94 Bravada project. A Funny fender adventure...
 

Big pictures below, so if that bothers you, hit your back button. (I did keep text viewable without
having to scroll over, I hate it when people don't)

I've had this 94 Bravada for about 6 mos or so and I am sick of the rust... It has 245,000 miles and runs like a new truck,
it doesn't burn oil but it will burn the tires.
I just finished with the engine bay so it's time to fix all THIS nastiness!

This is a simple 10 step procedure... Follow along on your own rusty treasure!

As you can see the front fenders and front doors are shot. The grille is broken and ugly as well. I am going to strip
all body cladding and make it a 4 door Jimmy.
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada025.jpg
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada045.jpg
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada034.jpg
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada029.jpg

Step 1)
Buy some beat up dented and half rusted out fenders from your buddy because, "He needs money"
be sure to overpay for them as well!

You Could have bought repo's, but these were "Cheaper".
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada022.jpg
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada021.jpg

Step 2)
Beat and fill, "Buddy fenders" back into some sort of shape resembling what the factory had intended.
Spray 4 coats of cheap primer.
Stand back and admire the 400 bugs that decided to play on your primer job!
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada026.jpg
Step 3)
Sand out bugs and whatnot, then get ready to paint.

Step 4)
Lay 3 medium light coats and wait to become tacky in between coats.

Step 5)
Lay one beautiful finish coat leaving very little to no orange peel. Then admire as the 12 year old neighbor
decided to get out of bed and mow the lawn before noon and then decided to cover your beautiful paint, with dust and crap!
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada041.jpg

Step 6)
Throw hands up in the air and say F@%k it!
You will have to respray it.

Let the paint dry and move on to the deconstruction. The fun part!

Step 7)
Remove janky, rusted out fenders.
Swear at the people that don't have janky, rusty fenders because they don't live in the rust belt.
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada047.jpg

(As you can see in the photos, I have a stage 3 weight reduction, courtesy of the rust belt I live in!
With this level of weight reduction, fender bolt access is now much easier!)
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada046.jpg
(If you are having trouble getting to the fender bolts, allow your truck to continue to rust for a few more years!
I had to wait for the maximum rust err weight reduction to get to some of the more difficult bolts!)

Step 8)
Enjoy the wonderful hood hinge/fender mount... Someone needed a good beating for designing that
stupid f##king setup!

Fender removed. Lovely isn't it?
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada049.jpg

Do you like the pile O' Bravada fender? All said and done the pile weighed about 7 pounds when I was cleaning up!
Lots of trapped dirt. (One more reason to remove stupid body cladding)
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada048.jpg

Step 9)
Hang the dust, dirt and bug covered fenders.
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada055.jpg

Step 10)
Stand back and admire the warmed-over "Buddy" fenders...
Bask in the Non-reflective glow from the non-matching paint.
Count the dirt and dust specks upon the amazingness you
have just created.. Listen to your a$$hole friends point
out every paint flaw with amazing precision.


Now how do you feel about yourself?

See, 10 simple steps.

Now for some better news. Tomorrow, I am going to pick up 2 front doors and a new grille (91 GMC Sonoma)
Should be fun to hang a pair of doors by myself! You know, because your obnoxious buddies only
show up 10 minutes after the job is done to explain how "They would have done it better!"



All comments welcome.

Nice work! I like the looks of the 1st gen Bravada!

Thanks, I hope to have it looking even better in a few days.

i think most of what looks bad is th trim, the bumper hanging over the sides 4" and the mix of the ruffled three ridge then the smooth panel. i think if you ca pull off the ridged trim (which it looks like you can by the tenth pic down, by just removing screws) the just fill in the holes sand and paint over rest of th truck, and youll have a nice looking truck. does the plastic on the bumpers come off? because i wonder what it looks like without it

oh, and what are you gonna end up doing for your grille?

Funny you should ask...

http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada063.jpg


The pic was taken at night, but I have a hell of a long story to explain why... Anybody on s10 forum already knows why.

I bought this GMC grille for 30 bucks on Ebay! It is absolutely perfect! A stock grille will have at least one flaw, but this does not! Before you cough up huge amounts of cash to LMC or similar, check out microplaterssalesinc on Ebay... Shipping is cheap too, I would have paid 10 bucks for shipping but I went and picked it up myself.

Check them out.

Thats a nice pile of rust there, and do I spy a Snap-On ratcheting multibit driver on the side? Nice driver. Had a lime green on that took a walk years ago. I think it was about 90 bucks from the tool truck.

Looks a lot better, now you want to fix my minor rust problem? :P

Yup lotsa rust! That is a Snap On driver... I've had this one for about 15 years. The first one I had, got swiped too. I think I paid about 90 bucks for mine too, kinda pricey for a screw driver!

lol nope, I have plenty of my own rust to play with!

Love the way you wrote that up....LOL way to make it comidic even though it was a pain in the ass, nothing better than trying to stay positive during such a bull crap problem....

Good job and kudos to you. If anyone tries to give you that BS load of "Oh if I had done it then I would've done it this way and it would be perfect", tell them to blow it out their arse. Looks great, can't wait to see more progress!

Thanks guys!

It's looking better everyday! But now that I have the ambition,
I run out of money! It's either work 100+ hours per week
and have lots of cash and be a walking corpse, or work
40+ hours per week and be broke, but be physically able
to do some truck work!

LOL, What to do, what to do???

What do you guys think of the Jimmy Grille? It was only
30 bux on Ebay and it is perfect, not a flaw.

Here is the seller, he is in Detroit Mi, he has really cheap
prices for both parts and shipping. microplaterssalesinc items - Get great deals on Bumper Covers, Grilles items on eBay Stores!

He has GMC and S10 grilles for 30 bux! They are better
quality than the (OE) grille I bought from LMC. LMC charged
me 150 bux for the grille itself, +39.99 for shipping and an
oversized charge of an additional 20 bux! I sent it all back
when I saw the lousy quality part they shipped. It was full
of "Booger-Spots" and scratches. I know they deal in Chinese
junk, but they charge OE prices!

I figured this Ebay part was going to be junk as well...
It was from a company called Juong Wen... I saw that
and thought, "Oh great, more Chinese bull$h!t" but I was very,
very surprised when I opened the package and I could see my
ugly ass reflection in the chrome!

This guy is well worth looking up. He carries parts for a
bunch of vehicles. The only thing that confused me was,
they are a plating company themselves. Why would they
sell Chinese made stuff when they could do it themselves?????

I received my answer, but I didn't like it... He (John) told
me his company only pays $20. for the imported grilles,
they (Microplaters) mark them up 10 bux to make a
small profit. "OK fine with me, but why don't you make
them here?" I asked... "Well if we were to make them,
we would have to charge $85 just to break even!" We
as Americans are too Fvcking greedy! We want something
for nothing, but we are not willing to work for it! That is
why the rest of the world hates us!"

Damn, how's that for a response?

Anyway, what do you guys think of the grille and new
fender? I am going to put on the "New" drivers fender
hopefully tomorrow...

Just for fun, I covered the drivers fender rust spots which
are just as bad as the passenger with duct tape and painted
over it... It looks to be expected up close, but from a distance,
it's not too bad!

Wanna see it? LOL

I went from this...

http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada036.jpg

To this...

http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada113.jpg


This weekend I am going to give a good color-sand and buff to blend all the paint. And I am going to replace the left front fender too.

Here is the left front with the painted duct tape hee hee.

Before..
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada027.jpg

After..
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada105.jpg
More random pictures.
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada104.jpg

http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada107.jpg

http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada115.jpg
Not much left of this fender!
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada053.jpg
Let me know what you guys think...

Well I finally got the chance to yank the left fender. I started right after Muscle Car (Spike TV) this afternoon at
1:00 and I spent all damn day changing this fender...

Removing it was simple, fight rusty bolts and yank off crusty fender. Play with oil filter unit, washer bottle
and the Monsterus ABS box. Play in the 4 and a half inches of oil, dirt, shop-rag, nastiness under the oil filter assembly...

http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada116.jpg

http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada118.jpg


Look at the Gunk!!! I found 4 shop rags! But under all this sludge
and dirt, I found clean shiny steel! The only clean steel on the whole damn truck!
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada117.jpg

This POS fender wouldn't line up for $hit... After about an hour of dicking around, I found out why, ...I noticed a little stamp
on the backside of the fender, it said "Made In China" Damn repo fender, no wonder why it wouldn't fit!

After beating and tweaking for another hour, I still couldn't get anything to line up, so I just drilled new bolt holes where
the Chinese scrotums should have... At the top front bolt I have a .750" spacer I made and I re-drilled the hole about .250"
over and up from the pre-drilled hole. The big fender washer covers most of it. It doesn't look too bad, considering the fender
is about .500" (1/2") too short!
That's a Matco 3/8" ratchet!!! A bit of a panel gap eh?
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada130.jpg

Hood alignment was an absolute pain in the weenie! To get it this nice took over an hour!
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada124.jpg

http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada125.jpg

Look at that HUGE panel gap!
http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada131.jpg

http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada121.jpg

http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada120.jpg

I didn't get done until 7pm! Six hours to hang a damn fender. But it looks Bitchin' in the dark! lol

Here she is getting frisky!


http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada154.jpg

Need more do ya????


OK Well here ya go...

http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/t...Bravada155.jpg

How the heck did you do that with awd?

Front axle was removed.

Wow that quarter panel was chewed up. Kinda funny you have close to the same set-up as I do at my house I have a white S10 and my mom has a red escape the exact same model as the one in your picture.

Hey Trip, i understand the rust thing that you talk of. i'm northeast side of Detroit. my 92 sunbird had a rust hole through the back door so big i could reach through it no problem to unlock the doors....

great work you have there so far

That's funny! Is her Escape a gas pig too? Mine gets about 10 mpg!

Thanks for the kind comment!

Do you remember the old Mickey Shorr's commercial from the mid-late 90's, where they said to stick a Rockford Fosgate sub woofer in the rust hole?! The dude in the ad said he quit having cold air blowing on him after the install... ha ha.

Trip... lets just say i was very young back then haha. i'm 20 right now.

But... that does not surprise me coming from Mickey Shorr. i only go there to buy simple stuff, i prefer cartunes only because they take care of me