1994 K3500 extended cab dually

[Husker6.5]

Nate, have you ever thought of using the philosophy of "Just let it be" whenever you dive into a project like this? Seems like around every turn you open up another can of worms (or ants)! Speaking of which, just where/how did all those ants get there and did you find a nest in the insulation under the carpet?

 

[n8in8or]

Nate, have you ever thought of using the philosophy of "Just let it be" whenever you dive into a project like this? Seems like around every turn you open up another can of worms (or ants)! Speaking of which, just where/how did all those ants get there and did you find a nest in the insulation under the carpet?

I’m trying, but I’ve become not very good at that. There are a couple things on the truck I’m trying to let go for now - one is the headliner....it’s sagging and dirty and I really want to take the last few panels out and see if I can find a better one at the junkyard, but I know it isn’t necessary now. I think in the past I’ve let some things go too long (like the rust on the Tahoe) and so now if I see something I can catch earlier (and easier while working on another nearby part of the vehicle), then I’m probably going to tackle it while I’m in there. I don’t know if it’s a good quality/philosophy or not, but I is what I is.

 

[n8in8or]

Finished the rocker panel tonight. It could be a little better, but it’s more than good enough for this truck and it’s all steel. Plus it’s an area of the truck that isn’t really going to be seen, especially once the weatherstrip is reapplied, so I think it’s going to be fine. If it bothers me, I can always do further bodywork in the future.




After that I re-cut the transfer case shifter hole and ground the welds down around the opening so it will fit properly.




I’m leaving the rest of the floor welds alone so they maintain as much strength as possible and of course they won’t be seen anyway. Tomorrow I’ll be wire wheeling the parts of the floor that need paint and getting it prepped for paint. I’m so happy to be painting again.......

 

[n8in8or]

Here are some good pics of the stuff that used to be steel that I cut out of the truck.

 

[MrMarty51]

I’m trying, but I’ve become not very good at that. There are a couple things on the truck I’m trying to let go for now - one is the headliner....it’s sagging and dirty and I really want to take the last few panels out and see if I can find a better one at the junkyard, but I know it isn’t necessary now. I think in the past I’ve let some things go too long (like the rust on the Tahoe) and so now if I see something I can catch earlier (and easier while working on another nearby part of the vehicle), then I’m probably going to tackle it while I’m in there. I don’t know if it’s a good quality/philosophy or not, but I is what I is.

When I was wrenching for the DOT. Doing PMs on equipment. The shop super was always righting Me up for taking too long on a PM. I used the same philosophy that You are using, long as I am in there, it will be right or it will stay in My bay until it is.
after He would finish explaining to me about the time thing, I would then ask Him, How many comebacks have You had to send someone out to correct or repair. His reply, evertime, yeah, none, You are right there.

 

[n8in8or]

Slow progress this week. I started rebuilding the front brakes and upon closer inspection found the rotors I thought were good are hella pitted, so now I’m waiting on rotors (should be here tomorrow). I did get the steering gear and idler arm installed so at least there was that. After that I switched over and got the floor wire wheeled. Tomorrow I’ll be prepping it for paint and then 2 coats of Rust Seal on Sunday.

 

[Husker6.5]

I take it the rotors weren't turnable? Or did you just opt to start with new and go from there?

 

[n8in8or]

I take it the rotors weren't turnable? Or did you just opt to start with new and go from there?

They may have been turnable, but brand new from Rock Auto was reasonable enough so I just went that route.

 

[Husker6.5]

They may have been turnable, but brand new from Rock Auto was reasonable enough so I just went that route.

Can't argue with that. Looking at the same situation with my '05 Camry with 142K. Have a shimmy/pedal pulsing when braking. Turn them for $12 a piece or replace them with drilled high performance for $35 each.

 

[ak diesel driver]

Seems like most newer vehicles by the time the rotor needs turning there's not enough meat to do so

 

[Husker6.5]

Toyotas, or at least my Camry (and the older ones I've owned), have enough extra "meat" on the rotors to get 2-3 turnings out of them, as long as the warpage or scoring of the rotor isn't too bad or deep, before you reach the minimum thickness. Mic'ing the outer edge of my front rotors, it appears that they've never been turned. The bummer is that I put new ceramic pads on about 20,000 miles ago and they're barely worn.

 

[n8in8or]

Made some more progress this weekend. Saturday I got the 2 prep steps of KBS Klean and Rust Blast done. My driveway is at an incline right up to the door of my barn so I was concerned about rolling the truck outside and not being able to control it. I could have used the Turd Ferguson, but the brakes aren't the best on it and hopping off-and-on it while checking clearances around the truck would be a pain....so instead I picked up a couple cheap 2" hitch couplers from Harbor Freight and used a chunk of old shipping shelf support and made a double ended trailer tongue so I could use the F150 to move the truck safely.





When I got it back in the barn I jacked it up to put it back on jackstands…...this is when I realized I made a boo-boo. I still don't have the driver side CV axle in because I don't have the replacement boot yet. When I grabbed the left front wheel to remove it from the hub I was shocked to feel the whole hub moving around with the wheel! I removed the wheel and found that pretty much the only thing holding the hub and rotor assembly in place was the brake caliper. This really surprised me! I knew you weren't supposed to drive these with the CV axle removed because the bearing could come apart, but I didn't think just rolling the truck back and forth about 30 feet would be a problem. Perhaps me kicking the wheel to steer the truck didn't help. Well, lesson learned there. I slipped the CV into the hub and tightened the axle nut to draw the bearing back together, which worked, but then the bearing was stiff. Damn. Maybe it would loosen as it got used, but that wasn't a risk I wanted to take. I almost bit the bullet and ordered a new bearing assembly when I decided to check the compatibility of the bearings I took off of Krovvy when I did the GMT800 swap. What luck! The bearings are physically the same, with the only difference being that the 96 K2500 bearings have tone rings and holes for wheel speed sensors. So I capped the hole with the end of an old sensor and cut the lead, then I was back in business. I was glad that worked out because eventually this truck will be getting a GMT800 brake upgrade so it would have sucked to invest money into a wheel bearing for a somewhat temporary repair. Sunday I finished up rebuilding the calipers and buttoning the brakes up.



Sunday was also paint day. I applied 2 coats of Rust Seal to the floor. I started by using a foam roller, but less than 5 minutes in the foam came off of the spindle - the solvent in the paint must have attacked the adhesive. So I switched to a standard 2" trim roller to finish up. That worked well along with a 2" brush for getting in tight corners. I'm pretty pleased with the finished results - the floor looks good as new. I'm going to let it cure for a couple days and then I'll lay down some sound deadener.

 

[Husker6.5]

Damn that petrochemical-based sealer softening and loosening the petrochemical-based adhesive holding the open-cell foam on the roller core. Just out of curiosity, is that stuff HVLP sprayable?

 

[Husker6.5]

Nice ingenuity "Pushmepullyou" tow bar. You watch Dr. Doolittle recently?

 

[Husker6.5]

When the DS front wheel bearing failed on my daughter's 02 Dakota Sport 2WD while driving down US 34 at speed, it did a similar thing. The only thing that kept the tire and hub from departing the truck completely and passing her down the road was that the brake rotor was still retained by the caliper assembly. The tow truck driver had to jack up the front end with a floor jack and shove the tire up into the wheel well in order to back the lift under the front and pick it up.

I had to get a new spindle assy at a U-Pull-It yard and a new set of wheel bearings (to replace both sides as the passenger was probably near failure on its "sealed and lubed till failure" wheel bearing). The old spindle had the inner bearing race pretty much welded to it and it was easier and faster to just start over with a good used spindle and pull the bearing off of it and go from there. Needless to say, despite the replacement bearings being "pre lubed", I packed the crap out of them by hand with Hi-Temp synthetic wheel bearing grease through the gap between the inner race halves before installing the bearings.

 

[n8in8or]

Just out of curiosity, is that stuff HVLP sprayable?

Yes it is. This is the same paint I used on the underside of the Tahoe. I started out with a gravity-feed HVLP gun, but had clearance issues so I switched over to an LVLP siphon-feed gun.

 

[n8in8or]

Nice ingenuity "Pushmepullyou" tow bar. You watch Dr. Doolittle recently?

Thanks. Dr. Doolittle? No sir.

 

[Husker6.5]

The Pushmepullyou was a two-headed camel with two front ends. It could only walk if one of the front ends agreed to walk "backwards" to the direction the other was facing. Needless to say, until Dr. Doolittle came along, it spent most of its time just standing there arguing with itself over which end got to go forward and the other backwards.

Of course, the book never dealt with how, with two front ends joined back to back, the thing took a crap or pissed, let alone mated. Guess that was too advanced for a children's book! Never bothered to see the movie with Eddie Murphy.

 

[FellowTraveler]

I got a little time to work on it this week - mostly inspecting the front brakes, suspension and steering, ordering parts and removing the old fuel lines and FFM.

Today I tore into it further. I got all of the steering parts removed so I could swap the center link and pitman arm - while inspecting the steering I found that the pitman arm nut was loose (the cotter pin was holding it in place still) and the stud was loose in the center link. So I ordered a new center link, assuming the hole in the old one was messed up. The idler arm was also a little loose so that was getting replaced as well. I already had a Super Steer idler bracket that I bought shortly after I bought this truck last fall. I had planned on going all through the truck this winter like I did with Krovvy this spring and I was going to really beef up the front end. Now for some reason I totally forgot that the Super Steer part was only the bracket.....I was thinking it was an idler arm too. So when I opened the box today and found only the bracket, I thought I was stuck until I got an idler arm, but then I thought some more - Krovvy is more of a build than initially planned so the Super Steer bracket is actually a better fit for that truck. Plus the MOOG parts I bought for Krovvy are actually a more reasonable fit for the dually since it will be getting torn apart again in the near future and the Mevotech parts for the dually are better for Krovvy (YAAAYYYYY more parts to paint!!), so the idler and pitman arm got pulled from Krovvy so they could be installed on the dually.

View attachment 60985
View attachment 60986

The driver side outer CV boot was torn, so I yanked that axle after pulling the steering and took the joint apart for cleaning and inspecting. Evwrything looked ok so I picked up a Dorman boot locally. I know this boot won’t last a long time, but it will work long enough for me to use the truck for a while and then when it gets restored in the future I’ll get new thermoplastic boots from Rockford Constant Velocity.

View attachment 60988

I also got the accessories taken off the engine so I could yank the water pump. I’m going to put the balanced flow water pump and Hayden fan clutch from the Tahoe on this truck to help keep it cooler while towing.

View attachment 60987

The only things I didn’t get removed that I wanted to were the oil cooler, exhaust crossover, turbo and manifolds. I have to admit......I’m a little nervous.......right about now is where I’d get the brilliant idea to pull the front clip, yank the engine, paint the frame, yadda, yadda, yadda. I hope I don’t get any big ideas in my dreams tonight

That SS idler setup is what I have been using for awhile I had lost count on how many stock and moog setups I had gone through over the years......"its a great upgrade that SS."

 

[FellowTraveler]

The Pushmepullyou was a two-headed camel with two front ends. It could only walk if one of the front ends agreed to walk "backwards" to the direction the other was facing. Needless to say, until Dr. Doolittle came along, it spent most of its time just standing there arguing with itself over which end got to go forward and the other backwards.

Of course, the book never dealt with how, with two front ends joined back to back, the thing took a crap or pissed, let alone mated. Guess that was too advanced for a children's book! Never bothered to see the movie with Eddie Murphy.

We have crocker-gators here w/same 2 head issue.