Restoration of my 1979 Lil Red Express Truck From Start to Finish.

foreign a while back I had done a video of my red Knight express truck the Black looteret Express and uh I wanted to actually go through and put all my photos and my videos all together of the progress from when I got it and the restoration the tear down and the putting it back together so this is a little red express truck this is how they looked from the factory this is how mine looked when I got it from the person I bought it from off of Craigslist I had it for fifteen hundred dollars and I also got an extra bed some bumpers Wheels and a couple grills as well had it run for some time I think it last ran in like 2000 so it had been over 10 years so while it looks like it has a nice patina in reality it was really crusty you know the Bedwood was all rotted away the interior wasn't too bad the dash wasn't cracked the seats weren't really ripped up too bad undercarriage everything was really rusty you could tell it had sat for a really long time probably in tall grass here is where I got it running for the first time I have a mechanic friend right in my back alley here the uh came over and helped me get it started for the first time and so that was kind of neat I was pretty happy that it was running and then we pulled it out the next day and Logan and I yeah long time ago 2011. Logan and I got to uh drive it up and down the back alley and had no brakes so I had to be extra careful with all the kids driving around on their bikes not sure how many cylinders are firing but it does sound like an old tractor fun here in the boys comments all these kids are all of those graduated from high school I do I think it looks bad I don't know at this point I still felt like I was going to you know maybe fix the brake lines and get it running mechanically and worry about the body and everything else a bit later I thought Dukes because it's coming up you should be able to hear the tires chirp as I had to throw it in reverse to uh slow it down a little bit since again I had no breaks thank you [Music] so yeah and then as soon as I fold it up the uh the exhaust dropped off and I backed it into a spot right here and tried getting it running later but it just would not run so parked it and decided Well I guess we'll just do a full frame off restoration come next spring polished it up a little bit kind of wish I had been able to keep this patina I really did like this look but as you'll see uh as I started tearing it down yeah here I'm doing the first tear down in March of 2011. as well again helping doing it with Logan here what do a little video you know or first day of tear down Logan [Music] finding change and other souvenirs 77 cents so far we're still behind and some Northeast tokens perhaps get a free car wash out of this in the end okay here's Reece helping I wanted to continue so I had him pull a few pieces of car beating out and throw it in these two handsome truck bed there's no floor there it is after I got the carpeting out and unfortunately I was a little disappointed in the floors um I was still thinking all right I guess I'll have to get some floor pans and weld those in as you can see the floor pans were all gone as well as the supports and the rails so that's spring we kept on tearing it down got the fenders off and uh interior fully stripped out and uh I got the fenders off the bed and that's also when I realized how bad the bed was most of the bolts I had to cut out you can see the holes in the side of the bed where they had just rusted through and then here you can see the frame not looking much better pretty crusty I had a pretty good feeling that I was going to be taking everything off there was a nice little rust hole here I could see it behind the perches yep so there's that rust hole what I ended up doing was grinding these rivets off and taking the perches off all together see I have half of it sanded and coated in Port 15. I did find a 74 bed right away I was pretty surprised to find this on Craigslist so soon after getting the truck it was a little sooner than I figured I was going to need it but I didn't think I'd actually find another bed close by and I got it for 450 I think um pretty clean on the outside the inside of the bed was pretty beat up turns out the fuel filler was actually a little different than the one on the little red express if you recall I said I got a bed with the truck when I bought it and this is it but it was a 60s bed when the fuel tank was in the cab so if you'll notice there's no fuel filler on the driver's side of the bed so I couldn't use this one I didn't want to cut a hole into it plus on these the Fender was shifted back about an inch and a half or so on the driver's side only to accommodate the fuel filler I did however keep the fenders and put those on the truck here is my discard pile includes the original bumpers the core support front fenders including the inner fenders and the bed pieces the only thing I saved off the bed was the tailgate and this is everything that I was keeping the new bed the doors the cab the hood still had hopes of fixing the floor here's all the suspension components and drive line and I just have set aside here getting ready to clean be cleaned up yeah this was the bottom of the cab it uh it was pretty bad floor pans are all rotted away the cab corners are rotted away the cab supports are gone there's two rails that run the length of the cab and those are all gone and also the the Rockers are bad too so I decided to start looking for a new cab I was really bummed about the core support because they use this core support for 79 and 80. and I was afraid I was going to have a really hard time finding the correct one so I really didn't like having to throw this one away but my skills weren't up to Snuff for repairing a core support so here's the frame all the components taken off there's a cab support that needs to be repaired got Port 15 on most of it and we're all excited to finish that day but then it started raining so didn't get to finish here's the cab that I ended up getting it was a 1986 89 not sure which it's a w250 so it's got the big comp but it was you can see how clean it is and for 425 dollars I got this plus the rear Elite spring perches and uh um and the leaf springs and here's Logan helping me mock up the truck we put the cab on the frame right away and we ended up putting the doors on uh just kind of lightly hung the front fenders through the 74 bed on and just kind of rolled up rolled the wheels into the the wheel wells this is when I noticed that there was actually a difference between the roof lines of this cab and my cab and with that we wrapped up 2012 and this is where and how the truck was left for the remainder of the year and into 2013 and for 2013 we started with cleaning up all the components sanding them down coating them and painting them and starting to get them back onto the frame this was one of Logan's favorite tasks burning up the bushings we've been sitting by the campfire foreign of the truck after I got the wheels on see I've got all new hardware for the control arms and the alignment grade eight bolts everywhere that I had previously everywhere that previously had rivets still have that hole in the frame gotta roll that over and Randy's going to weld that up for me so here's the before and the during of the repair that Randy had done here I'm using straws to figure out the length of brake lines that I need I actually bent and flared my own brake lines that went marginally well I did find a passenger side fender someone had told me that they had some issues with some of the aftermarket fenders not aligning right especially if you had an aftermarket Fender and an oem Fender so I decided to start trying to find original fenders for the truck the person that had the fender for me he even had a core support with the valence on it and then October came and it was time to put everything away threw it all on the frame and rolled it into the garage for the winter and then over the winter I brought in the wheels and the bumpers and I cleaned them up really good using the tin foil and water and then when it was warm enough during the winter Logan and I would go in the garage and start working on the engine tearing that apart that's when I realized I think when I was running the truck that first time and it died on me I think I put it away wet and uh left some fuel in the in the cylinders because it was pretty gunky Logan and I honed the cylinder walls and re-ring the Pistons and got it all put back together for the spring so Jump Ahead to July of 2014. Springtime we pretty much were just putting the engine all back together getting it on the frame getting the rest of the components cleaned up and on the frame and so the next step was going to be to get the engine running I wanted to get it running before I put everything all back together since I still had easy access to it so here we rolled it into the garage and I hooked everything up all the electrical coolant and so forth and uh that way I could make sure all the wiring was correct as well I had a little trouble starting it and blew up a muffler of course Randy came by and helped me get it started This was later that day when uh we got all the bugs worked out and uh really nice to be able to hear it run [Music] assistant [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] turned out to be just a little scratch in a freeze plug what that caused the coolant to just very slowly leak out Next Step here was to sand and varnish the bed wood with marine varnish so jumping ahead about three years here we are with the cab sitting on its back so I spent a few weeks cleaning that up coating it putting undercoating on it and then for the rest of the cab I sprayed it with Rust-Oleum from Walmart I thinned it and sprayed it and I thought it looked pretty good it was just meant to be a temporary solution and with Randy's help he said he's a wizard with these things I was having some carburetor issues and he had come and helping good at times better and get the carburetor set up [Music] all right so here it is driving out under its own power in 2019. September of 2019 in its first drive since I believe that was August of 2011. okay yeah you can see that it's pushing quite a bit on those front wheels sure if there was maybe something going on with the steering or just simply an alignment tissue steering seam fine so I assumed it was alignment solution to that was actually steering common thing that people do is going upside down which I did as you can see here it's connected to the center link which I think is even in backwards on the bottom and this is the correct way to attach the tie rods to the center link you can see there's actually a cutout in the cross member made a huge difference here's Logan driving it unfortunately I didn't notice that until probably um another year or so later on the solution on Facebook someone else was complaining about it that's the red hood hinges this is the original foot hinges I slide them into them correct the original another wire [Applause] easy [Music] things foreign [Music] here it is with the bed on it the nasty tailgate this was about a month later taking it out on its second Drive yes it's still pushing takes a long way around I'm just gonna make that turn okay this was a look we actually have for the last couple years the black the green the White and the red a Honda steering I think you can even see I was I was struggling [Music] zero miles yeah so this was fun I didn't fully torque Down The Rocker shaft on the passenger side so I was only really running on four cylinders luckily there was no damage everything was fine I still ordered a new set of lifters and push rods yeah so here it is in 2020 and uh Logan is going to take it over to his work and get it aligned we were hoping that would fix this issue with the front end pushing which of course as I explained what the problem was it did not fix it foreign here I am following it back from the alignment work in the Mustang [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign thank you [Music] yeah I had an interesting issue with a U-joint that crapped out on me on the highway luckily it jammed into the Yoke and I was able to get it into the Walmart parking lot where I was able to place that U-joint here's the dash when I was still working on getting a two match how it was in stock form I was having a real hard time of matching the silver Argent and also the bezels were Chrome and I wasn't liking the silver that I found and the Chrome didn't look great either so I just decided I'm just going to this black with red accents thing to paint the dash black and uh surround it with some red and just use model paint it was its first car show I figured once Reese got his attempts it would only make sense that it was first drive would be in the little red nice Gap in the door foreign nice solid Runner I always thought this was cool we had a late snow so I was actually driving it almost all the way to December and another reason how all the exhaust is rolling out of the garage like that from the stacks all right here's how the dash is replace the lighting with red LED lights got the attack where the radio used to be don't be fooled by the speed my speedometer was off by almost 10 miles per hour is my radio there on the right it's a boss marine radio that I put in place of where the tachometer was it's May of 2021 Reese is driving the truck and bedless to his first day of school why is it bedless because I'm drilling the holes and getting it prepped for paint first thing is to put on the Raptor liner on the inside of the bed and inside the fender Wells and then prep the tailgate by cleaning it sanding it and clear coating it and covering up the crappy rust with the bed wood sanded down all the fenders all the way down to the metal after I got everything primed with filler primer I then went and did the body work learned how to use a hammer in dolly while I had the fenders off I went ahead and put the steering brace on this is useful to keep the frame from cracking behind the power steering box unfortunately while I was getting everything all prepped a sudden wind gust came and knocked my hood down and bent up the area by the latch so I went to the junkyard and picked up this Hood from the Ram Charger luckily it was pretty clean instead of painting the exhaust brackets I just sanded them down to the metal and clear coated them for the primer I use this Omni mp172 black epoxy primer and then for paint I used the Kirker hot rod black satin finish luckily my neighbor was nice enough to let me use her garage over the summer so I could get the truck all prepped and painted in there the paint was done by a friend of mine that paints for a living here's the first coat he suggested he painted since this satin black can be really hard to lay down you have to keep moving and if you stop you can see exactly where you stopped and started back up again so here's the truck all put together it was nice to be able to let it sit and cure in the garage for a little bit [Applause] this little piece of damage was for me driving the truck out with the stacks on and the tips as well and it didn't clear the garage so it bent the stacks back into the bed and did these nice scratches I just touched them up my painter wanted to come in and redo that whole area I said it's fine and here it is all done put together don't have the pinstripes on the fenders just yet but boy it was amazing how nice it drove after finally having everything bolted on tight the way it's supposed to be and at first time Logan and I took it out and we hit a bump and it made no noise we just looked at each other in amazement you can't come meowing when I'm trying to record stuff why you being a jerk you could be quiet no I'm not talking to you like in general go do something okay I'm leaving Logan's apartment he got a nice video of me taking off [Music] passenger side as usual here's a Redemption burnout I did after I tried one on my first video I went back in and tweaked my carburetor with better results [Applause] yeah go back and watch that video and you can see how poor my burnout was oh that'll wrap up this documentary about the building of The Red Knight Express go ahead and check out the video that I have that'll be linked at the end here and uh of how it is now and we do a walk around and driving of that truck and uh next step is going to be to actually do a body swap between this truck and the 79 step side that I brought back from Washington State go ahead and watch that video as well and uh and then I will proceed to do an actual correct literate express truck restoration on this Frame

Channel: Stage Zero Garage

Views: 5,445

Keywords: 1979, Dodge, Stepside, Pickup, Truck, Lil Red Express, Tin Grille, Red Nite Express, D150, Restoration

Id: st4b9E3SZt0

Length: 38min 18sec (2298 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 09 2023