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!
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!