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Hey everyone, I was going to wait until I was done to post this, but it's taking longer than I thought it would so I'm just going to document things as I go. I believe I started the actual tear-down in April of this year, but some of these things I had done before that...so there may be a lack of continuity. The truck is a 1995 5 speed 4X4 with around 180,000 miles.
These first pictures are how the truck looked when I bought it. The tires barely had tread left and were dry rotted, the rear bumper was not attached, the body was dented, scratched, and rusted, and the front tires were way out of alignment.
One if the first things I did was change plugs and wires. As you can see, they were due for a change.
Next I replaced the front brake lines. One side had been rubbing on the tire and about wore all the way through.
Old vs. new lines.
The carpet was next on the list. Whoever owned this truck before was disgusting.
I went with gray instead of the blue that was in there originally.
I got this carpet from LMC. It was supposed to be an exact fit, but it definitely was not. Also I had to cut all the holes, then cut it to length. I will never be doing this again ha.
I then bought these steps because I was tired of having to jump into the truck. I wasn't too sure how well they would work, but I'm pretty impressed with them.
After a while of driving the truck, I started to have problems getting it to go into gear. I knew I probably had a leak in the slave cylinder because I was having to fill up the clutch reservoir pretty regularly.
Yeah...I'd say it was leaking.
Since I had to take the transmission out, I figured that I might as well rebuild it. I've never rebuilt a transmission before, but I bought a how-to video and it looked like it was something I could tackle.
You can kind of see the worn shift forks here.
Close-up of one of the shift forks.
All put back together with a new master and slave cylinder from Ford. I have no idea if it is put back together right...I'm kinda scared. I don't want to go through this again.
Now we get into the fun (terrible) stuff. I got rid of the bed because it was beyond repair, and I also wanted it off so I could undercoat the frame.
20 years of dirt, rust, and grime.
After what seemed like 500 hours of wire brushing the loose rust off and preparing the surface, I was finally ready to undercoat. I used Por15 after degreasing everything and coating it in their metal prep.
This took me a long time.
Getting ready to do the rear axle.
Axle done with a new diff cover installed.
I'm also about 90% done with installing new brake lines. I'm making them myself with some copper/nickel brake line I got from amazon. I'm not done forming them yet, it won't look so terrible once I'm done.
I also did the drive shafts and associated parts. One of the weights on the rear drive shaft was falling off, so I knocked it the rest of the way off and took the shaft to get balanced. I'm glad I did because they said it was bent, but you couldn't tell while driving.
I'll post some more tomorrow, I'm having trouble finding some of my pictures. I hope you have enjoyed it so far!
Can't wait to see the final product. Its nice to see somebody actually going through the trouble of restoring a truck. I was going to do the same with my bronco but I think it's to far gone already.
Can't wait to see the final product. Its nice to see somebody actually going through the trouble of restoring a truck. I was going to do the same with my bronco but I think it's to far gone already.
Thank you! I'm getting in deeper than I thought I would...but if it's worth doin its worth doin right.
Found a few more pictures. Well, I figured that I can't have the frame looking all nice and leave the suspension looking like crap.
Starting to take the rear suspension apart. The nuts for the u-bolts weren't going to come off willingly, so I decided to cut the u-bolts with a sawzall.
I tried fighting the bushings for the leaf springs and lost miserably. So I used a die grinder and air hammer to take the heads off of all the rivets. I got new rear spring hanger brackets from LMC.
After adding up what it was going to cost for new front and rear suspension, I noticed it wouldn't cost that much more to just buy a 6 inch lift kit from Rough Country. Here is the rear installed, this is the truck in its current state.
09-20-2015, 07:42 PM
olie's build thread.
