interior, I covered the lower door jamb plates with more diamond plate veneer, because paint obviously wouldn't hold up. I also put the diamond veneer along the bottom of the dash, you might be able to see it in the last picture.
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The same day I covered the jamb plates I also died the blue vinyl floor covering to black, and painted the seat brackets and the kick plates on both sides black as well. I eventually want to fiberglass a pair of 5 or 6" speakers into the kickplates, but still haven't gotten around to it, need to buy a 4ch speaker amp before adding more speakers

this is a pretty good overall shot of the interior as of that day, their were only a few things left to change and re-color.. Also shows the temporary tape job on the seat and piss-poor attempt at dyeing it black (note the required reading material: a harbor freight ad)
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Slowlaned

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At this point I was getting a little bored with removing panels and painting and those tiny plastic clips that constantly break, so I started a little audio project. I had a set of older logitech surround sound speakers, the little 1.5" satellite speakers that look like tweeters but play a full range of frequency. So I took the one center speaker and used it for the cause. I also had a set of even older logitech computer speakers, the precursor design to the surround speakers. Using those I came up with 4 tweeter-sized speakers that also play mids very well.
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This is the material used for one of the speakers, I used more plumbing parts and incorporated a chrome flange and some metal screen. Then I did the normal fiberglass stretch-and-brush speaker box method using plastic cups for mounting rings instead of trying to cut wooden rings that small.
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Then I used some body filler and sanded the boxes smooth, cut the proper sized holes using a holesaw, and covered the old, ugly pair using the screen and the flanges. I then painted them in hammered black to match the rest of the interior, and wired them together in series so I didn't end up overpowering and blowing them. This is how they turned out.

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Slowlaned

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And how they look mounted in the truck, I ended up putting them on the plastic roof trim because I wanted them to be seen, but didn't want to cover the factory 4x6? Pockets below the seat belt hangers. I had also tinted the rear window with some extra 35% film I had from a previous project.
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The next weekend I took the headliner out and dyed it black, along with the rear interior panels that I painted gloss black to match the rest of the newly restored panels. I never got a picture of the headliner before or after because I didn't feel like it needed to be shown off, but more like changing the color was an obligation at this point. However, you have to remove the sun visors before you remove the headliner, so I took the opportunity to upgrade those too. I could have dyed them black or used fabric spray to get them black, but I thought that they should match the accent color, as the hammered black spray is actually more like a charcoal gray than it is black. So I sprayed them with the hammered black as well.

Side note: (if you were to spray regular spray paint onto the vinyl that the visors are wrapped in, it would become sticky, and may not ever cure 100% I made that mistake on a jeep I previously owned and after 7 months the paint was still sticky to the touch. So what if you have vinyl that you want to be a certain color you can't find in a dye or spray? First, you spray it with 2 basecoats of the fabric and vinyl spray paint, the kind specifically made for it. Spray one good coat and leave it to cure overnight. Then spray a good second coat, and before it dries, spray over it with the spray paint of your choice. If you spray over it in time, the paint will take on the flexibility of the fabric spray, while retaining its original color. It will also cure just fine in the usual 24 hours or so. I figured that out after lots of trial and error re-coloring interiors)

After getting the visors the color I wanted, I thought of an idea to add lighted mirrors on both of them, because the visors in the '89's are totally blank and thats boring. So I bought 2 visor mirrors from autozone and used the strip leds that I had left from the dash lights I put in. The strips are wired and can be cut every 3 leds, so I put 3 on each side of each mirror and rigged up each one with cheap flashlight push button switches, from the flashlights you get for free at harbor freight every once in awhile. I thought they turned out pretty good too, and plenty bright at night.
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Slowlaned

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I don't know if anyone here has done any kind of emblem modding besides just painting or changing the insert, but I had wanted the truck to look aggressive in almost every way, and had a sudden idea one day..
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The standard emblem had been painted the same time I did the grill, and it did look better, but still not as aggressive as I thought the only remaining badge should be.. So I went about changing it.
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first, I took a 3/8" bit and drilled holes in the emblem in a few random spots.
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Then, I layed the emblem down onto a box that had tinfoil on top of it, with holes poked in it where the mounting shafts came through. So the whole emblem was flat against the foil. Using just fiberglass resin and mixing very small batches at a time, i filled the bottom of the holes with it, and slowly dripped resin off the brush down onto the filled spots. I also made the resin trail down so it looked like drips.
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Using testors enamel paint I painted all of the dripped resin gloss red. When it dried I drilled the holes out again with the next smaller bit, and used the cutting wheel of a dremel to carve grooves around the top of each hole. Using the same paint I had used on the emblem first, I painted the grooves randomly so it appeared to be exposed and torn metal. The finished product looks like this:
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I have since painted the emblem charcoal grey but left the holes and the red on it. This was 8 months ago. I just removed the emblem permanently last week so I can make a custom grille, and I don't believe I will use it again but for the time I had it I was very happy with it. I might just sell it if someone offers me a fair price but idk yet.
 

Slowlaned

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The interior was nearing completion, and I was starting to shop around for a seat, or good quality seat cover if I could find one. The options I eventually got narrowed down to were to either buy a whole new leather bench seat, (what I really wanted was just a plain, classic pleated black leather bench, not buckets.) or to buy a quality leather cover and go about recovering it in a professional fashion. The seat I had wasn't 100% as far as the foam padding goes, so a cover might have made more work for me than it was worth, and the seats I was able to find in the style i wanted were anywhere from $500-$1200 .. So once again, I improvised.

I had recently had a 97 taurus, the oil pump went out on me and it never threw a trouble light, or any kind of warning, so the engine blew up on me driving in to work one morning. The car was still in my yard and i was looking into selling it to a wrecker. Before I did, I pulled the rear bench seat out of it. The car had belonged to an older woman and the rear seat was flawless, and just for future reference, they fit in the front of the 88-98 models almost perfectly, with a little modification. So that was my solution.
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The rear seat comes out extremely easily, I think it had 2 bolts for the top and the bottom just unhooked when you pulled a certain way. As u can see the cushions and covers almost pop right into the original seat base, but you have to remove all of the foam thats molded around the wire and tube frame, which is a huge pain.
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The seat sat a bit awkwardly, so I had to take a bit off the frame with a sawzall and an angle grinder in a few different places, I also cut about 4" of tube out of the vertical part of the back frame and welded it back together. Here is a before and after:
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I am still using this seat to this day and it is easily one of the most comfortable seats I have ever had in a truck, much more than even a new bucket seat imo. I have since dyed it black, but you will see that later as I am trying my best to cover everything in the order I did it in.
 
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