1980 Flareside Build

[Agui-E7TE]

Man, that is one clean looking truck. I'm not really a step side kind of guy but, I like this one a lot! It just looks right.

[80FlareSide]

We had a girl, 10 months old now, starting to walk this week. I can already tell Im in trouble. She was about to do pick something up off the TV stand last night, and when I asked her not to, so looked at me, smiled, shook her head "no" and did it anyway.

I expected the baby to grind any project like this to a halt, but I am in a situation where I either need to make the truck fully reliable as a daily driver, or buy a new car. Fortunately my wife understands why I would rather drive the beast every day, and has no issue with the money Im dumping into it. Now if she could only understand that I really have no idea what Im doing (learning tons though) and why it takes me so long, we would be perfect.

One of the other things on the short list (per the wife's request) is to improve the safety a bit. The sofa bench is gonna go, and I think I am going to go with 2 Corbeau Baja RS seats (would love mastercrafts, but cant justify it right now at double the cost) and a center console / jump seat out of a 2011 F250. The other option Im considering is a PRP bench, but I think having a little interior storage in a console would be helpful. Combined with that will be a 1/2 cage similar to a Ride-Tech Tiger Cage for side impact protection, and to act as a harness bar for either Corbeau 2" retracting harness or a Schroth Auto Control harness (again, cost may be a short term consideration here).

[ChaseTruck754]

Nice to see some work being done, and congrats on the daughter.


Go with the folding center console vs. the bench - you'll thank yourself later.

Center seat is perfect for the kid when the 3 of you go and then you actually have a cup holder/storage the rest of the time.

I put seats our of an '02 or '04 (can't remember) F-250 in my '74 crew and the front is the 40/20/40 setup with a center console/seat deal for this exact reason. Only difference is I opted for 4 doors vs. 2 so I can stuff myself, the wife, 2 wee ones & 1 friend each for the wee ones in there later on in life when we hit that point.

[80FlareSide]

Picked up a new (to me) 1987 NP435 transmission this weekend. That will be torn down and rebuilt as soon as my parts washer shows up.

I also picked up a new steering wheel to replace the skinny hard plastic one.

Wheel 1.jpg (66.82 KiB) Viewed 371 times

[80FlareSide]

So far most of my work has been focused on the cab as the engine parts are still coming in, and I want to do that all at once.

The truck at one point had dealer a/c, but it had been disabled before I ever got it. Not sure what was needed to restore, but I knew I needed to get at the evaporator. Combined that, with the desire to quiet the truck down, switching to a manual transmission, and atleast a few broken peices of trim I new the interior all had to come out.

I also want to run H4 style conversion headlamps, so I knew I would need to get at the electrical system. Looking at the wires I was disturbed to find 3 inappropriately used scotch-locks, and 4 cut / un-capped wires (2 always hot, 2 ignition hot). As a result I unwrapped most of the harness to trace them back so they can be fixed or eliminated all together.

After finding the floor-pan rusted from a leaky cowl last year, I also knew I had to do bit of repairs to the floor. Yesterday I twice over cleaned the floor with mineral spirits, and then twice over with POR-15 Marine Clean.

Here is how I left it last night -




The plan for tonight is to use POR-15 paint and Power-Mesh to fix up the holes in the floor, and rust-proof the pan.