Build Thread Spotlight: 1985 Xtra Cab Restoration
Once a New England plow truck, this 25,000 mile Toyota pickup is being restored to its former glory.
As much as we love a good extreme off-road build thread, we can appreciate these trucks in their stock form, as well. It’s not often that we see them in original condition these days, and especially not with low miles.
Forum member Noah Brossman from southern Maine found this 1985 Xtra Cab that has lived its life as a New England plow truck. With just 25,000 miles on the odometer, he decided that it was worthy of a restoration.
Unfortunately, the life of a plow truck is a rough one — the ravages of salt and moisture have turned the bed of this poor Toyota pickup into Swiss cheese. Undeterred, Brossman is making a real effort to save this special, low-mileage truck.
He’s starting off small, by cleaning up the engine bay and handling deferred maintenance in an effort to get it running again. In addition to cleaning out baby squirrel skeletons from the airbox, he also replaced the totally roached battery terminals with fresh parts.
He also replaced the blown shocks, and, while he was underneath, began work on saving the relatively clean frame. He wire-wheeled the surface rust off, then spread on some Naval Jelly. He plans on painting the frame rails with some rust preventative paint to keep them clean and rust free for a long, long time.
During this time, he was seeking out a rust-free truck bed. While he’s not ruling out any modifications at this point, plans are to keep it mostly stock, so no homemade flat bed on this build. He got lucky when a friend blew the head gasket on their Xtra Cab with a bad frame.
For $400, he now has some clean body panels to work with. While the bed was off, he was able to clean up the frame from the top side. Recently, he repainted the truck dark blue, as he’s not the biggest fan of red. He also added a bed cap.
The work so far looks great, and we’re glad to see Noah saving this low-mileage Toyota pickup from the crusher. We can’t wait to see what’s next for this former plow truck.
Photos: YotaTech
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