So about two or three years ago, I picked this little beauty up off of Craigslist for 2200





The body was entirely trashed, but everything else was good. Along with that, the guy sold me another body that had been wrecked, but his dad fixed it up with bondo.So we halled that the five hours home on a trailer

And after a couple months we finally got the bodies switched




And after a little bit more work, and calling some junkyards up for fenders, here we were:


The guy also through in the brush guard when I bought it, although it required some cutting on the skid plate to make them both fit. Also, the 4 wheel drive didn't work so I switched out the procomp 12.5s for those crappier narrower tires. In the winter on the packed snow, i had no control with those 12.5s and no 4x4. I got a good deal from the local tire shop, i ended up paying 50 bucks a piece total. Around this time the fan exploded, why, i have no idea, but it had enough power to put holes in the brand new radiator, cut the radiator hoses, put holes in the airbox, and stick bits of fan into the hood.
There was no way I could stick with those whimpy stock speakers. Que ebay deals

12 inch mtx woofer: 50 bucks, 6x9 infiniti speakers: 60 bucks, alpine amp: 125 bucks. Speaker boxes from wally world: 20 bucks, and my dad made the sub box. It's a bulky looking setup, but man does it thump.
After getting my speakers setup, a new radiator, fan, hoses, and new gears to make the 4x4 work, the next most obvious thing I needed was paint. However, I didn't have 3 grand sitting around. Lucky for me, my boss loved me and payed someone to paint my truck, at no cost to me. I tried to get the guys at Napa to find the closes match to the blue of the body, and this is what they came up with:




At some point that summer I also went to our local exhaust shop and asked them to put something loud and balsy on. Ahaha I have no idea what brand muffler it is, but he cut off my cat, put on 2.5 inch pipe, and through on a turbo muffler. It sounds mean.
MY next purchase was some Coverking leatherette seat covers:

Since then, I've added fender flares and some new taillight covers, and my dad let me have my sisters old tires, the only cost to me was the 15 bucks a piece for mounting. AS of yesterday, this is what Mr. Roboto looks like:


Plans for the future. I have a completely rebuilt 3.0 sitting out at my bosses shop that i bought from a friend for 700 bucks. I plan on buying some headers, cams, copper or mls headgaskets, and couple other doo-dads to squeeze a little extra juice out of it. Really I just want to learn what I can about engines, get a minute amount more hp, and mostly, have the piece of mind that my turd wont blow up soon as it has well over 202,000 miles on it. I've already read the arguments over rebuilding the 3.0 vs scrapping it and upgrading to the 3.4. I plan on eventually doing that, but when I do, I want to do it right and build the crap out of it, ie a blower, cams, headers, everything to get more hp. And honestly, I don't have the time or money to do that right now, so I'm sticking with the 3.0 right now.
After that, I plan on getting some Mickey Thompson Sidebiter rims, rhino lining the bottom quarter of the whole truck, getting a Pro Tech headache rack, and redoing the interior (getting rid of every last bit of vinyl!).
It's been a long project with a long ways to go, but its been fun. Thanks for reading, and I hope I didn't post too many pics.

 

Gorgeous truck, and I enjoyed the montage! I dig the speedway blue!

Did you ever get those sidebiters? I have been wanting to see them on a DLX.

Cheers

 

never would've thought the truck was a POS after seeing the restoration. Well done on the resurrection.

 

Dam! Its come along way! Nicely done!

Welcome to the forum!

 

wow nice job, but the white truck did fit in the garage