My Luxurious late model truck (not so much)

[likaroc13]

Nice job on the door panels. It does tie everything together better. Glad my old truck could be a little bit of inspiration. Like you, I'm not a huge fan of wood interiors, but I rolled with mine for a long time. As you said, it works for now until you can come up with something better.

[Thunderwagen]

I got new armrests for mine. You can have my old ones. They aren't great but they are better than what you have and are the right color.

[aggie91]

Door panels turned out great. Can't even tell they where all busted up. I like it!

On to the next step - Headlight relays!!

[83GMCK2500]

Originally Posted by Tx Firefighter

Thank you. It's still not a luxo cruiser, but I'm sure enjoying the build.

I pulled it over into the shade to try and get a better picture to illustrate how the seat and door panels tie in together now.

That looks awesome. It reminds me of the Starcraft conversions that I've seen on 92-94 Suburbans, only yours is much more tastefully done.

Originally Posted by Tx Firefighter

And, Devin, this picture is for you. Tomorrow's project....

Ah-ha! I've never seen before/after shots of this upgrade on your configuration of front end, I am looking forward to the results.

[Greenlee]

Nice work. I did the same thing to spruce up the door panels on my square with the SEM paint and the wood. However, I took it to another level with some camo from the fabric store.

[Tx Firefighter]

Thunderwagon, I might be interested in seeing if we can work a deal since you're local to me. Greenlee, thank you for the offer too.

Today was headlight relay mod day.

I showed a picture above of a relay pack I had scavenged from some junk car in the past. I wasn't happy with their condition though, so I dug through my stock of relays. Mind you, I'm the guy that won't turn down the opportunity to scavenge over a junk car, so I tend to collect things like this. I found a box of very nice Nissan relays I had saved that looked promising.



The blue ones have the proper configuration that I need. Plus, they're good quality Jaoanese made units, which I'm confident are better than typical Chinese 5 dollar relays.



Now, let's talk theory here. I said they had the right configuration for my needs. Notice the diagram on the top of them. Terminals one and two are the latch circuit and terminals three and five are the load circuit. What this means is that when you supply power to terminal one, it flows through the relay to ground, and activates the circuit. When it is activated (terminal 1 powered), terminals 3 and 5 connect. When terminal 1 doesn't have power, the latch circuit opens and terminals 3 and 5 are not connected. That's what we need.

I was fortunate that a few years ago someone gave me a very high quality bench type of power supply. It plugs into 110v and supplies a steady 12 volts. Using this I could use jump wires and my multimeter and test the relays to make sure they work.



The downside to using these OEM Asian relays is difficulty mounting them. The common generic relays have a nice little screw tab on them to facilitate mounting. These obviously did not.

So, I dug around my shop and turned up something I could work with.



Using a Dremel and files I cut into it, leaving two tabs that slid into the little bracket grooves on the back of the relays.



I also needed a circuit breaker and some green and brown wire to build new headlight harnesses. Fortunately GM has used green/brown/black for headlight circuits forever. I know my 63 truck used the exact same format as this truck does.

I've found my local trailer supply place is cheapest for this stuff. They have the circuit breakers for 4 dollars. I chose a 20 amp auto reset breaker. Using Ohms law, we can calculate what is appropriate for our needs. Each headlight is 65 watts. Two headlights totals 130 watts. Divide 130 watts by 12 volts and you find that the headlights will draw 10.83 amps. I chose a 20 amp breaker. To get the wire I needed, I bought a 20 foot trailer wiring harness for 4 dollars. That gets me a ton of the proper color wire for dirt cheap. Sure beats buying it by the spool at the local auto supply store. Anyway, 9.63 total out the door.



Circuit breaker mounted inside the passenger fender, near the battery. Always mount your circuit protection device as close as reasonably possible to the power source. I'll be using 12 gauge wire to power the headlights.



Power from the battery comes into the copper colored stud (its important, and the breaker is appropriately labeled as such) then leaves the breaker via the other stud and passes over to the relays where it splits off to each one.



All new wiring in appropriate colors run across the front of the truck. The stock headlight power wires from the switch were terminated into each relay to act as a trigger source. The little ground wire you see there is the ground for the latch circuit. The big black wire is the 12ga power from the circuit breaker. It runs to the first relay and jumps across to the second one in parallel so each realy has a heavy gauge power feed to give to the headlight bulbs.



Here you can see the driver side headlight wiring specifically. Notice each headlight has its own dedicated black ground wire which I terminated to the core support individually.



That's it. Done deal.

[Tx Firefighter]

I forgot to mention, I also pulled the dash back apart and got the volt gauge working again. I had kind of pinched the revolving disc underneath the fuel gauge above it. No damage done and it only took a few minutes to repair.

[Stoney]

Nice write up on the light mod.

[Greenlee]

Nice job on the relays. They sell a kit to do that in LMC. I can't remember exactly how much it cost, but it's expensive.

[Tx Firefighter]

I appreciate it fellas. I buy heat shrink and connectors in large bulk so they're basically negligible in cost. Including the wire, circuit breaker and wire loom, I'm about 15 bucks out of pocket into the mod. But also about 4 hours of diligent work too.

[bluex]

Originally Posted by Tx Firefighter

I appreciate it fellas. I buy heat shrink and connectors in large bulk so they're basically negligible in cost. Including the wire, circuit breaker and wire loom, I'm about 15 bucks out of pocket into the mod. But also about 4 hours of diligent work too.

Plus the quality of the components you used is 1000x better than the junk in that overpriced lmc kit.....

[tommyd241]

Amazing work as usual.

[Sodell]

Can you explain why it helps to do this? me=lost

[Tx Firefighter]

Basically, the end result is much brighter headlights. Doing the relay mod typically gets you about 1.5-2 more volts at the headlights than the stock arrangement. The result is a marked increase in light output.

In the original setup, the power runs all the way up to the light switch on the dash then all the way back to the headlights. Now my lights are powered by a large 12ga wire that's significantly shorter than the original long path. All the headlight switch does now is to activate the relays. This also gives an added benefit of drastically reducing the amperage flow through the switch. That's a good thing since the stock light switch plug often melts in the stock configuration.

[Low Elco]

I can also confirm that the LMC kit eats headlight bulbs, for whatever reason. Wound up taking it off, no problems since.

Nice work!

[Tx Firefighter]

Today is good day in my world. I had a fruitful visit at the junkyard on my way home from work.

Upper and lower moldings for the rear window and a carpet piece for the cab back wall. Then I grabbed another can of SEM dye to make it all match. I'd have liked to gotten red moldings, but out of the hundreds of these trucks in that junkyard, the number of 88-94 regular cabs was not that many and the ones with this molding piece with unbroken mounting ears was even less. I wound up having to climb up on a top truck in a stack to get this one.



I'm still on the look out for better door panels and armrests, but the interior will now be almost complete.

[Hankster]

Looks like you've got the interior coming together nicely!

[flashed]

Would you mind measuring the length and width of that carpet ,it looks like it would work behind a set of BuddyBuckets in my 72 to hide the gas tank where the middle seat folds down ? And congrats on the finds .

[TheBlueBomber]

Nice find. How well does the dye hold up? Going to have to re dye my door moldings in the 79

[Tx Firefighter]

Flashed, basically the dimensions are 18 tall by 64 wide or thereabouts. I had already installed it when I saw your question so I had to kind of estimate how much was tucked under the side panels. These would be a great carpet for older trucks because they are rubber and jute backed and have five clips along the top for easy installation. Just drill five holes and snap it into place.

I started off by pressure washing the carpet to get it clean then hanging it over a fence to drip dry.



And here is where my OCD caused me a lot of trouble. The upper center molding is held by 5 clips, the dome light, and one screw on each end. It would have been plenty secure with just the clips and dome light, but the screws on each end are covered by the B post trim, so I had to completely strip both side B posts back down. Out came the lower storage tray and jack stuff, both seat belts, coat hooks,and a bunch of screws. A lot of hassle, but I just needed every single screw and clip there to sleep well at night. I figure General Motors didn't put a single unnecessary screw or clip in these trucks. If it's there, there's a reason for it. While I had that all apart I also swapped in some real nice used door seals that came off a wrecked truck. My old ones were split and torn in some areas.

My phone plays tricks with colors. Sometimes it looks red, sometimes brown, and sometimes purple. Regardless of the pictures, it looks good and sanitary.





Note the rear wall carpet pieces seem puffy. It's not just a weak install job. The rubber backing and jute causes it even on original installation from GM. My brand new 94 Silverado looked like that sitting on the lot.



And I also clamped, cursed, and glued the passenger arm rest back into a shape that resembles what it's supposed to. No where near nice, but it's an armrest.



Other than buying floor mats and a driver armrest, the interior is now complete. I'm no where near happy with my door panel solution, so I'll always have my head on a swivel trying to turn up a better pair whenever fate chooses to bless me.

[Tx Firefighter]

Originally Posted by TheBlueBomber

Nice find. How well does the dye hold up? Going to have to re dye my door moldings in the 79

SEM brand is the best on the market, but it's still not perfectly ideal. I don't mind it for low traffic stuff like dashes, but high wear areas like my door panels are likely to deteorate over time. I'm best case scenario though since my dye color is basically a match for original color on most of this stuff. So a scuff or scratch shouldn't show a contrasting under color and look so noticeable.

That said, I definitely have a pair of different door panels in my future when I run across a set.

[Tx Firefighter]

A reminder of where we started.









Kind of cool since his has been super low budget with only junkyard and Craigslist used parts. Other than some dye and various screws, I can't think of much I bought new.

[aggie91]

What a difference a simple few parts and some time can do to an interior.

[Stoney]

10x better...You reuse the original floor mats?

[Tx Firefighter]

Originally Posted by Stoney

10x better...You reuse the original floor mats?

I threw those old floor mats away. Right now I'm trying to decide which ones I want to get. There's Huskyliners (which I have in my Honda and really like) and there's Weathertech.