Builds My 80 series build up (1 Viewer)

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Joined
Aug 26, 2011
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1,191
Location
Long Beach, CA
A little late making this but better than never. I got my 80 in August last year and it was all stock and dirty when I picked it up but it had the magic dial.
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PO's idea of cleaning it out included grabbing his open pack of cigarettes and some half empty bags of sand blasting media from the back, he left the empty ones for me.
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First big mod was my J front, heavy rear lift.
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Next big project was bedlining the outside. 8-9 hours of sanding and prep work to get to this point.
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But it was worth it to get this result.
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Now my current project is building a sleeping platform with a pull out drawer. Todays progress was getting the plywood cut to the basic size I need it to be. Tomorrow I'll profile the left and right sides so it fits in the truck and hopefully mount the plywood to the frame. I'm going mount the frame to the old 3rd row seat mount points in the floor. The extra vertical pieces on the left and right sides are for mounting my heavy duty drawer sliders, they are rated to hold just under 400 pounds for the size drawer I'm going to build. The frame is 44" wide, 42" deep and 10" high, the plywood top is 59" wide and 42" deep.
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drawer system looks awesome. Are you planning on one big drawer? If so, what material and what are you planning for support?
 
Yes, I'm planning on just one big drawer, I'll be using 11 layer 11/16" thick plywood to build the drawer. I would have prefered to make this out of Russian plywood as it is a little thicker and has more plys but the stuff I found will work. It will be much better than the standard 4-6 ply plywood that was at home depot. The drawer will be roughly 42.5"w x 42"d outside dimension with at least one inside divider. I was initially going to do two drawers but doing one drawer saves me build time and gives the drawer some more space compared to making two. It also saves some hardware costs on a second set of heavy duty sliders and locking latch.
 
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I'd put some thought into the drawer box construction if going 42" wide. I'd personally build 2 drawers, but if doing one big one, I'd plan to have extra bracing on the underside (loosing drawer depth). If you think about yourself standing in the middle of a drawer that big, you'll have some sag. And you're probably less than half the weight of your slider rating. Just food for thought...

Nothing is worse than an under built drawer box. I've built many cabinets and my house is 25 years old, meaning I've built many drawer boxes to replace underbuilt ones. Unfortunately, it has been a learning a process for me.
 
Nice! Is that Tan Monstaliner? Looks really good. Also did you roll or spray?
 
I'd put some thought into the drawer box construction if going 42" wide. I'd personally build 2 drawers, but if doing one big one, I'd plan to have extra bracing on the underside (loosing drawer depth). If you think about yourself standing in the middle of a drawer that big, you'll have some sag. And you're probably less than half the weight of your slider rating. Just food for thought...

Nothing is worse than an under built drawer box. I've built many cabinets and my house is 25 years old, meaning I've built many drawer boxes to replace underbuilt ones. Unfortunately, it has been a learning a process for me.

I'm going to have a vertical divider/support down the center of the drawer. The sliders I have are rated at 400 pounds for the size drawer I'm building. I got them as leftovers from a work project, when I looked them up they are almost $500 sliders:grinpimp: At most I'll have maybe 200-300 pounds of gear in the drawer for trips but it will be mostly empty for daily use.
 
Nice! Is that Tan Monstaliner? Looks really good. Also did you roll or spray?

It's desert tan Liner Xtreeme, I sprayed it. The prep work was 99% of the job, the spraying only took a little over an hour to do all 2+ gallons. I'm happy with the product and for the cost it's a great deal but 2 things I'll warn you about if you use it. 1, DO NOT use the rubber crumb, it makes the surface very rough and will cut/scrape your skin in you rub against it once its cured. 2, there will be some bubbles as it drys after spraying, don't freak out they will go away in a few days. I'll probably get another kit down the road to do all the door jambs and recoat the outside to hopefully cover up the rough texture left by the rubber crumb in the first coat. If I was spraying this on something that I was going to walk on and needed extra traction the rubber crumb would be great but I would not us it for the outside of the vehicle.

Welcome to Liner Xtreeme | Bedliners to tuffen all your toys!
 
Cool. I was looking for something that was more flat with a sand type texture. Looking for the appearance of CARC like we had over seas. Stuff will peel skin too. :D
 
Tried to finish the top for my sleeping platform but the one piece top physically would not fit in the back with the frame in place. So I did what I did on my last one and made a square piece that fits the frame exactly and made left and right side pieces. Tomorrow I'll mount the frame in the back and mount my square piece of plywood to that then finish contouring the side pieces so they fit perfectly. Then I'll mount those to the main square with piano hinges. I may call it good for the week once I get to that point because I have some house projects I want to finish before the weekend so I can take my son to the mountains.
 
Yesterday I got the plywood mounted to the frame but I need to find longer bolts to mount the frame into the old 3rd row seat bracket spots in the floor. Probably won't mess with the platform today after work but I did do plug wires earlier and the truck feels like it has a slightly better idle and a little more get up and go. The idle wasn't bad and I wasn't having any running issues but the wires were original from '94. Next week I'm hoping to do my fuel filter, an alignment and rotate & rebalance of my tires.
 
I'm 90% happy with the bedliner. I'm subtracting 5% for it being rougher than I wanted, part my fault for not leaving out the rubber crumb like I was thinking of doing(I left it out of the second coat which helped some), part supplier fault for not calling me back with a mix ratio for not using the rubber crumb making me nervous about how much reducer to use when leaving it out. I'm also taking 5% off for it drying a lighter shade than the color sample. It's close but the color sample had a little bit more of a grey/green to it similar to Magpul's FDE color but not quite as dark by just a little bit. But for $185 delivered for a 2.5 gallon kit it did its job.
 
What brand did you use? Did it dry pretty quick?

Liner Xtreeme. It dried pretty quick, probably just over an hour till it was cured enough to put the lights and grille back on. Full hard cure was about 3 1/2 days. I'd use their product again, I just wouldn't use the rubber crumb unless I was applying it to a surface that was going to be walked on an needed extra grip.
 
Got the top of my sleeping platform completed today. Now I have to build the drawer but I have other projects I want to do before that happens. I still want to do my fuel filter and heater hoses before I take a trip to SoCal next week. After that I'll start on the drawer.

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I'm hoping to do the PHH, fire wall hoses and new heater valve next week. Just picked up 3 feet of Napa Gold Stripe heater hose, this way I have enough to do the hoses and keep some as a spare for emergencies and hoping to pick up my heater valve and clamps tomorrow.

The Napa Gold stripe is supposed to be the same or similar as the Gates green stripe as it's made by Gates but only for Napa stores. The gold stripe has the same temp and pressure rating but has a gold stripe on it instead of green.

This might be a better option for people having a hard time finding the Gates Green stripe locally like I did. If you decide to go this route print out or write down the Napa part number as it took a few min. for the parts guy to track down the right one at my local Napa.

For those interested here is the link to the Napa Gold Stripe 5/8" heater hose.
https://www.napaonline.com/napa/en/p/NBGH130/
 
Only took just over a year but I finally replaced the broken rear wheel stud, I did this while replacing the rear brakes.

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My drawer build is very similar. I used UHMW Runners which had you not had your Slides would have worked well.
I can kick myself for not adding top access and not adding dividers (see pics)

The Bed Liner looks great and I may go that route when my paint gives up.

You should chk out my Fuel Storage in Tire Area underneath since you have welding experience.

**Pics are not mine, but others I found on here

Drawer Build 2.jpg


Box Storage 1.jpg
 
The top access is interesting but I don't see that being needed for what I'm going to be using my truck for and it will also weaken the top along with creating 2 additional points for something to squeak or rattle while going down the road. I'll be dividing my large drawer in half for added strength but will probably use plastic containers and heavy duty canvas bags for keeping things separate. Dividers are nice but I can squeeze out a few more square inches of storage space in each drawer by not having them and packing my stuff more tightly together.
 

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