Sullii the 72 GMC 1500

[lolife99]

Perfect!!!

[hewittca]

Originally Posted by lolife99

Perfect!!!

Thanks!

New page, new problems.

While the truck was on stands waiting on tires, I discovered two things that need immediate attention. First was a coolant leak that was coming from a crack in my block. I never noticed this spot while I was doing the swap, and I've never noticed any coolant on the ground. It appears the leak was slow enough that the coolant evaporated before it dripped. At first I was thinking the worst and that I would need to replace the block, but after reviewing old photos I realized the block has been cracked for quite a while.





I figured if I've been driving it like this the whole time I've had it then it was worth trying something to stop the leak. I decided to add some GM coolant tablets into the radiator and after several heat cycles my leak was gone! I'm not sure how permanent this solution is but I plan to run it and see if this issue ever resurfaces.



The second issue was my idler pulley. The outer lip of the pulley had cracked off and the grooves were starting to cut into my belt. Then I realized I made a bonehead mistake. I was supposed to use a smooth idler pulley for the backside of the belt. I'm not sure how I missed this, but at least I caught it before my belt snapped!



At first I tried a 5.3 truck pulley, but it required spacers and the diameter was too large. Next I tried a 5.7 Camaro pulley and this was the correct one.



One last aside is a correction to my bed alignment. I thought that my bed didn't look quite right, especially when viewed from the side.



After running a stringline I realized how far off it was.



I took some measurements and added the correct amount of spacers under each mounting point and was able to get things much closer.



Bed misalignment is one thing that always jumps out at me when I see a truck, so I'm glad to have this resolved.

[hewittca]

Now that I have those issues squared away, it's time to enjoy the truck a bit! I discovered that there is a truck show next weekend called C10 Resurrection that isn't too far from my house. They are doing what they call a photo poker run where you take photos of your truck at landmarks around town for a chance to win a prize at the show. I don't care too much about the prizes but I definitely wanted to take the opportunity to ride around in my truck. My kids tagged along for the ride. First we hit the carwash and then we were off to Lexington.



They have a list of locations that qualify for the drawing. Of course, since Lexington NC is known for barbeque you have to hit a BBQ restaurant.



There were a total of four locations in Lexington that we needed to hit.









There were also two locations a few towns over in Spencer NC.





We had time to hit 6 out of the 9 locations. It made for a fun morning driving the truck, hanging out with the kids, and taking some cool photos!

[hewittca]

It was such a beautiful day today and the lighting was perfect so I decided to pull the truck out into our field and get a few shots of it "in the weeds".





It was fun seeing the truck hiding in the grass, so I left it out until evening. When it was time to pull it inside I was rewarded with the setting sun casting the perfect glow on the truck. Photos like these are the ones I love revisiting after years gone by and I'm several builds later. Keeping that in mind, I'm trying to remember to enjoy this truck while I have it!

[hewittca]

I'm just catching up here with some photos from the last month. I've been driving the truck quite a bit and just trying to enjoy it. I even drove it to work every day one week. I want to put as many miles on it while the weather is still tolerable. I also made a successful trip to the C10 Resurrection. It was the first year for the show and they had 250 trucks show up. Not too bad for a small town show in Lexington NC. I only managed to get two photos of the truck. One before heading out to the show, and one arriving. My friend came with me and after about two hours we left and headed back to his place to work on his truck with some newfound motivation. Ultimately, we ended up bringing his chassis back to my house so he has room at his place to start body work. He helped me so much with my truck and now we are making some serious progress on his truck.







The only issue I've had with the truck lately is a dead starter. At first I thought it was the battery so I tried jumping it with my Tacoma, but still no luck. Then I tried rolling the truck down the driveway and dumping the clutch and it fired right up. At this point I was highly confident it was the starter. Easy enough to swap. It took longer to go get the starter than it did to swap it out. I'm thinking the old one died because it was worn out because I don't think my exhaust is too close. We'll see how long this new one lasts. The starter was indeed the issue. Back to cruisin!





Here's a few more random shots of the truck. All out and about near home and work. The kids hop into a photo every now and then. They are usually with me since they enjoy riding in the truck just about as much as I enjoy driving it.









I've also been trying to improve my photo taking skills, at least as much as I can given I'm still just using my phone! My biggest mistake is I've been using the native 26 mm focal length of the lens which allows you to get really close to the truck and still fit it in the frame. This gives it a distorted perspective that exaggerates the size of parts that are closer to the camera. It makes for an interesting photo sometimes, but it doesn't faithfully represent the dimensions of the truck.



A more natural focal length for automotive photography is around 35-40mm. Unfortunately you cannot change this on my phone. You can, however, mimic it by changing the zoom to 1.5x. This forces you to take several steps back to fit the whole truck in the shot. The tradeoff is you reduce photo quality slightly, but the truck looks much more proportionately correct.



My tentative plan for the truck this year is to drive it until the weather is unbearable. Then I will most likely park it until the weather cools off just in time for the next C10 Fall Revival. After that, I will probably be ready to start working on the interior. That's it for now.

[hewittca]

It's been another month of enjoying the truck, but the weather is starting to reach peak misery and my days of driving the truck are getting few and far between. I really need to look into Vintage Air...

I was able to get to our local cruise in for May in downtown Mocksville. It's normally a decent turnout, but it's always the same vehicles year after year. It's more of an old gentleman's club. Anyway, I brought the family along for this one. We did NOT all fit in the truck. My wife followed along in her air conditioned modern car, smart! I was able to grab a good spot, take a few pics, and then we walked around for a bit.

[hewittca]

While building the truck I always tried to keep in mind that I wanted to still use this truck as a truck. Although I have limited its stock capabilities in this regard, I am still able to do virtually everything that I would need a truck for. For example, I needed to do some trimming of thorn bushes along my fence. The truck was perfect for this task, even with driving it all over my property which is not very forgiving in some areas. Luckily it is mostly rolling hills.





In some areas the truck was literally on the ground but it powered through. I'm sure I was on the verge of getting stuck, but this wasn't too troubling. If I did, I would just pull the truck out with my Tacoma.





Overall it was fun using the truck as it was intended while knocking something off the never ending to-do list.

[hewittca]

I've had the truck for about 3 1/2 years now and I've always intended on making a homecoming trip of sorts back to Piedmont Traction where I bought the truck. Every year they have a show on father's day weekend and every year I've had plans to bring the truck, but I've never made it. This year marks the fourth show since I bought my truck (and 7th show overall) and I was finally in a place where the truck could make the journey. Overall, it was a fun event and I'm glad I could make it. Here are a few pics from the show.

[clay68c10]

It's looking great doing work for you. I like the shot where you are literally in the weeds.

[jasinger01]

Looks great! Saw you on the latest UBT video

[zicc1835]

looking great all the pictures thanks for sharing ...the family ......working sullii ...I did something similar but a lot different..now im going over to my thread to update

[raggedjim]

Glad to see you enjoying the truck with your kids!

Rg

[Graham57a]

So cool to see this thing in person the other weekend. You have done an amazing job on it and I love that you drive it and enjoy it with your kids!

[hewittca]

Thanks everyone! Sorry I've been slow to reply, I've actually been away from the forum for a bit. I also haven't had time to even drive the truck for the last two months or so. Just in the last week I've pulled it out again and started thinking about what I want to do next. It should be interior, but I keep thinking about putting a cam in it instead!

Coming back to the truck, I still get the feeling that I wanted to do something different with the front of the truck. At certain angles, the GMC grill looks so awkward and I couldn't really figure out what I don't like about it until now. The center vertical bar has a peak in the center which forces the horizontal bar to angle out at a different slope than the hood. This makes the whole center cross look strange to me, so I decided to try and flatten it out. I started pushing on the center and was able to straighten it enough to make the center horizontal bar at the same angle as the rest of the grill surround. It's a subtle difference but in person it does improve the flow of the grill when you walk around the front.



The other thing I didn't love was the clash between the white bumper and the chrome grill. I never went back to chrome because I love the white rear bumper. After several years, however, I finally decided to give the chrome another try. This time around I definitely like the change. It makes the front look more cohesive to me. Of course, this meant I had to strip the rear bumper as well. I don't hate the rear with the chrome bumper, so chrome it is! Now, I just need another can of paint stripper so I can finish the job.

[hewittca]

Lately I've been working through some of the items further down the to-do list. First up was replacing the window seals. They leaked terribly and were completely dry rotted. I wouldn't be surprised if they were still original. While the windshield was out, I figured it was a good time to replace the dash pad and clean up the top of the dash. At first, I was going to leave what was left of the original paint. After cleaning it I didn't really like how it looked. The original color was a darker flat blue, but I could not find a code for it. I searched around and landed on matte ink blue from Krylon. It was a close match to original and looks great against the medium blue on the rest of the truck. The dash pad is from Dashes Direct and was an easy install. Also, a welcome improvement over the badly cracked original.







Now that the dash was done it was back to the windshield. Unfortunately, when I removed the windshield I did not notice a small crack that had started in the top left corner. While trying to reinstall the windshield, the crack spread until it was cracked top to bottom. Worse still, the window was not fully seated. After several reattempts the windshield was beyond usable and I had to accept defeat. I've heard these are difficult to install, but I've installed windows with the rope technique before so I thought it wouldn't be too bad. This one proved too much of a challenge, however, so I went with a professional. I used Adam's Auto Glass in Statesville and they did an outstanding job. He used a Fuyao windshield which turned out to be a perfect fit. I've used this brand for replacement glass in my classic VWs and it is well known, so I wasn't too worried about going with this one over OEM. He also used a Precision window seal which is as good as it gets. The new seal and windshield coupled with the refreshed dash and new vents (also painted ink blue) really sparked my motivation to start working on the remainder of the interior.







While I try to stomach the cost of seat foam and cover, carpet, and door panels, I continued on with my list. Next up was fixing the awful fuel filler problem. Filling the truck with my original solution behind the marker light was not easy and it drove me to finally cutting a hole in my bed floor. I decided to cut a 6" hole because I want to use a hinge that I had lying around from a 6" fuel door for a Blazer. I will use the piece I cut out as the door for a relatively seamless solution to the problem of having a giant hole in the bed floor! Filling the truck is SO much easier now. I will come back to the fuel door once I have that finished.





Next, I've started cleaning up the original paint again. I polished this truck within the first month that I bought it and then never touched the paint again. It has faded again since then so I am going back and repolishing it. I always go back and forth about doing a matte or shiny finish. I think this time around I will go shiny.





In between working on these smaller projects I've also been driving the truck as much as I can and using it as a truck, weather permitting. It has now been one year since I got the truck back on the road and it is still performing as well as I could have hoped for. My original goal was to take it to the C10 Fall Revival, which I did. Now, it's already time to prep for the next one in a few weeks. I don't have any real changes from last year, except the keen eye might notice I now have chrome caps instead of white.

[zicc1835]

I was hoping you were going to do the marker light fuel door and follow your instructions ...im thinking now of going a different route myself ..... your truck is looking good