Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

those among you with body work skills, please step back 50 feet in order to properly appreciate my repair (a collision repair specialist I am not, shocking I know, I just don't have the patience for it)

I live my life one 5 gallon bucket of bondo at a time! ha ha

and yup we ditched the GMC letters, Badges? we don't need no stinkin' badges!

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

and now: Dumb Idea of the Day!

lemme know what you think about putting this GT Zero hood scoop over the hood, I am thinking we trim it down some to make it narrower, then slide it forward even with the hood, weld a small blocking plate to the very tip so it's a non functioning ornamental piece and rivet it all the way around airplane style to diss off the purists type a thing

it will cover my shady hood repair that's fer sure

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

Im only going by what your said about your bodywork skills, do you think you could pull it off and make it look any better than your hood repair?

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

Excellent point, there's a solid 51% chance that I could!

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

well...you know the saying..."it's your truck to do what you want to do with it"

http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/a...1&d=1633264596

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

I don’t know about that one looks like a giant ball and tackle set on the hood to me. But I’ve seen you pull off stuff your can always get a new hood if you don’t like it

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

so the craptacular body work continued, the door panels were next

this is the passenger side and I always do the Tejas Two Step on rust removal, abrasives and chemicals, so we start with the wire wheel

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

after the wire wheelin' was done we bathed the driver side door panel in some Phosphoric acid from Home Depot (pronounced: "cheap")

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

I normally use the KRYLON Semi Flat paint but here I decided to try the glossy stuff

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

we filled the pitting with some bondo

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

and got em into primer

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

I really need to do a better job of sanding prior to paint, I honestly don't know what I was thinking here, these will get redone

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

well say what you will about my metal working skills, but there is something to be said for taking a basket case and piecing it all together and taking it camping - this was such a fun weekend (sometime in the summer of 2019 B.C. Before Corona) truck ran great and we climbed to 5,000 feet before heading back down to Ice House lake. We rode two up with a bunch of gear

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

Ok. You sucked me in. I'm all caught up.

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

AWESUM ! thanks, we are almost done with the first half of the build, the second half will be much more exciting

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

the doors were next, and on the passenger side this happened

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

well as we were working on the door panels we spotted an anomaly, the driver side door, although it fit perfectly fine, and opened and closed perfectly, was the wrong door, it was a '72 door on a 71 cab.

can you imagine the embarrassment if we let that go at Pebble Beach, we would have an egg on our face

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

so we disemblenated it

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

and here it is liberated from the cab, now it's hard to see but the outside skin is gone, most of it looks like it's been shot up with a sawed off shotgun and the bottom is rusted out

how I end up with these green trucks i don't know, did no other paint colors exist in the 70s? lol

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

so lucky for us we found an amazing 67-72 Chevy truck used parts supplier in town, this couple has converted an old 40 horse stable into a warehouse full of parts, and they are salt of the earth people, that's where we got our new(ish) 71 door for our 71 cab - it even came with hints of green on it

yes that is my other truck Rusty delivering the goods

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

but, the new 71 door don't fit proper on the 71 cab, imagine that, so I did the sensible thing and drove the truck back to my mamas house and parked it in her garage, and decided to work on Busty my '54

and that's where it sat for the last two years, so that brings us up to current time, and the possibility of a Dusty Winter Project

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

What did you ever do with the GTzero hood section? I think if you cut the scoops off and put one on each side of the hood that could look cool. Bad deal about the door.

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

I think I just moved it to the bed of the truck so that I could pop the hood open, and I think maybe Pontiac Mike wants it back, not sure what we are going to do with it, we were just spit ballin', appreciate the suggestion

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

subd

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

so I may be my own worst enemy here, advertising these sales to everyone cause man I found a couple of these 90-91 GMC truck cabs picked to da bone, so job well done gentlemen, but dog will hunt!

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

and hunt we did, I am sooooo happy though I had to hit 4 junkyards in one day, I did find this beauty in absolutely MINT [junk yard condition] ha ha so now I have a pair, you see I already shoved a set in my '54 aka Busty and had a third seat in desperate need of a mate, so out I went looking for a [ahem] hook up

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

I absolutely love these seats, they are the Last of the Mohicans, all manual, no power nothin', no stupid seat warmers no lumbar support, no silly anti Whiplash [I'm looking at you Metallica] head rests, just straight up buckets, with logical simple bracketry, know what I'm sayin' - oh and did I mention this version folds down forward so I can put a banana behind the seat if I felt like it

also I will show the pic later but I bought the outside passenger seat bracket with the slide it back and forth handle so that when I mount two driver side seats in my cab one will have the handle on the opposing side [semi Por Tip for you all right there!] hope we can pull it off

and here is my daughters little Mazda 3 doing Truck Things (kids out of town so I won't tell her if you won't that I borrowed her car to go to the junk yard)

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

so here are some pics of that opposing symmetrical bracket that will put the knob on the outside like on the driver's side

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

and here we see how the 91 seat folds forward (the 90s seats don't do this) I mean it ain't all the way flat, but it's not like we're going to be transporting drum sets in there

now I wonder if the other seat does that? I forgot what year it came out of? and since I had 3 of them I probably mixed them up anyway... great!

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

and here are The Blues Brothers side by side

I washed the one on the right and boy you can sure tell the difference!

so just so happened as I was driving back home with Thing 2 the other day that the car in front of me had them back window phone number advertisement for automotive upholstery so I jotted it down and texted them this morning, let's see if they can do these babies in black leather with gray stitching for less than $600 each (fingers crossed)

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

so swung by my moms this afternoon and showed her how to remove the old seats

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

and then we instalized them buckets, looks like we got ourselves room for a 12" center console

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

we also tinkered with the driver door

and at first I thought it just sagged 1/4" too much so I loosend the 6 hinge bolts at the door and gently lifted it up with a jack and then I could force it shut but I noticed the bottom still wasn't right,

so I took the striker plate off completely and just tried shutting the door, now I got brand new weather strip on there but the old '72 door would shut easily with it on this one is being stubborn

after further inspection it looks like the bottom corner by the B pillar sticks out at least a good inch away from the cab, the rest of the darn thing is perfectly flush with the cab, any ideas how to fix that, do I need to take off the front fender to loosen and readjust the hinge bolts that hold the door to the cab?

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

Christmas in October

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

I just had to run over to Mum's Garage LLC and try these beauties on

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

Mandatory Stare and Compare

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

Houston, I think we have a problem!

I am not giving it a Thumbs Up ha ha I am using my thumb as a precision measuring instrument to point out only 1" of clearance between the new 17x8 rim and the edge of the truck bed, no bueno!

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

Top Tip: to all the Young Padawan's new to the sport!

Guys and Gals, don't trust anything on these 50 year old trucks to be matching, even, or perfect. In other words in a case like this, try that new wheel on both sides, as things may be polywampus! As observed in People's Exhibit B below

and don't ask me why this side of the axle and hence the rim sits/drops below the bed line, unlike the other side, ha ha, let's tackle one major malfunction at a time please

apologies about the poor pic quality the Intern left the blinds opened on the South facing garage window

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

so what have we learned, well based on the thumb vs three finger salute I am going to go out on a limb and say my bed is sitting crooked and since we just threw it on there the best we could it very well could be, so a 1/2' shift to the passenger side is in order

I threw up some measurements and it sticks out approximately 6 1/2" inches away from the frame to the lip of the wheel well on the driver side and it's hard to see (because of the camera angle) but only 6" away from the frame on the Texter's side

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

Alright folks, time to do some tire size math

our new rims are 17x8" so first 8" is 203 millimeters (that gives us a reference)

second 215 is the minimum tire width recommended for an 8" rim

third our stock wheels are 235/75R15 which computes to a 28.9" diameter so essentially we are currently running 29" wheels

if we were to keep the same wheel height we would need to get a 215/70R17 set of tires which is an odd size and not very popular therefor expensive

so we step it down a notch to a 215/65R17 tire size which ends up being a 28" tall wheel and so be it, there is a huge selection of tires in this size

GOOD YEAR
ASSURANCE FINESSE - SIZE: 215/65R17
Passenger All-Season