Here are a couple of pictures of my cruiser as purchased. Actually this is after a few days of hard cleaning and polishing. I wish I had taken some pictures of how it looked when I actually bought it. It had been used as a hunting vehicle and there were several inches of bird feathers in places. I couldn't open the kick vents on the way home because it caused too much debris to fly around inside.
Not too bad, but as you can see, it had the normal cancer on the rear quarter panels and under the rear ambulance doors. I did some poor backyard bodywork (tons of kitty hair filler and a little paint) and got it looking like this:
I was kinda proud of how the area under the rear doors turned out. I just cut out the old channel and replaced it with a section of square steel tubing. I wish I had taken some detail photos when I was doing this. I would recommend this approach to anyone looking for a quick, cheap fix. You will also notice in these pictures that I recovered the front seats and replaced the Grant steering wheel with Toyota.
One last picture after painting the wheels black and doing a few more things. Note the Hi-Lift on the front, and the ConFerr brush guard, and the tail light guards.
The following is a partial list of the things I did (or had done) to my truck during the two years prior to starting the restoration. I've graded each to indicate overall satisfaction:
 | 38/38 Weber (B-) |
| New rotors, master cylinder, pads, and associated brake work. (A+, I had very little brakes before, so this was a great improvement!). |
| New 31 x 10.5 Mud Kings (A) |
| MAF header and exhaust (B) |
| Rebuilt parking brake including speedi-sleeve on the seal surface. (A) |
| Recovered the front seats with SOR covers. |
| Saginaw power steering conversion (A on improvement / C on installation). |
| Front axle rebuild (A) |
| Sony CD player with silver faceplate to match the inst. panel and glove box (A). |
| New radiator and reservoir tank. |
| Misc, etc., etc., etc. |
The only things I let someone else do were the Weber, the PS conversion, and some of the brake work. One thing I learned in the first two years was that if I needed to fix my truck, or wanted to make some modification, I was better off doing it myself. I would learn something in the process, and if something got messed up, or took longer than it should have, I had control over the guy in charge.
