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.





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".



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!

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!


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.


(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!)

(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?


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)


Step 9)
Hang the dust, dirt and bug covered fenders.


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...




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!