spaseghost

Nothing fancy. Bought a pretty nice truck for a good price. Mainly a camping / hunting truck, but I do ride four wheelers in the desert with friends and go to the land fill a lot with doing a slow remodel on my house. Just figured I would start a thread to showcase my passion and hobby. Enjoy!


Bought it like this.









Had to replace the brakes and spark plugs. Crappy video of the spark plugs cutting out once in overdrive and lockup.


Replaced all eight spark plugs without a single one breaking, and brakes. Also picked up some tow mirrors from a 2012 that was wrecked at work.

spaseghost

Installed a relay with the trigger off the highbeams for some hidden lights.

spaseghost

Tinted the windows at 10% on the front with a windshield strip and had the rear windows matched up.




Picked up a locked SCT Livewire for $50, sent it in to have it unlocked and put the 87 performance tune on it till I kill the full tank of fuel to get an e-mail tune. No pics...

spaseghost

Decided to plastidip the mirror caps white.
* tow mirror skull cap removal *
* tow mirror glass removal *
Had a hell of a time figuring out how to remove the mirror glass without breaking the glass. Well, I broke the passenger side assembly, but I was able to do some of the good old plastic welding to fix it... LOL. Here is a picture of where you pry at to remove the glass. The glass is held on by four tabs on a plate which is held in to the power mechanism by a spring loaded torx screw.




You should see the "pry points" next to the eyelets. Message me for more info if you need too!

The skull caps are held in by four clips, at least on mine. These are factory 2012 heated, blinker, manual telescoping mirrors BTW. I tried the white plastidip spray on them. It worked really nice until the third coat, which sprayed on odd, came out of the nozzle in beads. I turned the can upside down and cleaned the tip after every coat. Finished up with two more coats just to see how it would look.




It was also a much brighter white than my truck... So I peeled it off and scuffed it all up with steel wool, hit it with some mineral spirits and set up a super sweet paint booth in my garage.



I used Rust-oleum Paint for Plastic Gloss White and plan to finish with an acrylic enamel clear also from Rust-oleum. That's where I am at right now... My daughter has soccer practice in three hours, so I am sure I will post the results after that.

dipschnit

That thing is sweet looking!

spaseghost

Thanks dip!


Got a little distracted. Traded in the Mustang and wife's Armada on a Subaru XV Crosstrek for the wife. She does home health care and the 12 MPG from the Armada was a just killing us. Anyway, the caps are done and I think they turned out pretty nice. Really makes everything pop. Did 4 coats of paint and 3 coats of clear. Might do two more clear and a really light wet sand to get rid of the orange peel. Either way, here it is. I also can't rave enough about the SCT, it shifts so hard into second on full throttle that the belt chirps. Read some posts about it, ill write what I do to correct it. It's nice having an accurate speedo too, I was driving waaaay faster than I thought! I saw somebody else did the door handles in white, I think I might copy that idea and also hit the tailgate handle white when the tailgate camera shows up. Just a thought.







I also installed the switchback LED blinkers I took from the mustang. Been on a while, but never said anything about them. Put silverstars in every other light socket in the truck too, had them on hand from the mustang... Im sure I will eventually upgrade to LEDs like I have on everything else.

spaseghost

Ordered my Blisteins for the front and rear, supposed to be here on the first. I want to go camping for the entire week of the 4th, so im not sure if I will install them. Also looking for a 1.5'' add-a-leaf for the rear to eliminate my rear squat.

spaseghost

Curious if anybody can help out, I am getting alot of opinions from shops and friends and can't really find a direct answer. I ordered these http://www.topguncustomz.com/p-1982-...x#.U7LtSt_Hmk1 to swap out for my blown front Fabtech struts. I was told I have to use the factory strut mounts, do I not use the fabtech spacer that is on there already? This guy -->
Just kind of confused on getting this swap done correctly, fabtech wasn't very open about what I need to do because I didn't order the shocks from them, given they said they were $330 a piece, why would I? Top Gun Customz said I need the factory mounts top and bottom. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

spaseghost

Figured it out. Went to a junk yard and got complete strut and coil assemblies for $60. Truck had about 80k miles and was in decent shape. Not sure of the story, but I got what I needed. Truck is a whole new vehicle, steering has tightened up, no more bump steer going over chip seal, no more squeaking when compressing, it is fantastic. Now I just need to order the rear Bilsteins. Crappy pictures since its so late, packing up to go camping in the morning.


Goodbye!!!


Hello!!!