So what have I been doing???

Although I just gave you a laundry list of problem idems on the truck, it was still drivable. Robyn and I took several trips to the drive in movies. We took it out to the lake, to the saturday night car show on main st. Even the pavillions a couple times. The truck at this time was just a fun ride we had in the family. Once a week I'd take it up to work in scottsdale. I could only take in once a week because of the terrible gas mileage. I don't know what it gets to a gallon still to this day, but I don't really want to know!!!!

So what have I done, I think the easiest way to get through this post is to just list the items, and maybe go into a little detail about the change, but not to much.

Starting out at the front of the truck and one of the most expensive things I've done is replacing the radiator and cooling fan with a Be Cool radiator and electric fan assembly.

This new 4 core aluminum radiator with dual electric fans is set up to handle 700 hp. Not that I have that now, or will ever have that, but with the A/C running in Az in the middle of the summer I thought the more cooling power the better. The radiator also has tanks in the sides for the transmission fluid to be cooled in as well.

As you can see in the last engine shot I posted the headers on the truck were painted black and kind of rusting. So thanks to Bret Micheals and a little wheeling and dealing I got my headers jet hot coated, almost for free!!! Although Bret doesn't know he paid for my headers to be coated I'd still like to thank him!! Thanks Bret!!! By the way Bret I love the eye make up and bandana.

You can kind of see the coated headers in this picture. While we are speaking of exhaust. I had the whole system ripped out and replaced with dual 3 inch pipes with flowmaster mufflers. That made a huge difference.

I added a power brake booster to the front brakes. Thanks to Early Classics in Fresno California.
I bought a lot of stuff from them. A stiffer front sway bar and new shocks and coil springs all around. And to tie everything in a torsion bar in the rear to keep the axle from moving around.

H4 conversion headlamps were added with aftermarket xenon lights lite up the road at night

The interior of the truck got a little freshening up too!!! The first thing I did was install a tilt column with the column shifter. This allowed me to remove, and round file the P.O.S. B&M shifter that was in the middle of the floor. While I had that all ripped up. I layed dynamat, new padding and new carpet down in the cab. The old bench seat was thrown away and replaced with a original bench wrapped in black leather. The lightening bolts soon met their death. The original panels this truck came with were completely metal and cleaned up really nice. With a little gloss black paint they were reinstalled. New sun visors finished off the interior. While my seat was out of the trunk I still wanted to drive it every once and a while so this is what I came up with:

One day I was coming home from work and a police officer pulled up right behind me. Great I thought, I have no seat, no seat belts I was going to get it, but he didn't stop me!!! That was the last time I drove the truck sitting on a bucket. Here's a shot of the finished interior. Of coarse the new leather seat, black trim panels, new carpet and the shifter where it belongs on the column.

The most expensive mod then came, and I had to sell my green samauri to get it. A Gear vendor over under drive system was added to the end of the turbo 4oo. What this unit does is takes a three speed transmission and makes it into a four speed. Or if your adventurous and or pulling something heavy you can manually shift the transmission as follows. First gear then first gear overdrive, Second gear and second gear overdrive, and so on. Thus you keep your RPM's closer and make your three speed tranny into a six speed tranny. Adding this unit onto the back of my tranny meant I had to shorten my driveshaft. While I was rolling around in the tranny fluid. I installed a shift kit and replaced the stock tranny pan with a deeper aluminum pan with cooling fins. Along with the shortened driveshaft, and since the tranny was loose. I added a new tranny crossmember and frame crossmember. This stiffened everything up.

New BFG tires were added for better handling and safer freeway driving.

So maybe I haven't done that much to the truck??? Its hard to tell and even harder to handle financially. All of these changes really made a difference in the way the truck ran, handled, sounded etc. One day coming home from work in scottsdale I was able to get the truck up past 90mph. The speedo was wrapped all the way around the gauge and stopped at 10mph. So was I doing a 100??? I don't really know, but the truck felt great :)

Built cost so far to this day, as requested by my wife : 10k for the truck and a somewhere in the 5k range in upgrades!!!! Haha and the funs not stopping there either.