Halfbreed - GMC Z71 + IH Extd Cab

[sparkydog]

I am a happy camper now. My nose job is almost over. I have a solid, well rigged radiator/grille assembly that blurs the line between the GM and IH equipment.

[tecky11]

that is so cool

[1985-GMC]

It look good! Now you just need to spray some color on it!

[ThreeQtr]

Very clean looking. Good job.

(Chevy appears in little gray truck)

[sparkydog]

Today was not supposed to be a truck project day... but.

This morning I was taking a break from yard work and thought I would do a quick "technology harvest" and strip down the drivers seat off the 96 GM in case I could adapt the powered seat base onto the 60/40 bench unit.
I got the basic motor stuff off and then decided to look into what it would take to get the lumbar support bag out.

Next thing you know the surgery went clear down to the skeleton and I decided I would leave the bladder on the original seat frame for now. This way when/if I ever get to upholstery I don't have to remember how the bladder thingy was rigged. I will just graft it over then.

[sparkydog]

However while I was screwing around with all of this I began to notice that the powered seat base and the 40 seat base of the 60/40 team looked an awful lot alike.

Soooooo... ...

First I measured the bolt pattern.


Then I swapped the bases out.

Then I checked if the seat base still worked by powering it up outside the truck.

[sparkydog]

The next thing I know it's 4pm and now the truck interior looks like this!

It sure is cool to have a powered drivers seat!

(As usual there are a few loose ends to tidy up but boy was it cool to have something just bolt directly in!!!)

[ejn74]

Very Cool Man, Keep up the awexome work!!

[sparkydog]

Early trip to the wrecking yard this morning. I got a hood strut off some kind of F**d and a little docking bracket off something else. Now when I open the hood I just reach to the right side of the hood and release the strut and it docks into the bottom of the IH grille.

OK enough with the cool little details. Now I have to get back to the main body work of the nose job and finish all the welding.

[Mr Pops]

This truck is so cool

[racedaddy]

nice job

[Pop's C-10]

i love this build

[sparkydog]

Weld weld weld weld, move, weld weld weld, switch sides....
weld weld weld weld, move, weld weld weld, repeat.

Flapper job.

Grind.

A little more flapper.

DA sand.

Ready for some hammer/dolly work. 44.5 feet of seams baby!

[sparkydog]

Originally Posted by sparkydog

The start of this dream goes back over a decade. I didn't get semi-serious until 2 years ago. And I didn't get real serious until a little over a year ago when I purchased the IH vehicles that would form the core of my build.

About 10 years ago I kept driving past a dead Travelette in the front yard of a house near Ruch, OR. (Edit - a "Travelette" is the model name of an IH Crewcab) Every time I drove past it something would tug at me. I think it was that it had sunk low enough into the weeds that it looked kind of cool like a cruiser. I kept saying "that sort of looks cool but not really - I wonder what it is about that look?"

But I never did anything with the thoughts and then one year the truck was gone and I stopped thinking about it.

A few years later a red one popped up in Sutherlin right along I5. This was a crummy - a logging rig. Seeing it revived my curiosity. I finally stopped and took some pictures. It was beat to chit. I went home and started playing around with crops of the pictures - trying to figure out what it was about the body that had made me think something that fugly had the potential to look OK.

I finally decided that IF:
a) the hood was shorter
b) the roof was lower
c) the bed was longer
d) the rear axle was further away
e) the crew compartment was a little shorter

That there was in fact a decent looking and very unique cruiser lurking inside the Travelette.

At that point it was fun playing paper dolls with photo crops. But once I had the basic look I was starting to get hooked. So, I said "hey what the hell - how expensive can a Travelette be?" So I hopped on the internet and starting trying to find one...

...that was in decent BODY condition..... but wasn't show quality.... and that was affordable.

Well ultimately I came to the conclusion that there wasn't such an animal. There are always a few Travelettes for sale but they all have had a hard life and their sheet metal is usually trashed. And then every so often there is a real cherry but it is usually available for top $$$$ and I AM A CHEAP BASTARD MOFO.

I pretty much gave up at that point.

Then I had a wild *** idea. If I was going to do a bunch of chopping on the cab anyway to get the unique cruiser look I wanted, then who said I had to start with a Travelette? I started wondering whether I could find a decent pickup AND a decent Travelall and then ... uh.... welllll um... just do some kind of magic whupass on the two cabs and make my own crew cab.

Well it didn't take much effort to find two trucks with decent sheet metal and for low $$$'s (pre economic meltdown $$$'s).

Sooooo..... I bought them!!!

Whoever wrote this was a Moron.

[1985-GMC]

Hahaha! It looks great man!

[ERASER5]

Originally Posted by sparkydog

Whoever wrote this was a Moron.

Possibly, but a VERY entertaining moron to say the least! We are all glad you did it.

[hgs_notes]

Originally Posted by sparkydog

Whoever wrote this was a Moron.

With a capital M. Well done.

[FrankieD]

It always looks easy in our heads “Oh I can do that, shouldn't be too hard or take too much time" ya right. Good thing you live in California or it would be a lot more expensive with the heat bill and time consuming with cold & snow. It will be a cool ride when you are done and I am sure one of a kind, keep the faith you are alomost there.

[sparkydog]

Originally Posted by 1985-GMC

Hahaha! It looks great man!

Originally Posted by ERASER5

Possibly, but a VERY entertaining moron to say the least! We are all glad you did it.

Originally Posted by hgs_notes

With a capital M. Well done.

Originally Posted by FrankieD

It always looks easy in our heads “Oh I can do that, shouldn't be too hard or take too much time" ya right. Good thing you live in California or it would be a lot more expensive with the heat bill and time consuming with cold & snow. It will be a cool ride when you are done and I am sure one of a kind, keep the faith you are alomost there.

Ha ha - thanks much guys! Yes I am glad I did it too. Not burned out yet but it IS interesting to look back at the self-delusion that (I think) is a necessary ingredient to starting a build like this. You have to fake yourself out a little.

[sparkydog]

I've done a couple of other little side projects along with the main nose job.
First was that I got the GM xcab rear seat out of mothballs and started mocking it up. Right away I knew that I wanted to tuck some of the GM gear into a little more narrow package. So what you see in this pic is a shiny horizontal cut line across the black bracket. That is where I cut both sides and then swapped the lower portions side-to-side. This allowed me to easily tuck all the hinge gear inside the IH cab. I tacked the brackets in and will leave it alone for awhile.

I will need to raise the seat upward about 3" or so to bring the seat backs level front/rear and to more closely mimic how the GM xcab is rigged. In the stock GM cab the rear floor is raised up about this much but in my truck that portion of the floor is no longer around.

[sparkydog]

Another project was the air filter box. Once I installed the Buick hood hinge I no longer had clearance for the stock GM plastic housing. And as the IH fenders were modified I lost some of the room to tuck the stock housing under them. So for a couple of reasons the GM housing had to go. I wanted to try and come up with something that looked a little more 60's and in my head I thought I could find an old fashioned air filter housing at the wrecking yard.

Well this turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. Not many post-80's vehicles have the round, metal housings anymore. They all went squarish and plastic. But just as I was giving up I found something on an Isuzu and brought it home. After stripping off it's brackets and slitting it in half I extended it and started mocking up how it would fit inside the engine bay.

In the last photo you see it getting close. I still have to cut off the opening in the lid and seal it up and then extend the side inlet over and out.

[sparkydog]

Over the weekend I hit a milestone - I ran out of 023 MIG wire and had to do some of the seam welds in 030. This means that I have put about 32 lbs of weld on Halfbreed over the past 2 yrs. (It also means I have ground off 20 of those 32!)

[1985-GMC]

I love the air box!

[sparkydog]

These pics are from a couple of weeks ago.
The Isuzu-based air filter housing made it to paint.

I finally went back to my very first tack welds and finished them up. This was across the floor of the bed. Since I was unable to get underneath to clean off the paint and undercoat I knew that I was going to get a lot of smoke and trash in my weld puddle. So I put the truck up on ramps on one side so that my weld joint would have a slight tilt. This allowed me to weld downhill a bit and kept the smoke and fire burning above my weld puddle.

(Confessions of a dirty welder!)

[FrankieD]

good thinking, I like your welding cart very orignal