#minijimmygmc - Wifey's 1990 GMC K5 Jimmy build....

[chevy3100truck]

So my wife decided late in 2016 that she wanted to ditch her Trailblazer (truly hated that thing) and get a square body Blazer/Jimmy or Suburban. I ended up trading her Trailblazer for an 86 Suburban (which has parts from at least 3-4 different trucks on it) and some cash to buy a project for daily driver.

Finding a K5 that wasn't completely rotten around here is virtually impossible, so I just took the best I could find at a sane price ($2500 - Canadian). From the records I got with it, it looks like it had 1 owner from 1990-2012 who kept all the service records. It was then sold to a guy who added the lift & tires as a weekend mud toy. Had 160,000KM (100000 miles) on it. Typicaly 350/700r4 setup, dealer installed AC that sort of worked (I really didn't think dealer installed AC was still a thing by 1990 but apparently it was....)




My daughter decided it would be called the "Mini-Jimmy" since she thought it was small and cute lol. Well, it is a lot shorter than the Suburban but it was sitting on 38" Swampers with a 6" lift......

Needless to say, it didn't look too bad, but I knew it had it's share of warts.






It was really fun to drive home on snow & ice covered roads with the swampers and a stuck drivers side front brake caliper....

So - first things first - gut the interior - how I hate red interiors.....

[chevy3100truck]

So the interior had to come out to show off what was missing from the floors...... mainly big chunks of the floor behind the front seats

[chevy3100truck]

I think I'll wait until the forum is updated before loading more - this is painful lol

[SuperBuickGuy]

Cool rig.

[corvettedad]

What was mentioned in your other post,
LMC Truck parts!

[DanStokes]

If you're not good at welding sheet metal........ YOU WILL BE!!!! Have fun with the project as that's what it's all about.

Dan

[SuperBuickGuy]

If you're not good at welding sheet metal........ YOU WILL BE!!!! Have fun with the project as that's what it's all about.

Dan

bondo, steel wool and he's dialed... no need for welders.

[Deaf Bob]

Nice project.. Like those.. Good to know the hate for red interiors is not just me... It must be the worst inthese rigs!

I never was able to post pics.. Got a new phone in hopes I could.. Now I am waiting for the new "improved" BS..

[chevy3100truck]

bondo, steel wool and he's dialed... no need for welders.

That was the previous owners sort of fixes - except no bondo, just silicone lol

[chevy3100truck]

First things first - have to fix this mess -

Cab mounts were replaced on both sides from where the material was good (not all the way across the cab, but a decent portion from the rockers in towards the center) For the floor panel replacement I didn't bother buying repop panels as the worst area was a flat section with a drop off towards the rocker. I would have just ended up cutting up new panels and then still having to fabricate a bunch, it was just as easy to just patch everything together - it's not a show truck, just meant to be a daily driver.

A bit of grinding to clean up the ugly stich welds and some seam sealer to make sure it's all water tight

I put back a seat belt mount where it was rotten on the passenger side (rot was cut out below the mount on the drivers side) however I wasn't going to be using these mounts after upgrading the seats.

[chevy3100truck]

The rotten tailgate post was the next thing to get attention -


a bit of cutting and using a trimmed up patch panel and we get this -


Some more repairs in the taillight cavity, not too concerned about looks since this will never be see with the taillight in the truck. Just had to be functional and cut out all the rust that was there. This side had a bunch, the passenger side was completely clean.

[chevy3100truck]

Next up - getting the seat mounts in for the 2005 Yukon Denali rear seat. This was a split 3rd row that I picked up off of craigslist. One of the issues with a 1990/91 K5 that separates it from the earlier ones is that the rear seats have 3 point seat belts with an attachment on the roof. Basically - you can't take the roof off and have seatbelts.... (and using 2 point belts in the back would lead to issues if we ever had to take it through inspection).

Being as my wife wanted a K5 for the ability to have the roof off we needed a different solution for summer time. The Yukon seats with built in 3-points were the best solution, and being leather was a bonus for sure. It helps that they are about the perfect width for sitting between the wheel wells on a K5.

These pics just show the patching where the old seat mounts were, but there are 1/8" thick steel plates underneath the floor spanning all the way across the tub under both rows of mounting brackets - if the seats come out they are taking the entire floor with it. Where the floor is raised there are spacers between the floor and the steel backing plate, I wasn't going to try to make the backing plate conform with the corrugated floor.

The front seats are out of a 2001-2007 Chevy Silverado for now, picked up some cloth power seats for $20, then found $12 in the console lol. Not the ones I want, I need to find 1999-2000 3-door truck seats that have the rear lever for tipping them forward, but the price was right. I actually took a pic of the steel backing pieces for underneath the floor for these seats, 2 pieces for each seat, bolted from the bottom to the factory seat mount bolt locations, and then the seats are bolted down from above through the floor and the 1/8" thick plates.

[chevy3100truck]

The floor now needed to get a bit of paint, so I used Duplicolor roll on bedliner to coat the entire floor since a local liquidation place was selling it for $5/quart. I wouldn't have trusted this stuff for an actual truck bed, but for the interior it adds some mass to the floor to help with acoustics and block a bit of heat.

Added some Eastwood X-Mat acoustic insulation, their equivalent to Dynamat, to some areas of the floor before covering it all in a cheap aluminum backed polyurethane heat insulation material.

Vinyl floor went in (no more carpet!) & the rear seats dropped in. (The vinyl floor need to relax more, I was installing this at night when it was cool outside)

[chevy3100truck]

Since wifey wanted to drive the truck last summer it was just going to get enough updates to get it on the road.

Unfortunately that meant replacing the front axle as the ball joints were shot, the pinion bearing had a bunch of play, the hubs were garbage etc. Apparently running 38" swampers on half ton axles to play in the mud isn't good for them lol. Luckily a friend was parting out an 89 Blazer that had good axles in it, so I grabbed those and swapped the front one in (with no driveshaft since the ratio didn't match the rear now - but the rear is being swapped this winter with a complete re-do of the rear suspension).

New brakes all around and we sold the pretty much bald swampers and changed to 35" x 13.5" r17 Nitto Terra Grapplers

[chevy3100truck]

So now that gets us to last summer, got the truck insured and driving (albeit in 2WD only - but it's going to be a mall crawler anyhow lol)

And with the top off after installing 1 1/4" wheel spacers on the rear to get rid of some of the "tucked in" look (which I hate - I understand why it was done, but I hate the look)

and one shot with the wife's summer only car - 1969 Ford Falcon sport coupe

So after a couple thousand kilometers over the summer, some changes needed to be made.......