TerryD's Tow Pig: Helga

TerryD

Total Tease
Supporting Member
Location
Covington, Va
Growing up in a GM family during the 90s, my favorite body style pickup has always been the 88-98 GMT-400. While I was building my K5 Blazer, I needed to replace the XJ I was daily driving and needed something to tow the K5.

I found this 2000 K2500 Crew Cab Short Bed GMC outside Raleigh, NC. It was a bosses truck for a contractor and other than 280k miles, was in pretty good shape. It was originally a South Carolina Carolina so it had never seen snow or road salt.

Here she is the day I brought her home.

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Having always wanted a step side truck, I picked up a nice step side bed of Craigslist for $200 and had it painted to match to replace the mangled factory bed. I then went and found a camper shell for it because we were using it to do family trips and wanted it to help keep out luggage and gear dry on trips.

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I'm ashamed to say I've neglected the old girl in recent years. Between the wife's school and having the Xterra to drive daily, the A/C and front dome lights have quit working and it's in bad need of tires.

I've got an appointment to get the A/C going next week. Then hopefully I'll start working on the old girl again.
 

TerryD

Total Tease
Supporting Member
Location
Covington, Va
Once the A/C is going, I think I'm going wheel shopping. My plan is to be able to buy new tires for the truck and swap the slightly used ones from the truck to the Xterra to wear them out wheeling.

I'm wanting to go to 17s so I'm looking for some painted Hummer H2 wheels for the truck. Once I'm ready to swap, I think I'll get a set of the Pathfinder steel spare 17s for the X.

285/70/17s will fit both the truck and the Xterra and I think the H2 wheels will look great on the truck as well.

I'm going to be watching for a set to come up for sale but I need to replace the tires soon. The ones on it are just a set of used 265s I picked up to get it to pass inspection last year when the 285s I had on it failed due to dry rot.
 

TerryD

Total Tease
Supporting Member
Location
Covington, Va
The A/C is fixed and seems to be doing good. The wheels I had found didn't really work out so I'm probably going to just stick with 285's and get it reshod before winter gets into full swing.
 

TerryD

Total Tease
Supporting Member
Location
Covington, Va
Why didn’t the wheels work?

Dude went a week, responding to me maybe one a day. We decided on a day and something came up for me with family and I couldn't make that day then suddenly he started pushing for me to make the 6hr round trip when I had no time so I just dropped it.

Not worth the hassle. Plus I'm a hub centric believer regardless of what everyone says so I'll just stick with my steelies and save the money for tires. Maybe something will drop into my lap locally but I've got more important things to worry about right now.
 

TerryD

Total Tease
Supporting Member
Location
Covington, Va
I've been having steering issues with this thing since I bought it. With almost 300k miles on it, it's pretty worn. Earlier this year I replaced all the steering joints and it helped but didn't fix it. This weekend I removed the steering shaft and the rag joint in there is pretty shot.

I attempted to source rebuild components for it but couldn't find everything I needed so I wound up ordering a replacement joint from RockAuto. It should be here in a few days and I can get the truck driveable again. Next on the list is an actual alignment then some new tires first of next year.
 

TerryD

Total Tease
Supporting Member
Location
Covington, Va
Those big 2500s are GREAT trucks. Id love to find one in non abused condition.

It took a while to find this one. The GMT400 body style has always been my favorite and the small block/4L80E combo in the short bed was exactly what I wanted. I now wish I had found a 454 truck but it's not that difficult to swap if I can find a donor truck. The 5.7 is REALLY tired and leaky anyways.
 

Smileyshaun

Bought an X
Couple of my favorite rigs have been that series of chevys but my fav was a 99 3/4 burb , body lift and some different keys for the torsion bars so I could soften up the ride and it rode fantastic on 35s, that 454 was a bit of a pig but saw big gains when I switched out the injectors for some bosh ones . If I wasn’t living in a townhouse I probably would’ve bought another one instead of getting the Xterra.
 

TerryD

Total Tease
Supporting Member
Location
Covington, Va
So this thing has had a huge year. New shocks, UCAs, brakes on all 4 corners, new Cooper Discoverer AT3s, and I'm picking her up with a rebuilt A/C system this evening. Turns out the mid body seal on the compressor blew and that was why it wouldn't stay charged.

Next will be a full set of door hinge bushings and then a driver's side power window motor.

Gonna be a nice truck once again!
 

kirk

Butterfly King
Moderator
Supporting Member
Location
Allen, Texas
I got emailed an absurd offer from Carmax to buy back my Tundra. Id love to sell it back to them and find me something like this. They are all flat brimmed up around my parts.

Nice work!
 
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