88 chevy = tow rig.

About 20 years ago my uncle aquired this truck from a friend of the family, who I believe bought it new. My uncle used it to haul wood or the occasional car, usually it just sat in the driveway.

One day I was needing to haul something and was half joking around and said "you should sell me the old chevy." He thought for a minute and said that he did hate just letting it sit around, so we struck up a deal.

A kept the truck a few months and didn't even move it from the spot my uncle had it sitting in. My cousin and I was talking and he ended up talking me into selling it to him.

At this point the truck had a tired 305 in it, which my cousin blew up after a few months. We had a buddy that put a new reman tbi 350 into his truck, then totalled it about 6 months later. My cousin bought the engine for 300 bucks, then spent the next night out in the shop swapping it in.

About 6 months went by and my cousin decided to move to Virginia and couldn't take the truck with him. He offered me a really good deal on it, so I snagged it...

So now I had the truck that I didn't really need. About 2 weeks later my other uncle called and asked if I wanted to sell it, so he ended up with it. That was about 3 years ago.

I ran into him about 6 months ago and asked him what was up with the old chevy, he said it's just been sitting. He goes out once month and drives it down to the mail box and back, but he doesn't really drive it anymore. So of course I bought it back.

My cousin came over a few days later, saw the truck, and just had to have it back. So I sold it to him.

About 3 weeks ago, he crashed his new ram rebel, and needed money for his deductible, so I bought the truck back.

My uncle (the 2nd owner) always talked about how one of us needs to fix up the old truck and keep it. Lol

Well, he passed away this month. He was great guy and taught me a lot about cars. He owned a shop, and it was always the meeting place for the men in my family. Had a lot of respect for him.

I've bought and sold this thing so many times and always made profit off of it, at this point it's basically a free truck.

I'm going to do a grass roots style rebuild on it and use it for my tow rig.

Figured I'm start a semi boring build thread.

Man, you'll fit right in around here.

Post pics, plans, whatever. At least i am a sucker for the gmt400 trucks.

With all due respect Mr Duster, if anyone around here is a sucker for gmt400 trucks it's me.

I'm surely going to be sick when my big block 5 speed truck goes to its new home

You definitely have me beat, mr Patrick.

Dont tease me...bring on the pics:) I love me some truck threads!

I only got two on my phone. I'm going to cut out any rust (mainly the cab corners), get the body decently straight, and give it a quick paint job. Probably going to try out summits single stage. Thinking of keeping it two toned, red and gray. Other than that, probably build some bumpers for it, and get some newer style wheels. Just going to clean it up and try to preserve it. Not going wild on it.

The interior is missing both Kick panels, the glove box lid, and the passenger side pull handle. I'm going to get those at the salvage yard. Also going to replace the gauge cluster pad thingie, mines cracked up pretty bad. That'll get the body and interior in good shape.

My uncle has a rv that got messed up in a storm, but has a good running 454 tbi. Might be able to snag that up cheap. If not, I'm going to stick with the 350 and slap on some vortec heads and do the tbi mods.

If I ever come acrossed a 5 speed in the yard I'll be grabbing it.

Definitely going to upgrade the stereo system. Just a decent head unit, some 6.5 components in the kick panel area, and a decent 10" sub behind the seat. A sound quality'ish system. I love music!

Manual trans with 4wd.....scoreboard !!! check out tbichips.com for performance upgrades on these OBD1 trucks.

Yep, pretty familiar with tbichips and the gmt400 and full-size Chevy forum. I owned this truck so many times, every time I get it back I hit up those forums to regain some knowledge and to follow some build threads. Lol

Anyways, ran and got the truck inspected and then licensed. Then I used it for it for its intended purpose, to go haul a car.

Bought a 98 mustang gt project car. Its a decent looking car with semi low miles (83,xxx), the previous owner did a pi h/C/I swap, didn't get it timed right and smashed some valves. Car currently is down to a short block. Will probably swap in a pi motor if I can find a cheap on. Might start a build thread on that one as well.

Drove the truck to pick n pulls the other day, about a hour and fifteen minute trip each way. It did really good, I was pretty happy with it.

The bed is pretty hammered on it, and being in the Midwest it's getting hard to find a rust free replacement. Really thinking about building a flat bed/expedition style bed for it. 

I don't really want to lift the truck, but I would like to upgrade to some newer style wheels and some decent tires.

Might also look into a 5 speed swap for it, but the 4 speed inst bad if you stick to 65-70 mph.

Oh is that the 4-speed that has the granny gear 1st? I remember a friend of my dad had one of those. 1st was good for 9mph maybe but man could it crawl around our farm without getting the jumpies.

Yeah, it's the four speed. 1st gear and 4 low and it'll crawl over anything. Lol

Truck doesn't get driven much, I really need to get the missing interior pieces and do some maintenance before this winter... I'd like to buy some new tires, but I'd like to find some newer style wheels first. 

I backed into a foot tall curb another or two ago. Caught it with the back side of the tire and knocked the front end out of alignment. Im taking it in on Wednesday to have the front end aligned. If all is good, I'm going to hit Craigslist for a good wheel and tire combo. If I can't find anything I'll just order some new tires. Need to have it all done before the snow starts to fly.... Hitting the junkyard next weekend to see if I can find some seats for the mustang. While I'm there I'm going to look for the little odds and ends I need to make the interior of the truck complete.

Going to order the cab corners and rockers and get those on sometime soon as well. 

I wanted to go up to st. Louis and hit all the self service yards today, but nobody wanted to go with me and I didn't want to make the hour trip each way by myself (boring!)

I ended up going to the local salvage yard. It's not a self service yards, but the owner knows all my uncle's real well so if I sweet talk him a little he lets me go scavenger hunt in. I got there about an hour before he closed, so I didn't get everything I wanted to get, but I got some of it. I found some decent 99+ style wheels, probably going to pick up and set of those that already have decent tires.

Found the kick panels pretty quickly. Then after a bit of searching I found the little dash pad that goes over the gauge cluster. It was in good shape, just dirty and tan (I'm going to clean it and dye it black.) I found one red glove box, but the little tabs where broke. I figured I could use screw or something. Then I found a real good blue one, so I tossed the red one and got the blue one... Then right when I was leaving I found a good red one!

So I got kick panels, glove box, and the little dash pad piece (which I'll have to dye.) I got back to the office expecting about 5 bucks each, or 20 bucks. He said "ah, give me 10 bucks." Sold!

Tossed the kick panels and glove box in, makes it so much better looking. Now I just have to get the dash piece dyed and put in. Couple more interior pieces and it'll look pretty presentable...

Also go to the front end aligned the other day, but not before it eat the outside of the tires. 

 That 4 speed (the Muncie SM465) is one of my favorite transmissions. Only the lack of overdrive keeps it from being perfect. What ring and pinion do you have? If the shifter starts to feel slopy, it's fairly east to fix. There are vids on youtube, but basically you pop it out of the top of the trans, (from inside the cab, no need to pull the trans) weld up the worn area in the grooves then grind them straight.  Made a huge difference in mine!

In reply to Gearheadotaku :

The shifter feels alright for now, but I'll keep that in mind.. thanks!

I'm all over this build. I have an 88 RCLB  2500 Silverado that I swap DD duties with my Lancer Ralliart wagon. It's a Eastern California/West Texas/Florida truck, so zero rust. 

TBI 350, 700R4, 2wd. All stock except for a aftermarket limited slip and big transmission cooler. Over 300k miles, maybe 400, and never had the heads off. 

Standing by for the next installment. And welcome to the forum!

Still need to get the little plastic cover for under the steering column, the passenger side door pull strap, and recover the headliner. But it's starting to look pretty decent. It'll be good enough for a tow rig/work truck anyways.

Truck originally had a bench seat with the usual tears, my uncle replaced it with this pretty much mint 60/40. When it's clean it literally looks new. Haha, the only thing about the truck to be proud of. Lol

Coming together nicely!

Good Job!

How/why did your uncle remove/lose all the interior components, or was that the PO? Just curious.

Nice, GMT400s are great! I had an '89 2wd 5 speed 350 TBI RCLB for awhile, and the current tow rig is a '98 k1500. My favorite wheels for these trucks were sold on 2009ish to 2012ish GMC trucks (sierra and yukon) - they're 6 spoke and pretty straight edged, so they work with the styling well. For 2013 or so, the wheels got more rounded, and I don't care for those as much. Plenty of them on CL around me that were dealer takeoffs. Got mine with basically new tires for $400.

SaltyDog said:

Coming together nicely!

Good Job!

How/why did your uncle remove/lose all the interior components, or was that the PO? Just curious.

The owner before my uncle (uncle's friend), had made some fiberglass kick panel speaker pods. When he sold my uncle the truck, he kept the speaker pods. When my cousin had the truck the first time (he's owned it twice), he broke the glove box (the little plastic tabs that hold it on.) For the longest time it just got latched and left hanging, but somewhere down the road it was lost I guess.

Small update, my uncle called me today, he was walking around the junkyard and grabbed me a door pull strap! It's getting closer. Lol

In reply to Project86fox :

Good job on finding a pull strap. I never was able to find them in the yard, and haven't come across any replacement ones. Not even from LMC truck. 

I have some flat aluminum stock that's bent and drilled, works okay. 

In reply to Floating Doc :

My next step was to start Google searching to find other makes and models that use similar pull straps.

And it changes hands again. My cousin dented his new truck using it as a... Well truck, and so he decided he needed a good work truck. He just bought some property to put his newly constructed tiny house on, and still has a lot of clearing to do. 

I switched jobs and bought a crappy beater car but it sucks because it doesn't have cruise and it's ugly as sin. I needed a better work car. 

He bought a new focus this summer and never drives it because he needs a truck. I've only put a few hundred miles on the truck since I've had it because I need a gas mileage car... So I got a '17 focus, he got the Chevy.

He already has a lead on some nice wheels and tires. Hopefully he continues to fix it up. It stays in the family! History will probably repeat itself and I'll probably buy it back from him, like many times before. I'll keep u guys updated on his progress... And I'll start a build thread on the focus, there's a few things I want to do to it.

History repeated itself. If you read my arctic cat thread, you know I got this back in on a trade. I guess you could say I got 300 bucks into now. The clutch master cylinder went out on it and my cousin didn't want to fix it.

I really don't need this thing, I guess I'm going to throw a clutch master cylinder on it, clean it up, maybe buy those slip over rust panel replacements for the rockers and cab corners, then spray on some tractor paint on it. Keep it around until somebody else has to have it.