Silver C1500 Adventure Wagon

[Matts_Creations]

Bought this truck in 2003 for 500 bucks! Used it to move cross country to southern California as a young man and stayed there for a few years. Came back to NJ and continued driving it to and from work until 2015. Then parked it until 2021 when I got the itch to make a project out of it and bought a ton of parts but never found the time to devote to it. Recently was driving it to work when the power steering hose burst. All it took was fixing that hose to reignite my desire to build this thing up the way it deserves to be. This truck has been so good to me and it's amazingly nice to drive around in. It always brings back so many good memory's of riding around and discovering new places. This truck is a piece of the history of my life. Without a reliable easy to work on truck that had no monthly payment it would have been much harder to make it in the world. Thank you to GMC for making such great machines from 1988-1998. GMT stands for General Motors Toyota as far as I'm concerned.

The goal is to make this 34 year old truck very reliable and easy to cruise the highway in.

So far in the last month it's had:

1) Oil/Filter change Mobil full synthetic
2) Rough Country 6 inch lift
3) 33 BFG Tires on 5 lug steel rims
4) Little machine shop rear disc brake conversion
5) Mag-Hytec differential cover
6) New ball joints and tie rods
7) NAPA front disc's, wheel bearings, ceramic pads, new calipers

In the process of finishing stainless brake lines so it can go to the alignment shop.

 

[Matts_Creations]

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[HotWheelsBurban]

Welcome to the forum, from Houston, Texas. Nice rig, what's the story on the square body crew cab?

 

[Matts_Creations]

Welcome to the forum, from Houston, Texas. Nice rig, what's the story on the square body crew cab?

Thank you! 3500 got traded away a while back, did a 4BT swap on it and learned a lot.

 

[Matts_Creations]

This evening was able to put nice new blue boots on the rear shocks and install them.

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Jacked up the front before running out of daylight. Going to put extended braided lines on the front calipers. See in the picture the old rubber hose stretched to the max.

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[Matts_Creations]

Discovered the old hose mounting brackets had been getting some rust. Pulled them off for a quick blast and epoxy paint treatment. Appliance epoxy stands up to cleaners pretty well so hopefully brake fluid doesn't affect it much. Baking them for 1 hour at 350

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[GrimsterGMC]

Discovered the old hose mounting brackets had been getting some rust. Pulled them off for a quick blast and epoxy paint treatment. Appliance epoxy stands up to cleaners pretty well so hopefully brake fluid doesn't affect it much. Baking them for 1 hour at 350

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G'day mate, is that some sort of heat box you are using to bake the paint on?

 

[Matts_Creations]

G'day mate, is that some sort of heat box you are using to bake the paint on?

Yes, it’s an epoxy curing oven for small parts. Baking this epoxy paint makes it tough and also knocks the gloss sheen down to almost a flat black

 

[GrimsterGMC]

Yes, it’s an epoxy curing oven for small parts. Baking this epoxy paint makes it tough and also knocks the gloss sheen down to almost a flat black

That's a cool idea, I used to use the kitchen oven but my wife put and end to that when we got the new one.

 

[Matts_Creations]

That's a cool idea, I used to use the kitchen oven but my wife put and end to that when we got the new one.

Hahaha yeah that doesn’t fly with most women. Used to use an old grill that someone was throwing out for paint baking. Now have pretty big parts oven