Beretta.net

If you've been reading my other thread, you already know I bought a truck on facebook from Cali to replace my NY rusted NC truck. viewtopic.php?f=52&t=4230&start=420#p147845



Took basically 8 weeks, but the transport is finally done. What a cluster that whole deal was. Got jerked around for a month by 3 different transport companies with the truck never leaving the guy's driveway. Then my dad was out in Reno visiting my sister so he and the bro-in-law drove the 2 hours each way to bring it back to her place. From there it was almost another month to get it home. And even then I had to drive 30 miles to the nearest highway to go get it. After all that though, the truck is 100% rust-free. Couldn't be more happy with it.






Interior is rough, but I already had plans to swap the buckets and console for a bench. After all, the dogs wouldn't like the buckets. And the cup holders for the console would be in the way to shift anyway. haha I picked up a front & rear bench with the fold down center section locally today. Dash is cracked under the mat, but I gotta pull the dash anyway to weld in the 5spd pedal bracket...so I'll just spray my maroon one black and put it in. Did notice in the glovebox it's actually a Z71 too. Without the stickers I wouldn't have guessed, but the RPO is there and so are the skid plates and Bilstein shocks.




Exterior-wise it has blueish discoloration that will probably buff out. But the bottom half is getting Raptor Liner along with the bumpers (once I modify them the way i want). Also swapping the chrome dumbo mirrors and grille for the newer black style. Looking for a deal on some aluminum 16s to paint black and mount my DuraTracs on for less rotating weight. The steelies on my truck are heavy as hell and getting pretty rusty. May or may not put on the factory 2500 style fender flares. I have a set but I may wait until the fenders start to rust to put them on. haha . I guess it really depends on the wheels I find whether it needs the flares or not.


Trans is absolutely shot. It drove on the trailer from Cali to Reno, but it barely moves at all even at like 4000rpm now. haha. I got the fuel rails and injector bungs I need to convert from TBI to MPFI on the stock computer. First step is to repin the harness from 7747 ECM to 7247 and make sure I did it right and it still runs TBI. Then I can convert from there after I tear everything out.

I threw together a quick photoshop from a pic of my old truck.

Eric Wood, Rusting Z71's since 2009... LOL

I figure by 2029 I'll pick up a 2016 from down south to start over. Haha

By then I'm sure someone will have pioneered a manual swap...

Good luck with the truck. It looks like you got a nice solid body to swap stuff over to.
You have lots of work to do but it will be worth it. I can't believe what they want for new trucks and cars today!
As far as the house, once the foreclosures and other under priced properties are gone the market will come back. In the meantime, like somebody else
said, it's better than renting. My daughter was in a similar situation with her condo but after a couple years, she was able to sell it with a profit.
Just a tip. I have water detectors in a few locations in my house to alert me to water in hidden places. I have two in the basement near my sump pumps
and one under the dishwasher. Once, the valve on the dishwasher got a piece of rust stuck in it and it would not close. It started raining in my basement.
Now since I put in the water detector in I haven't had a problem except when the battery was dying it started beeping. I had forgotten about it and it took us a couple hours to figure out just what was beeping.
BTW Those taillights remind me I worked on some molds that made aftermarket taillights for that truck. Back then, the factory taillights went for about $93 each. This company did business by copying the originals and molding their own at a cheaper price. That was one of the largest molds I ever worked on in my little shop.

Dig it!!
No rust is key. Everything else can be fixed. Makes me miss mine that's for sure.
It's amazing how the sun out west roaches the interior, I've never been to the west coast.

I don't like the new trucks (or anything for that matter) personally. Too much sh#t to break, and they just feel like an appliance.

Yeah, chevy emailed me about their $9000 off MSRP for year end 2018s, but it would still be $40k for something I only drive a few thousand miles a year. Plus the new ones seem so bloated. I drive a friend's 2014 and the DBW throttle and auto just make it a slug. I'd have to mod it immediately. Haha

That is nice. If I were to get another GM truck, that is the era I prefer too. I could stomach getting an LS-based rig, but not with an auto, for sure. I tend honestly to prefer the pre-Vortec TBI trucks, for that matter. Looking forward to seeing the Multi-Port setup you are doing, lots and lots of pics, please.
We had a customer who had bought a rare Canadian-only model Land Cruiser with the little diesel and five-speed combo -fun little SUV to drive, but I hate diesels overall. The dick who sold it to him had put aluminum-foil tape across the massive rust-holes in the frame, under-coated everything, then spattered it all with mud to hide it. One of the other techs had missed this on the guy's pre-buy inspection, about a year before I started there, but the customer brought it back in because of a 'clunk' in the back-end: turns out it was one of the rear leaf-springs that the mount had finally rusted away from the frame. The customer bought a used frame and and I had the joy of installing it for him.
It is clear you got a solid truck there though. Wonder how many of those are left out there in that good of condition?

The Vortecs are nice, but they have their drawbacks, too. They make a fair amount more power with the better heads and roller cam, and the spider injection is better than TBI when it works right. But they are more expensive to fix, and the OBD2 means they fall under the NY emissions Nazis umbrella. The TBI trucks are perfect for me with the OBD1 tuneability, emissions-exempt status and cheaper repair parts. I kind of already had the best of both worlds by running Vortec heads on my TBI with a roller cam...and it will be even better with this truck and the MPFI conversion. Now that I know how to integrate the WBo2 with my Autprom I can do an even better job of tuning it, too.

My dad got screwed on a truck from a dealer a while back. Probably 5ish years ago he bought a 2004 Chevy 1500 5.3 with less than 50k on it for $14k...but it had nasty rust they freshly painted black and he fell for it. He only drove it a year or two and traded it in for $5k after having to replace the shackles, shocks and diff cover due to rust. That's an ouch! The shackles broke and dented the bottom of the bed...where just the bed was holding up the suspension. The front side of the bed was all rotted out from the plastic liner, too.

I just found out some lazy ass cut a hole in the bed to do the fuel pump on my new truck. But luckily the piece they cut out was tucked under the liner, so I have it to weld back in. I've got the rear seat, wheels/tires, Flowmaster dual exhaust and bedliner all for sale on Facebook marketplace now. We'll see if I can at least get back the extra cash I paid in transport!



Got the new seats put in and that's gonna be nice. I'm surprised the gray matches perfectly. I know 88-94 and 95-98 were different maroons, but apparently the gray is the same. And I've actually wanted the fold down arm rest in my truck since my dad bought that '04. haha. Plus it will make baby-seat access easy. The rear one was a bolt-in deal, as well as the passenger seat (once I swapped the seat tracks). The driver seat outer mount bolts in, but I have to drill holes for the center tracks. I was hoping it would line up with one of the center console holes but it doesn't. So I'm gonna take some scrap 3/8" plate from work (about 3x4") and drill it M10x1.5 and panel bond it under the floor so it's a good anchor for the seat - stronger than factory even.

Sold a bunch of stuff on facebook...still looking for cheap aluminum bullet hole wheels. The blueing came out amazingly easy with my new $19 Horror Fright buffer and some some compound I had left over from 2009's Beretta paint job. Much less work than I expected...all done in maybe an hour? I might touch up the deep scratches with a black paint pen just to protect them against the salt a little better. Some of the rusty/peeling spots on my NC truck now started as little scratches.




I also got the 7747(6299) to 7427 ECM rewiring done and running. You move 34 pins and splice one wire to go from the 160baud 8192baud speed. (And as mentioned, the 7427 can be converted to MPFI...which I'll be doing when it's torn apart in the garage. (It's also the newest OBD1 ECM with the most speed, memory and power. The tune is 64kb instead of 32kb like the Beretta) haha
http://www.gearhead-efi.com/Fuel-Inject ... t=16197427

Nice truck! Looking forward to seeing more updates and pictures. Good luck.

Hold on... Project 3.0 soon to start... SELL ALL THE GARBAGE!

Life is funny sometimes! Update to come...

You have a problem... lol

Let's bring this up to date...shall we?

Tested one of the early baby shower gifts in the truck. Piece of cake! Then I actually had to bring it inside to get my driveway widened from 2 to 3 cars and could start the real disassembly.




Tried out a model paint pen on the scratches to see how it worked...and it's amazing! Huge improvement for $8 or whatever.




Bought a set of aluminum 16x8s for $175 to replace my steelies and swap my DuraTracs on. Was going to blast and paint the wheels all black.


Buuuuuut...one constant in life is change. Sometimes you have to think with your head, and not your heart. Build thread 3.0 to follow.