Next was improving the look of the outside. Removed the cheesy step sides, rubber fender flares, cracked rain guards and the roof rack that was held together with coat hangers.
Before:
You can see the fender rust because of the flares. there is some light body damage on the rear corner you can kind of see. I also mocked up what it would look like without a saggy rear.
After removal of stuff and threw some 3rd gen coils under the back for a no cut zuk mod. threw some longer shocks (about 2 inches) that i had from the 85 extra cab that were like brand new. I did a full OME setup on the truck, so these were just laying around. This time i mocked up the front to what some ball joint spacers would do.
I found out that one of the tires had about an inch different back spacing than the other 3. Luckily the spare was the same type of wheel and the correct backspacing, but different size and type of tire....
you can't really tell because its white, but the paint is the furthest thing from shiny. So, i softscrubbed the whole thing really good, wet sanded it with 1200 grit paper and gave it a buff. pictures don't do justice of how bad the paint looked before. the sand paper i was using was definitely much smoother...
after a wet sand:
after buffing:
The paint turned out amazing, looks brand new
Time for some front end maintenance. The upper and lower ball joints were shot, so those were definitely getting replaced. perfect reason for some ball joint spacers too right?? some steering bushings were shot, some were ok, so i did the right thing and replaced it all. went with Beck and Arnley stuff too... my wallet hurts.
New inner & outer tie rods for both sides, Pitman arm, idler arm, steering stabilizer, upper and lower ball joints for both sides, and a cv axle for the driver side. threw some new brake pads on there too.
all buttoned up with the ball joint spacers. not sure if the bolts are supposed to be installed that way, but when they were installed the other way, the ends were a little to close to the boot of the ball joint for my liking.