This started off as a “What Did You Do To Your SyTy Today” post, but it turned out so long that a new one is in order.
Last September I lost a front tire at speed on the way to work. When the carnage subsided, the carcass had shredded the right rocker panel & ripped the right front flare almost off the truck (hanging from the two front-most attachments). At least the wheel (was on a set of ’89 ZR-1’s at the time) and outer fender the made it through unscathed. Pulled the spare out, only to find it had deflated in the interim, so the truck came home on the flatbed that day. Sorry, no pics of the damage, but here’s one with ZR-1’s (with factory caps) on:
I purchased an NOS flare & used rocker off the forum, removed the broken parts and then things kinds ground to a halt with everyday issues. So the truck sat all winter and this summer while I tried to gather enough spare change together to pay for paint. I busied myself installing an Alpine 1.5 DIN head unit, cleaning up the mess made by the tire, straightening the tweaked inner fender, and the like.
My next door neighbor Chris would come over and ask when the hell I was going to get it back together & I would say “we’ll get there” knowing full well that I still needed to find some extra coin to send the new parts out for paint. And with trying to maintain 3 other vehicles and occasionally working on friend’s cars, I wasn’t making much headway on the repairs. I hadn’t even replaced the blown front tire, so I had pulled a set of IROC wheels out of the basement to see what they would look like on it.
In the meantime I also swapped out the factory (leaking) injectors out for some take-off units from a new Mustang (34.6 LB @ 43.5 PSI).
Had to cut off the EV1 connectors & crimp new EV6 connectors on, so it isn’t exactly a one-for-one swap, but everything I’ve read recently implies that “newer is better” when it comes to injector durability/spray pattern/precision. My friend Scott altered the tune (he had already installed Code 59 last year) to accommodate the new injectors.
And while the upper plenum & throttle body were off, I added a TPIS airfoil & cover plate I had tucked away.
After this the truck is ready for a test drive. So to get the truck out of the garage, the unpainted parts still sitting on a blanket in their shipping boxes need to be pulled off the roof.
As they’re coming off, I noticed that the boxes were empty, didn’t think much about it though, as I’ve been moving parts around a lot lately to clear space in the garage. Later, the truck is back in its spot and I’m putting everything back, I found a note inside one of them, signed by “Xzibit” informing me that I’d been pimped and that my parts had been taken hostage, but not to worry, they were safe.
Long story short, Chris decided that the best way to get things moving was to get them painted, and rounded up my other car-guy friends to chip in and help pay for everything.
As you can imagine, I was beyond surprised & amazed that they would do something like that out of the blue. What more can you say except that everyone wishes they had friends like they are.
Chris had hoped to have them painted & back in the boxes before I noticed they were gone, but the body shop needed respray them after he went to pick them up and was unhappy with the color coat. Either way they came out beautifully the second time and were now good to go.
Between the test drive & parts returning, the battery had decided that it wasn’t going to hold a charge for more than a couple days, so in went a new Optima.
So we finally got the new rocker panel & RF flare back on last weekend, almost a year later.
And I got the front end re-aligned this past week.
Lastly, I finally found the missing pieces to put on a NOS Formuling France steering wheel to replace the factory bus-sized unit. Couldn’t find a dedicated GMC horn button, it took like 9 months of searching eBay to locate a proper hub kit as it was. I’ll either make up something to replace the Camaro applique, or perhaps I can find a something a bit more suitable to use.
With a full tank of fresh fuel and it’s starting to run like it should after all these years, just in time to sit through the winter.
And most importantly, a shout to my friends Chris M. - Chris P. - Harris and Scott for the body work & paint.
Thanks guys.
- J
Last September I lost a front tire at speed on the way to work. When the carnage subsided, the carcass had shredded the right rocker panel & ripped the right front flare almost off the truck (hanging from the two front-most attachments). At least the wheel (was on a set of ’89 ZR-1’s at the time) and outer fender the made it through unscathed. Pulled the spare out, only to find it had deflated in the interim, so the truck came home on the flatbed that day. Sorry, no pics of the damage, but here’s one with ZR-1’s (with factory caps) on:
I purchased an NOS flare & used rocker off the forum, removed the broken parts and then things kinds ground to a halt with everyday issues. So the truck sat all winter and this summer while I tried to gather enough spare change together to pay for paint. I busied myself installing an Alpine 1.5 DIN head unit, cleaning up the mess made by the tire, straightening the tweaked inner fender, and the like.
My next door neighbor Chris would come over and ask when the hell I was going to get it back together & I would say “we’ll get there” knowing full well that I still needed to find some extra coin to send the new parts out for paint. And with trying to maintain 3 other vehicles and occasionally working on friend’s cars, I wasn’t making much headway on the repairs. I hadn’t even replaced the blown front tire, so I had pulled a set of IROC wheels out of the basement to see what they would look like on it.
In the meantime I also swapped out the factory (leaking) injectors out for some take-off units from a new Mustang (34.6 LB @ 43.5 PSI).
Had to cut off the EV1 connectors & crimp new EV6 connectors on, so it isn’t exactly a one-for-one swap, but everything I’ve read recently implies that “newer is better” when it comes to injector durability/spray pattern/precision. My friend Scott altered the tune (he had already installed Code 59 last year) to accommodate the new injectors.
And while the upper plenum & throttle body were off, I added a TPIS airfoil & cover plate I had tucked away.
After this the truck is ready for a test drive. So to get the truck out of the garage, the unpainted parts still sitting on a blanket in their shipping boxes need to be pulled off the roof.
As they’re coming off, I noticed that the boxes were empty, didn’t think much about it though, as I’ve been moving parts around a lot lately to clear space in the garage. Later, the truck is back in its spot and I’m putting everything back, I found a note inside one of them, signed by “Xzibit” informing me that I’d been pimped and that my parts had been taken hostage, but not to worry, they were safe.
Long story short, Chris decided that the best way to get things moving was to get them painted, and rounded up my other car-guy friends to chip in and help pay for everything.
As you can imagine, I was beyond surprised & amazed that they would do something like that out of the blue. What more can you say except that everyone wishes they had friends like they are.
Chris had hoped to have them painted & back in the boxes before I noticed they were gone, but the body shop needed respray them after he went to pick them up and was unhappy with the color coat. Either way they came out beautifully the second time and were now good to go.
Between the test drive & parts returning, the battery had decided that it wasn’t going to hold a charge for more than a couple days, so in went a new Optima.
So we finally got the new rocker panel & RF flare back on last weekend, almost a year later.
And I got the front end re-aligned this past week.
Lastly, I finally found the missing pieces to put on a NOS Formuling France steering wheel to replace the factory bus-sized unit. Couldn’t find a dedicated GMC horn button, it took like 9 months of searching eBay to locate a proper hub kit as it was. I’ll either make up something to replace the Camaro applique, or perhaps I can find a something a bit more suitable to use.
With a full tank of fresh fuel and it’s starting to run like it should after all these years, just in time to sit through the winter.
And most importantly, a shout to my friends Chris M. - Chris P. - Harris and Scott for the body work & paint.
Thanks guys.
- J
