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

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  • #16
    so when the truck has a 6" lift, 35" tires and you have old school swing out doors that only have about 6'6" clearance you have to get creative to get it in the garage for the winter - and not care about the beat up old asphalt driveway too much lol



    Drove it in on it's own that way on just the junk wheels. Only left a few grooves in the asphalt..... didn't hurt the concrete floor in the garage at least.

    Once it was clear of the door I could put it on dollies and move it around - just have to be careful not to hit the tracks for the garage doors as they are bloody low.

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    • #17


      Originally posted by chevy3100truck View Post

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

      ohhhhh one of those high-class redneck repairs..
      Last edited by SuperBuickGuy; January 18, 2018, 11:43 PM.
      Doing it all wrong since 1966

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      • #18
        so the truck had an oil leak, and had the typical blue smoke on startup, so I figured this was the appropriate way to deal with it



        Got my trusty assistant to give me a hand.....


        and tear down the engine

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        • #19

          Just a quick and simple rebuild on the 350 - new rings & bearings, new slightly larger than stock cam, and freshened up heads. The bearings that came out of it were all in good shape with the exception of the cam bearings - they were ugly. Being as I'm leaving it with the factory TBI for now, not a whole lot I can do to the engine without having issues (well, not without throwing money at it which I don't really think is worth doing with the factory TBI)



          mostly complete - accessories, water pump, brackets etc. will go back on once the engine is back in the chassis


          Sandblased & painted the accessories etc as needed. Had to get a friend to weld up one of the accessory drive brackets as it had a crack in it. Also learned a valuable lesson - after you degrease & pressure wash a bracket that still has the tensioner on it don't leave it outside for a week, the bearing will rust up really nicely lol (I can't believe I did that - I meant to bring it inside, but forgot it with some parts I was storing outside)

          Attached Images

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          • #20

            I had pulled out the funky ARA dealer installed air conditioning, it sort of worked, but I think it had as much leak sealer in the system as it did refrigerant. I didn't realize that dealer installed air was still a big thing in 1990, but the Jimmy was pretty bare bones with manual windows & locks, only a power rear window.

            So I sold this pile of stuff to a guy who just wanted the engine compartment box that adds AC to a non-ac inner heater box.


            Since it is the wife's rig, and she really wanted AC (even though the top will be off most of the time when it's hot out.....) I ordered a complete Vintage Air kit for it. It will be way cleaner in the engine compartment, and quite frankly I hate dealing with the vacuum operated doors on the factory stuff...

            Block off plates for the vintage air installed -


            Interior also got gutted again -




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            • #21

              I managed to roll the front of the truck outside for pressure washing the frame prior to a bunch of wire wheeling & sanding to get the frame cleaned up. This thing had been a mud truck when we got it, so there was silt and dirt everywhere (the mud line on the inside of the door was up around the door handle, so it had been submerged pretty good at one point.....)



              OK, I did get it cleaner than that prior to painting. I feel like a used car lot guy using Tremclad spray paint to detail the engine compartment, but its just going to be a daily driver, so no need to get fancy.



              The steering components are all going to get replaced with the exception of the box, so I wasn't worried about painting that stuff or the brakes for now. Also have the Off Road Design steering box braces to install still

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              • #22
                So the factory inner fenders were typical for a square body.... complete garbage..... So I bought some cheapy aftermarket inner fenders for the GMC and painted the engine compartment side and undercoated the inside. I detest the little plastic Christmas trees used for attaching plastic parts, so I cut out some new rubber splash guards and used SS allen bolts to hold them in place. The rubber I used might have been a bit to thin (3/32"), but I can always swap them out later if necessary.


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                • #23
                  so next up was tackling the engine compartment wiring harnesses (as you can tell there is no rhyme or reason to my order in doing stuff sometimes, just depends on what I feel like that night lol.)



                  I removed all of the original split loom, and shockingly the harness had never been messed with. Other than a lot of dirt inside the loom, there were no cut wires, no damaged insulation, nothing. It was all in perfect shape, so I just wiped down all of the wires and put new split loom on all of it. I'll end up modifying the light harness when it all goes back together and add relays near the lights and set it up so that when the high beams are on the low beams stay on (not a fan of the either/or setup with a 4 headlight truck)

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                  • #24

                    So the Jimmy had 2" lift springs in the rear with 4" blocks when we got it, I know that setup is OK, but I've never liked big lift blocks. Even with the weak 350 in it you still had a bunch of axle wrap when you get on the throttle. So since the axle had to come out to get changed out to the new to me one, I decided to switch the lift to an Off Road Design shackle flip kit.

                    Before that goes in though there was a whole bunch of scraping to remove the original undercoat from the truck. At least it was easy to get a lot of that cleaned up since it had gotten hard over the years and really wasn't adhered to the frame rails, wheelwells or the bottom of the floor much at all.

                    lots of piles like this -


                    to get it mainly like this from scraping -


                    then lots of wire wheeling and cleaning before applying undercoat to everything underneath the truck. Before doing that however I ended up replacing most of the inner rocker on the drivers side, after scraping off the undercoat on that side I found some rust, so I figured it was easier to fix it now than to wait until it gets worse. The passenger side was mint however, so it just got cleaned up and painted.






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                    • #25
                      so you think it might need new leaf spring bushings? lol



                      So I wire wheeled the leaf springs and threw a quick bit of paint on them to hide the ugliness, same with the new to me rear axle. Once the axle is in I'll put on new brakes, brake lines, etc.



                      Installed the Off Road Design shackle flip kit, ORD shackles and greasable polyurethane bushings. I have to say the shackles are a whole lot beefier than stock ones (one of which was bent). I'll have to get the axle installed and figure out where it is in the wheel opening since the shackle flip moves the axle ahead a bit. I've got a set of the ORD "inch" blocks to adjust the position of the axle as well as their 1/4" thick plates for adjusting axle position (inadvertently ordered the inch blocks, but shipping them back to the US isn't worth it, so I'll use them if I need them, if not they'll go on the shelf for another day)

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                      • #26

                        so that's basically where the truck is at right now, I pulled it into the garage in late October and I'm hoping to have it back on the road by the end of May. Had a couple of other projects get in the way in between working on this one that took up some time -

                        A mini quarter midget race car built out of polished stainless steel for our year end racing banquet silent auction (this car is about 10" long tip to tail - I'm not good with detail work and its basically all cut out with a 4 1/2" angle grinder, lots of filing to notch the 1/4" tubing, and SS wire in a mig welder - not the best way to do things, but it works lol)



                        Next, I had to build a couple of new ugly drum smokers for Christmas presents (I had built one for myself in September and a couple people really wanted to try them)




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                        • #27
                          EXCELLENT project! And it's really great to see the younger generation having a hand in it - I'd have killed to get into a project like this at that stage in my life (a VERY long time ago.....). Please keep the updates flowing.

                          Dan

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                          • #28
                            Neat project. Thanks for sharing.
                            Chris - HRPT Long Haul 03, 04, 05, 13, 14, 15,16 & 18
                            74 Nova Project
                            66 Mustang GT Project

                            92 Camaro RS Convertible Project
                            79 Chevy Truck Project
                            1956 Cadillac Project

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                            • #29
                              Man , your pretty good at keeping a secret . It's really cool though seeing this much progress on the first day of posting. I've had a couple of these and they are my favorite 4x4 . I'd like a square suburban next .
                              Previously HoosierL98GTA

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                              • #30
                                Originally posted by Dan Barlow View Post
                                Man , your pretty good at keeping a secret . It's really cool though seeing this much progress on the first day of posting. I've had a couple of these and they are my favorite 4x4 . I'd like a square suburban next .
                                It's my wife's dream truck (well, really she wanted a short box 4x4 pickup, but with two kids it doesn't really work lol - a K5 is the closest you can get). I'd like to have a bagged 2wd one myself, I'm not much of a 4x4 kind of person, would rather go fast lol.

                                Suburbans are cool too though, we've got a winter beater '86 with a '90 or so front clip. It's ugly and built from a bunch of other trucks (everytime a piece of paint falls off you get to see a new color lol), but the damn thing is rock solid reliable and great in the snow. I wouldn't mind one of those on 35-37" tires, they just look right at that height.
                                Last edited by chevy3100truck; January 26, 2018, 11:48 AM.

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