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My '89 Trooper "Sweet Dee"

10K views 40 replies 18 participants last post by  chuffer 
#1 ·
I've been making some progress so I figured I might as well start my build thread. Here we go!

Picked her up from a local kid who was in the process of driving this poor thing straight into the grave. She's got some dents, smells a little funky, and the exhaust needs attention, but she is practically rust free from what I have seen so far, and only has 131k on the clock.

When I picked her up, she coughing on fumes and I was barely able to limp her into the gas station. When I pulled up to the pump... I saw something ridiculous:
At first I was at a loss for words. All I could do was laugh at the idiocracy I was witnessing. I stopped by O'Reilly's and picked up an $8 gas cap. After that I went to pick up lumber to build my workbench, and the tires (that I saw had a little cracking) turned out to be much more rotted than I previously thought...
Great...
Now tires became a massive priority, and I figured if I needed new tires then I might as well get the rims I want as well. Got my mits on some 16" snowflakes, ripped off the bent and incomplete chrome trim, gave her a quick rinse down, and all of the sudden she was looking pretty dang good.
I took her out into some mud with the new wheels. Had to test my limits. She did great, considering that I live in a swamp.
Since then I have cleaned her up a bit, and swapped out the old radio deck that would go straight to maximum volume (if the faceplate decided to stay on long enough), so now the radio works flawlessly. Just to give you all example of the kind of craftsmanship I am dealing with here, I'll show you the difference in wiring. On the left is my newly made wiring harness that took me all of, maybe 15 minutes to do while watching TV. On the right is the tangled mess that the previous owner figured was good enough...
...and with it installed:
Now that all of my CB equipment is beginning to arrive, it shouldn't be long before I have all of that hooked up and working. Plans for the immediate future also include picking up my roof rack (really exited for that one), gutting the interior for a thorough and deep cleaning, installing my superwinch hubs, polishing up the Snowflakes, getting replacement body panels from a doner 1st gen to replace a couple on mine that are beyond repair (mainly the passenger side rear door... Its in bad shape), and I have a Pacesetter header also on the way so I can fix the horrible exhaust holes. I'm just going to hook up a small muffler and run the tailpipe out in front of the rear wheels. One of the benefits of living in SC is that they don't give a crap about your car. You can without cats all you want. No inspections.

All in all it is turning out to be quite a fun little project and I absolutely love driving this little thing. Most people have no idea what is next to them on the road. And even with the new tires I am getting about 20mpg! No idea how I am doing that when you look at the suggested mileage, the age, and the new tires... Owell. With the size of the gas tank in this thing it feels like I NEVER have gas her up.

Well, here is how she sits for now, waiting patiently for the rest of the CB stuff to come in, a for the manual hubs to be installed.
I'll be updating as I do things to her, but I shouldn't be long between updates. Stay tuned!
 
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#2 ·
Good lookin truck. Looks like you're enjoying it. Where about in SC are you located?
-J 8)
 
#9 ·
Wow. Been a while since I've updated this thread! Haha! Funny how life happens and moves projects down the priority list (had a kid and whatnot)

Well, to pick up where I left off, tonnydoodles ended up crushing the Cherokee with that roof rack the DAY BEFORE I went to pick it up, so no roof rack yet. I told him I wanted it but he assured me it was a piece of crap. Owell. Since then I have swapped out all the doors from an 86 that hit the Pick n pull (with the headlights and grill!!!). Snatched all that stuff off (didn't have the turn signal housings though), and am still in the process of mending the grill and installing it. Now I don't have a terrible caved in door. Conversely, now the hood and doors are rattclecan flat black... I also decided to grab a different hood that is in great shape (which will then make my trooper 3 colors).



I have also torn out all the nasty carpet and removed the back seat. I plan to line the interior metal with something similar to herculiner. I am changing all the bulbs in the dash to blue LEDs as well as changing out all the lights with LEDs eventually.

I installed my CB but can't get it to transmit for some reason... Everything appears to be hooked up correctly, but I'm not getting any needle action on the SWR meter I mounted in the center console.



All the pieces to the round eye set were less than perfect. The headlights were old and mismatched, the trim rings were nasty and rusty, the buckets and mounting brackets were more of the same. Got some new Sylvania performance halogens to hold me over until I can get ahold of some LED ones. Anyways, I took to Shaggy's way of life and set to work making the bezels and buckets pretty once again. And with the new doors being black, a paint job was on the horizon. While determining a scheme, I decided on dark silver with black accents, along with slight amounts of blue here and there to tie in the blue interior lighting. So the dials to the aisin hubs will be blue, I might add a subtle blue pinstripe, im going to mount blue supertone horns behind the grille, and then I had an idea about the headlight trim rings. I figured they would show just barely in the grille panel, so I cleaned, sanded, primer, and painted the buckets and trim rings. I'll let the pictures show how it turned out. Right now the windshield wiper arms are getting the same treatment, not any blue on those, though!

Before:


After:



Once I get the grille fixed, sanded, primed, and painted black, I think the bezels are going to really make a nice addition to the subtle blue pieces here and there. I'm being very careful to not over-do it though.



The interior still needs work, and I will be changing all the fluids next week. I want to make my own door panels, much like taco_man's Casey Jones build, and cover them in a black vinyl. I'm going to snatch some sweet black seats out of something to make them fit, as well as repurposing a black center console with cupholders. I also want to wrap the dash black as well. All in good time, I suppose.

It looks like might be able to get her painted here shortly, so I am absolutely looking forward to that!

Other future plans for right now include a 3" body lift, new tires, safari snorkel, extending breathers into the engine bay, relocating all electronics into the dash, and installing marine waterproof speakers inside. Still looking for a roof rack as well... Then I can mount up the lights and get tricky with the wiring.

Sorry about the long gap folks, but good things are coming!
 
#10 ·
Quick status report. Been cleaning things up and refinishing odds and ends while I'm waiting for other parts to arrive. Even though I have owned this little guy for a little over a year now, my timeline has just crunched down to getting a lot of things done in time for the Uwharrie trip in late April.

The biggest barrier for the exterior pieces was my round eye grill. This poor thing has seen better days, but I got it for something like $15 so I figured she was worth the effort to fix! Here are some shots after I drilled tiny holes to stop the cracks and cleaned up the jagged broken portions with my trusty Dremel.
There were no intact tabs on the top, and the two tabs that were actually still there were covered in JB weld.




As for the cracks, I carved a U-shaped groove into the back side of the cracks with my dremel, and fired up the plastic welder. So I found the right temp setting and grabbed a stack of ABS rods. After laying the beads I started to build up the missing parts with beads of plastic, and I laid the beads on top of each other and let it cool between rounds. Far from perfect, but not bad for my first time using a plastic welder!

photobucket





Then I primed, sanded, primed again and painted the grille. It is going to get one more coat of textured black, but she is pretty much finished.

 
#11 ·
So other things I have done in the past few days while working on the grille, I refinished the taillights

I cleaned the lenses inside and out, wet sanded the outside, and laid 4 or 5 coats of clear on it. Then I masked off the border on the old silver taillight housing, and painted the outer trim textured black. The picture really doesn't do it justice... The difference just can't be captured on camera

Then I decided to refinish the tacky chrome shift bezel. Some textured black, new screws and washers, and she looked pretty slick


I also redid my new-to-me Aisin hubs. Well, hub. Only finished one so far. Still waiting on my new o-rings and gaskets to arrive and the second one will be fixed up as well. The blue on the dial is the same blue that I did on the headlight trim bezels. I gotta say, the time is took to file the lettering and clear over them, as well as the new bolts from Toyota really make this thing pop. It is going to look sick poking out of my snowflakes.


I'm getting 5 new Cooper AT3's installed, mounted, and balanced for $690 on Friday. You'll be hard-pressed to find a better price than that! Finally I have some progress!!!
 
#15 ·
Nice job! That is turning out to be a good looking ride there sir.
 
#16 ·
Thanks for the compliments guys! And I am moving right along with the progress.

Got a new set of Cooper A/T3's the other day. So the old girl is sporting brand new rubber for the first time in who knows how long...I got all 5 tires swapped out, running 255/70R16's, and cost me $690 out the door for everything. Closest other quote I could find was $800-$850, so I think I did pretty good. Finally got the grille patched up, and drilled holes in the new tabs I made, then they proceeded to break immediately while trying to install it. So, cursing and pissed off, I decided it was just getting zip tied. I also dropped one of my new Sylvania performance halogens face down on my driveway 15 minutes before that...suffice to say I was pretty angry.

But I got the supertone horns installed finally. Had to fab up a bracket, drill some holes, and then realized I would have to inlet the back of my round eye grille to make them fit. While most of those on here might cringe at the thought taking a Dremel to a coveted round eye grille, know that this thing was beat to hell and if there was a round eye grille to cut on, this was it. I made the bracket from a front end piece to an '86 Trooper, and if anybody wants the dimensions for the bracket to do something similar, just let me know. I also might end up cutting out another one to add to my horn bracket to reduce the flex. That metal is pretty flimsy.





Then once my LED's started to come in the mail, I decided to go ahead and install those too. I can't seem to get the icon that has the drive train on it to light up. Isnt that supposed to tell me when I'm in 4x4? I tried shifting the transfer case while sitting there and nothing happened. Any ideas on what to manipulate to see if thst light works? I ended up having to go back in and play with almost all of the lights to get them to turn on. These rest light up just fine and the tiny bulbs that lit them in the past were almost all blown out. The oil light is darker than the rest, and that has to be translucency of that panel on the card. I thought I was having as LED issue. I also swapped all the gauge bulbs for blue LEDs, goes further with the blue theme and it also matches my radio faceplate.




I also received the LEDs for my turn signals and taillights, and these things are awesome! I still have to wire in the resistors so the turn signals blink properly, and I might have to wire in resistors for the red lights because those suckers are bright! I'm fine with the brake lights being crazy bright, but I don't want the running lights to be as bright as they are. Also, my reverse lights are not coming in... This is the same with the filament bulbs, so there has to be a fuse blown or a pigtail not plugged.. Any idea on that?



That's all for this one!
 
#19 ·
If your reverse lights and 4wd indicator aren't working check the wires going to the switches on the tranny.
 
#20 ·
A lot of the time the wires break off on the switches and don't leave enough to tap another wire in there. I have had luck getting new switches from Rock Auto. If you just want to see if the wiring is good, jumper the two wires together at the switch and see if the lights come on.
 
#21 ·
Looking really nice, great job on the grill! They are time consuming to fix and the rustoleum textured hides all those repairs well. Also been using Kevlar bed coating in a can on mine too. A little rougher looking then the paint but no more stone chips or rub marks.
 
#22 ·
Big update here. A long awaited one for me.

Here she is with the doors off the '86 and looking rough


And here she is after sanding and some body work





And without further adieu I give you the new color



The color is Toyota's Magnetic Gray Metallic, paint code 1G3. I thought it looked badass on a Tacoma I got behind while driving to meet my paint guy, and I can get touch up paint for it at any parts store.
Not a perfect job, my buddy painted it for me cheap, so there are still some dents here and there, but I'm okay with that. It's a trail truck and I wanted it all one color.. I got so sick of the 3-color look...

Here is as she sits at the current moment. I am painting the bumpers black until I can get my hands on some sweet ones. I also have to fix yet another crack in the roundeye grille that showed back up. I'm getting so tired of that piece of crap. I might just end up breaking out my spare roundeye grille



And a close-up shot of the flake
 
#23 ·
I am currently chasing down some electrical gremlins with the turn signals, and about to wire in the resistors so the LED bulbs blink properly. I also just got my supertone horns hooked up, and I got my rebuilt Aisin hubs installed, and still have to switch over some lock cylinders, paint the the door handles, and paint the pillars.

And clean these nasty rims!



I also need to wash the blue crap off my tires, delete the smog pump, find a new coolant overflow bottle, reinstall the bumpers and change trans fluid before the Uwharrie trip. Time is ticking but progress is being made!

Also, the yellow tape over the headlights and horns really makes me want to JDM the front end up a little with some yellow fog lights...
 
#24 ·
How in the heck did I miss this thread. I love everything you are doing.

I had done the exact thing to the beauty rings on my headlamps but red. Hope you clear coated them. Mine have since turned pink :oops:

Cheers
-Ian :blackeye:
 
#25 ·
imamonstertruck said:
How in the heck did I miss this thread. I love everything you are doing.

I had done the exact thing to the beauty rings on my headlamps but red. Hope you clear coated them. Mine have since turned pink :oops:

Cheers
-Ian :blackeye:
Thanks man! Slowly but surely getting her on the right track.

And I did clear coat the rings! Glad to know I'm not the only one who has done that! Haven't got much feedback on those from here yet! In person they really tie into the Aisin hubs now that I have those on.
 
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