My '95 RCLB C1500

[Canadian Rust Bucket]

Got the tailgate sanded, cleaned and primed. A few minor scratches to glaze now, but nothing major. This tailgate was in near-mint condition because it came off the '88 delivery truck in 89 and was kept in storage until I needed it.

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I also reinstalled it, but I've had some issues with one of the latch rods not fully retracting. I have five spares, so not a big deal. I'll swap the rod and maybe shim the handle if required.

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Also dug this old grille filler out of the woods; I've had it so long I forgot it was there. Luckily found it while looking for a ball the dogs had lost. The hardware was all rusted, so I swapped it out for some stainless I had in the basement. A little bit of polishing and the piece was nice and shiny again.

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And here it is installed. I'm a sucker for chrome, so I love it.
One more part out of storage, and onto the truck.

 

[Canadian Rust Bucket]

Took the truck to the cottage over the weekend to see how she'd do on the longer trip. Everything went well, nothing fell off, great success.

But when I got home, the truck wouldn't start without cranking for a good 15 seconds. So I figured fuel pump relay, got in and tested it, relay tested fine. I jumped the pins to make the fuel pump run and the truck would start easily.

Long story short, the relay is fine, it's the socket in the under hood fuse panel that's loose. I tweaked the pins on the relay so it grabs a little better, but I'll have to research a more long-term solution.

 

[Canadian Rust Bucket]

Still shopping around for a good price on the paint; I don't want to blow my budget on a crazy expensive paint job, but I still want it to be good.

Replaced the speed sensor in the tail of the transmission to fix my wonky speedometer.

Swapped in a new pair of leaf springs since my old refurbished ones have sagged too much to be re-arched. This fixed my sagging frame issue where the passenger rail was quite a bit lower than the driver's rail at the rear. I took the truck to a spring shop, and was quoted $1500 to do the swap. Told the guy to pound sand, I'd do it myself for $700 (the cost of the spring packs.)

Also picked up a set of LED lights for under my hood. The original mercury-switched light is long gone, so I have to fab up a replacement. I'm thinking I'll use a normally closed pin switch I scavenged to trigger the lights to turn off when the hood is closed.

 

[Erik the Awful]

I took the truck to a spring shop, and was quoted $1500 to do the swap. Told the guy to pound sand, I'd do it myself for $700 (the cost of the spring packs.)

Yeah, that's a "I don't want to do it" price. I swapped my rear leafs on my shop floor with no lift in under four hours, but I'm also in Oklahoma where we only get surface rust.

 

[Canadian Rust Bucket]

Yeah, that's a "I don't want to do it" price. I swapped my rear leafs on my shop floor with no lift in under four hours, but I'm also in Oklahoma where we only get surface rust.

It took me about the same amount of time as you. Luckily for me, I've already had the springs apart once when I refurbished the old pack, so all the bolts came out with just an impact and a wrench.

The funny thing is, when I have the old springs on the floor together they look identical. But under load I guess one of the packs sags way more than the other.

 

[Cadillacmak]

Still shopping around for a good price on the paint; I don't want to blow my budget on a crazy expensive paint job, but I still want it to be good.

Have you thought about painting it yourself? Paint jobs here run $15k to $20k so we do it ourselves.

 

[Canadian Rust Bucket]

Have you thought about painting it yourself? Paint jobs here run $15k to $20k so we do it ourselves.

There's a paint shop near me that will do the truck as a weekend project for around $3k, but I think that's too pricey for single stage urethane, no matter who sprays it on.

So I'm looking at buying a few gallons of limco paint (since that's the brand of primer I used) and doing a base/clear, to give me more opportunity to address flaws in the paint. And after seeing some gorgeous paint jobs at a few shows, I'm reading up on metal flake application to add a subtle bit of metallic to the paint job. So while I could probably get busy and paint the truck really soon, I am dithering and researching first.