My son's first truck

[dieseldawg142]

our '90 stepper that we bought from the orig owner in '95 with 24 000 miles, finally after 29 yrs of faithful service, 200 000 on road miles, approx 150 000 off road miles and smiles all the way has given it's last....sad face...
had never owned an IFS truck (solids only) and had my doubts, figured it would be a good mall crawler for the wife and to maybe get off our road in the winter.
in fact the whole time she drove it (first 9 yrs) she prob had it in 4by maybe 10 times.....sad face...
after i took it over in '04, it's off road miles skyrocketed, with a 40-ish to 1 crawl ratio, some good tires and it would go, climb, ford any terrain as long as the tires got traction, and made me a believer out of IFS suspensions
shortly after we bought it in '95


wasn't "pretty" enough for the wife, so cranked the bars, some add a leafs, 285 tires, prom chip, flowmaster cat back and a few other accs


then i took it over and it's off road chops kicked in. cue the man in black- "I've been everywhere"
literally to hell and back, never left me stranded, although i did have to limp it home once or twice after destroying some parts...
but for the last few yrs i kinda neglected it and only spent whatever money was needed to keep it running. all my money was going into my crewcab

[dieseldawg142]

i did some calculations and i figured it would take 5-7K to bring it back mechanically, not counting the cosmetics.
so it was a no brainer buying this '96 rcsb for $6500.
truck was bought new by a hot rod shop that used it for a parts chaser, then they sold it to the gentleman i got it from.
4.3 V6, 5 spd, and 3:73 gears. body is minty mint esp for a 28 yr old truck.
hot rod shop also swapped the seats for some out of a Yukon i think.
miles were just over a hundred k. runs perfect with no issues, clutch is smooth as is shifting it, brakes, which usually suck on the gmt 400's, are outstanding- they will put your face in the windshield if your not paying attention.
didn't get much of a "test drive" as the p.o. was riding with me, but it run and looked so good and i needed a daily, so i bought it.

[dieseldawg142]

like i said, for a 28 yr old rig, the body is beautiful

[dieseldawg142]

on the way home after buying it (aprox 70 miles) i was completely underwhelmed by the V6. never owned a V6 truck in my life, always 8's and i noticed i had to run it up way more when shifting than the 5.7 in the stepper.
but i had bought it and figured after driving it for awhile i would get used to it....
the offending V6..


the first thing i did when i got it home was pull off the cow catcher and toolbox. i need to mount a canopy for my dawgs. sold the grille guard and toolbox for $500 so my investment was now down to 6 K.
when the guard came off it was pretty obvious my fr bumper had some plating issues...


also had a headliner prob to deal with as well

[dieseldawg142]

bumper was a little rougher looking once the chrome came off....
at this time my stepper was still driving, so i figured i would just do a temp fix on the bumper. the plan was to take the mint bumper off the stepper when it died and put it on the new truck.
after tons of welding and grinding, it looks acceptable enough for now


first winter with us and still hadn't put it on the road yet

[dieseldawg142]

new struts on the box and some new paint got me $500 for this goofy-ness


one thing i hated about this truck is the '90's silly-@ss decals on it. a few hrs with a hot air welder from work and there gone. also took off the few pieces of rub strip that were left. where the rest of it went went i have no clue...

[bnorth]

I hope you fix up the stepper too but both are great looking red shortboxes

[dieseldawg142]

Originally Posted by bnorth

I hope you fix up the stepper too but both are great looking red shortboxes

thanks
with our little windfall, i had seriously thought about re-doing the stepper, but man it needs a lot. of course we do have some sentimental attachment to it, (29 yrs worth) but i need to be realistic. even if i fixed it up, it's still an almost 400 000 mile (not kms) truck that has seen some serious use. i bought the new truck cause the last fews months one thing after another after another was hitting me with the step. and it won't really "die", it will live on in our new truck..
and i been thinking, we have 3 trucks already, why not get what i want, another blazer, but maybe gmt400 style, or a 2dr tahoe, fairly modern and reliable but easy as $hite to work on

[dieseldawg142]

my son and i pulled these off the rear leafs today-bit of a chore, sure glad i bought that 1200 ftlb milwaukee impact the other month...
half a inch thick the entire length. rear susp could'nt move it was so stiff. now it flexes nice. seeing how it was a parts chaser for a hot rod shop, guessin' they put them in for hauling home engines, axles, etc.


one shock of 4 showed up today. other 3 are coming in 2 more boxes (?!)


we mounted up the new tires on my old stepper rims today, just to see how they will look. plus we can mount them on his truck this weekend so we can decide how high to lift it


stepper is looking even more forlon now. 3 different tires.
pass fr is a 245/70 16, dr fr is a 285/75 16, and the 2 rears are the old tires and rims from wifey's 'yoda, 245/65 17

[dieseldawg142]

[dieseldawg142]

spent like half a day cleaning my old stepper rims. literally the first time they been cleaned in about 10 or so yrs...


kid bought some chrome valve stems, luggies and center caps for contrast...

[OutlawDrifter]

Looks like it's coming along pretty well.

[dieseldawg142]

getting there...
few more things we want to change and sort out.
took it out for some light wheeling, does not bad for a v6, 41:1 crawl sure helps.
totally impressed with the cooper stt's. actually find they bite better than the KM2's we were running


leafs flex much better without them overloads. if they were still on, tires would be in the air


puppies seem to like the more room than my old stepper

[dieseldawg142]

well we hit our first real mechanical probs with the '96.
i knew we had to get it aligned after throwing some lift keys in it, but it drove real nice at lower speeds so it was kinda on the back burner for the moment, but on the freeway a few days ago it didn't feel right. felt like an old '70's large barge, do a lane switch at speed and it seemed to take it's time and wouldn't come back fast enuff so now your doing the wiggle waggle down the road till it straitened up. people behind us prob thought we was drunk or something...lol
we did a backyard alignment and determined there was no more adjustment in the stock camber bolts. so we put some new bolts in and did another backyard alignment so we could get it to the shop. the alignment guy actually commended us on the not bad alignment job with a tape measure and 3 ft long level.
$160 bucks later and she steers with one finger now


niiice! no chineseum...

[dieseldawg142]

the other mechanical prob is a little more involved.
once or twice while in 4lo it would clunk. i thought maybe a bad cv, but after inspecting the cv's, they were pretty solid. then last friday while trucking up this mountain we had a more serious prob. was in 4lo again going up a 30-35 degree gravel hill with a little throttle thrown in and she popped into neutral twice on the hill. little freaky the first time as it started rolling backwards- instantly...
so i'm thinking maybe the shift fork is boogered or the pads are worn off. will also check the "infamous" snap ring on the output shaft


luckily if anything is broken or chewed up, i got this 241 case with 2 yrs of use on it. my buddy bought a 94 k1500 new in '94 and in '97 he blew the t-case. he just made it in under the 3 yr warranty and gm put a new case in for him. two yrs later he blew the tranny and i ended up with the t-case. been sitting in my back yard since '97....wondering what the guts look like after 20+ yrs of non-use...besides his was out of an auto, ours is a manual