G-body cousin S truck "Barn find"

[SRD art]

Great find. Hopefully your son is appreciative of the history. 1985 was a different time than now - people treated everything differently then as compared to now imo. No social media or cell phones that didn't require a bag with a heavy *ss battery. That truck is a piece of that history.

There is nothing wrong with keeping a truck of that nature in stock form because it will be another 50 years before they are of any real value. Cool and reliable transportation - this old guy's goal .

Agreed. I posted it on a couple places on Facebook and the typical response showed up several times... "LS swap it". I say it's got 35,000 miles on it, why throw away a decent reliable drivetrain?? I already have a couple fast cars, Pumkinator's got a very healthy 406 SBC, Grandpa Cutlass is getting a 454 BB Chevy and I'll SBC swap my S10 Blazer. I just want a normal person driver for now. But, I also love lowered cars so I'm going to at least do that, I can't help myself there.

My older son is very into cars, works in a hot rod shop and all. He jokingly calls this one an old guy type build because I'm not putting modern pro touring wheels and suspension on it and will leave it relatively stock outside of the drop. I'm almost 52 now so I'm ok with being an old guy on this one.

 

[64nailhead]

My kid has a '93 square body S10 with the original 2.8 and T5. He got it for $100 with a great body (for the Northeast) and has lowered it, installed a posi and added some silly stuff. It looks waaaaaay worse than what you just picked up, but it's a daily that runs everyday with 80K miles and is damn reliable for over a year and half now. It hauls his skinny butt back and forth to work everyday.

He has all of the parts to SBC swap it including motors and trans. Also EFI with a TPI. I'm trying to hold him off until he gets something else because it's so dang reliable. It gets nowhere fast, but always gets there. Not too shabby for $100.

I am curious of the price tag on your truck, but I don't want to ask.

 

[SRD art]

My kid has a '93 square body S10 with the original 2.8 and T5. He got it for $100 with a great body (for the Northeast) and has lowered it, installed a posi and added some silly stuff. It looks waaaaaay worse than what you just picked up, but it's a daily that runs everyday with 80K miles and is damn reliable for over a year and half now. It hauls his skinny butt back and forth to work everyday.

He has all of the parts to SBC swap it including motors and trans. Also EFI with a TPI. I'm trying to hold him off until he gets something else because it's so dang reliable. It gets nowhere fast, but always gets there. Not too shabby for $100.

I am curious of the price tag on your truck, but I don't want to ask.

That's awesome, thanks for sharing that insight. I mention the actual price in post # 8. It was cheap. Real cheap. I consider it a huge blessing for being a nice guy.

 

[69hurstolds]

Mighty kind of you to help someone deal with stuff I don't think anyone really wanted to deal with. And you got a "free" truck out of the deal. Awesome!

There's nothing wrong with making it your own with the mods you're thinking about. Excellent starting canvass.

 

[08Malibu]

Great story and nice truck. Those wheels will be a great choice.

 

[mclellan83]

Awesome score, congrats. A man after my own heart, hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be getting back at my Blazer. This go round will be the go fast time

 

[SRD art]

I guess I'm getting old and cranky, pricing on things seems like it's gotten crazy over the last year. It's been hard to find "cheap parts" for building on a budget because you want to save toy money for the real builds. I was looking at some 15" black D window wheels for the truck, but the cheapie $50 wheels have bad ratings and the name brand versions are near $80. That's not a bad price, I'm just hoping to keep the budget low so I can continue spending the majority of $ on Pumkinator. I've been scouring FB Marketplace since I got the truck too and on Monday found these 15x7 mid '80s Firebird wheels. I've always liked this BBS styled wheel, the first wheels I bought for Pumkinator were 16x8 GTA wheels and they're now on Grandpa. The 15x7s cost me $100 and $50 in gas to drive our Suburban down to Vegas to pick them up, I'm pretty excited about such a great deal. They're old and look it, but cleaning them up shouldn't be much of an issue, Gonna order a set of H rated 225-60-15s for them on Black Friday.

One more photoshop and I think I have the final design set. I decided to use a shade of brown on the bottom this time. I like that it's not just a duplicate of a factory option, the extra contrast makes it pop, and the darker color visually weighs the bottom and makes it look lower. Yep, I'm excited about where this is now headed.

 

[SRD art]

I also worked on the fuel issue this past Weekend. I first ran a hose from the fuel pump to my 2 gallon gas can. Ran just fine so I knew the pump and filter were good to go. I really didn't want to pull the bed... yet, so I then got out my electric pump and hooked the gas can through the pump into the fuel line to back wash it. After I heard a soft "plunk" in the tank the fuel flowed just fine. Hmmm, maybe there was a clog or maybe I just blew the sock off, lol. I put another 3 gallons into the tank and hooked the pump back to the truck pump. It fired up and ran great on it's own now. Just in case there was crap in the line and it's now in the tank I put a clear fuel filter between the hard line and the pump to make sure nothing gets into the pump/ system. It won't get that much driving time over winter so I'll run it this way for a bit and I think when weather warms up in March I'll probably pop the bed off, open up the tank and see what might be in there and replace all the rubber hoses.

Initial Drive:

I took it around the neighborhood for a couple runs first. This truck definitely feels like it has 35K on it. Brakes work great, steering is tight with zero slop, suspension feels great, trans shifts flawlessly, and no rattles and sounds like parts are going to fall off. All the lights and the heater works fine. I'm way impressed with it.

This morning I let it warm up a bit and then went for another drive. Close by there's a long straight deserted road so I did a couple 1-2-3 gear "hard" pulls. I expected a complete turd but it scooted pretty well. I'm thinking it's at least as fast as my '84 Cutlass with 2.14 gears behind the 307. Although that's still pretty slow it was better than I anticipated so I'm ok with that for now, I have an old school G-tech meter so probably Friday I'll take it out and get stock form 1/4 mile times. After I get all the bad gas run through, remove the cat, put the Flowmaster on and swap in the high flow air cleaner I'll run it again to compare.

More coming soon. Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

 

[SRD art]

Updates- I found out from the DMV that there's a special process and form required to buy a vehicle from someone that passed and never signed the title. It involves a surviving family member signing before a notary that the truck can be sold. Luckily Karen and her husband are back in town this week renovating the home so I was able to drop the form off and will pick it up today. That's the last step to getting it legal to start driving around town so I can see how it does in traffic and on the freeway.

I drove it a few more times around the neighborhood last week, the truck just runs incredible. For kicks I tried a burnout and to my amazement it lit up both tires with ease. Granted it's not hard to roast old 195-75-14s but nonetheless it was fun. That fuel filter I put in line is definitely catching some dark residue crap, grateful I felt inspired to put it in line before the pump. I'm assuming it's rusty residue or something. It's getting colder and with the garage filled with other projects it's driveway maintenance only so I'm going to wait till early spring to pull the bed and see what's inside the tank. Hopefully it's not too bad. Between now and then I'll keep an eye on that filter and change it as needed.

It's still in the mid 60s during the day here in southern Utah but it's not going to last much longer. Priority to get done before it gets down into the 30s is an oil change, replace the deteriorated vacuum lines, buff the paint, mod the exhaust, drop the suspension and get the new wheels and tires on. Come spring I'll get the door replaced, get the brown paint sprayed on and do something about lining the bed, either a plastic liner or a spray liner. I think at that point it'll be most of the way there.

I've been thinking about custom plates. I was in high school in '84-88, and muscle cars and lowered mini trucks were the thing among the kids in south Florida where I lived. Only the high dollar mini trucks had the wild paint jobs so considering the paint scheme will be similar to era factory styling (mostly what everyone had) and the wheels are from an '85 Firebird I thought one of these options would be fitting. Which do you like best?

 

[scoti]

1st option....