1997 GMC Sierra gets a second lease on life

The lens is a pretty wide angle and with the sloping angle of the topper, I can see about 18" behind the boxsides, maybe even a bit closer, the full width of the truck.

I thought about a recessed 3rd brake light, but there isn't enough real estate, as there is not a lot of vertical height above the aluminum frame for the door, and it conflicted with installing a back up camera.
 
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The factory cargo lights suck, so I used some boards with white 5050 led chips, had to use urethane sealer to hold the boards in place at the correct angle to the lens, about 100x better than the two measly 912 bulbs they had in there behind a fresnel lens. 2013-11-11 20.13.39.jpg
 
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Love it man! Awesome work. I can still remember how awesome my 94' GMC Suburban was. Sell me this truck when you're through updating the engine and transmission like you did the rest of the body? Hahahaha... Seriously killer job.


Side note: How does that por-15 stuff stack up compared to the stuff you used? Any experience with it?
 
Nix, I have used Por-15 once on a trailer frame I built for someone else, to me it's a 'shade-tree' way of doing things, however this is what the customer wanted. Exposed in the sun and weather, it will chalk up in no time at all. It does go on nice and smooth though with a brush application. Where the rocks and sand hit the frame it chipped and started to rust just like any other coating.

My preference is to do a 'white' blast on steel, then an application of an epoxy primer surfacer, and a good 2K primer over that, sanded, then followed by a polyurethane topcoat. Nothing else stands up to harsh environments as well from my experience.

I haven't kept up on the latest products out there, but if it was a fleet application, when I worked at a large bodyshop, we used a modified epoxy primer with a wet-on-wet process for industrial / commercial applications. When you adhere to the correct window to apply the topcoat, this works well, however the surface finish will not be as smooth as other processes, unless you sand to at least p180 grit on steel, and p320 on aluminum.

Blast profile got sanded with P80 and then P180 grit on an orbital before shooting wet-on-wet.
 
Thanks guys... not sure I would want to run my own shop, working for someone else gives me lots of time to do my own projects.
 
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Seriously great work. I love your attention to detail.

And I agree you can do better than por-15, especially for the money. I actually preferred the finish spraying it vs brushing it on, but like you said, a good epoxy primer with your choice of primer and top coat can yield a better finish that's also more durable.
 
this is phenomenal!!!!.... awesome to see threads like this!!! Great work mike
 
I don't have many pictures, but I added lighting under the front seats as well, more 5050 LED strips. Changed out most of the stock filament based lighting in the interior as well: in the glovebox I have another small board with 5050 chips, the same ones I used for the cargo light, in the map lights in the overhead console there are drop in 194 type bulbs, I had to enlarge the back of the housing to fit them through, there are blue 194 drop in replacements under the dash, another board for the roof mounted ceiling light, and high output leds in the door lights.

In the first picture you can see the vent outlet for the rear seat ducting, the carpet is shaped different, the adapter on the lower part of the dash that connects to the heater box, as well as the ducting and the outlets. This all came from the donor truck I bought with the correct interior parts I was missing.

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Blasted up a spare lower intake manifold, then spent a few evenings with the air die grinders equipped with carbide burrs and flap wheels, and roloc surface conditioning discs.

I did this in preparation to change the lower intake manifold gaskets, which is a problem on these early Vortec engines. I figured it can't hurt even though it probably won't make more than a few percent in power gains with the rest of the stock equipment. Once I was done with contouring all of the port entries, I turned my attention to matching the gasket surface, used machinists bluing and scribed around the ports.

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The injection spider as it's called is just plugged in there for pictures, it was removed while I was working on it, however I left it in when it was blasted to keep from eroding the bore where the injector goes into.
 
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OBX makes a nice set of stainless headers for this truck, with the 1 3/4 primaries they are a bit large for stock engines.
 
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