Is there a benefit to buying a classic truck as opposed to something late 80's mid 90's? other than styling...

It's been neglected in its past life but I'm restoring it, so please forgive the pics. It'll end up either candy red or the original medium blue.

Will be replacing all of the gauges and rewiring them. Removing the tach and adding it to the cluster, and removing the water temp gauge on the bottom right as well.

Very nice man. Old trucks are a wonderful thing. I'm doing the same with mine, although I'm swapping the motor soon.

so anything pre 1965, got it!

Well pre 72 you'll be good. Those have seat belts pretty much but that's it.

Nice! For some reason old trucks look best in red.

so anything pre 72, but what about gas, everything nowadays has ethanol corn shit. also, how do you deal with the whole stereo thing, no music in the car?

I picked up an 81 gmc half ton shortbox 2 years ago, the only thing I have to comply with is seatbelts. No emissions, no inspections in my area, and the emissions systems been removed from the truck by the PO (was a California truck). Chevy squarebodies (1973-1987, up to 91 for suburbans) are common as fuck and reliable, parts are cheap and plentiful too. Pre-78 trucks are far more rust prone though.

You can get a stereo. A lot of guys upgrade the stereo but hide it in the glove box to keep the interior original. There's also a lot of aftermarket kick panels etc for speakers.

For gas you can get a lead additive if needed, but I haven't had issues with my 71'. It does have a flat tappet cam so I have to add zinc during oil changes but that's it.

I agree, although when I repaint mine I want to paint it a dark green.

I installed my own stereo in mine, only downside is you have no room for a sub. Just need a decent mini amp and some banging 6x9s.

One thing about old trucks, nothing so far has been that difficult to fix, but you learn how to work on cars fast.

I put 85 shit gas in my Ford, it runs fine.

You can install a stereo senpai, easy shit either cut the dash (if its anything pre 72 fuck off on doing this, get a retrosound or install aftermarket in the glovebox or something). As far as ethanol you rebuild a carb and update the fuel system with modern lines and rebuilt kits and the new rubbers and gaskets and hoses are fine, the only issue is if the vehicle sits for some time the carbs can gunk up and corrode.

>For gas you can get a lead additive if needed, but I haven't had issues with my 71'. It does have a flat tappet cam so I have to add zinc during oil changes but that's it.
>I put 85 shit gas in my Ford, it runs fine.
ugh, fuck ethanol, but good to know it runs. i just checked autotrader classic and there are literally 0 trucks pre-1972 within 100 miles of me. fml.

Craigslist my man. Auto trader is for boomers

Pioneer ib-flat subs, check them out. They make them in 8, 10 and 12" versions, (10 in pic) that need like 3 1/16 inch mounting depth iirc, ideal box volume of 0.62 cubic feet (this accounts for 0.02 driver displacement), cheap, and sound great. They'll fit under most seats and behind them if you have the space.

Pic related, I'm feeding them ~600rms from a Kenwood 900.5 5 channel.

Wonder if they'll fit under a bench seat. Really don't want to relocate the in-cab gas tank.

May be tricky depending on the seat, get creative with a box design. The 10" ib-flat's will work in as low as 0.35 cubic feet, as recommended by pioneer

>$150 retail price each
>got them through Walmart for $78 each

Nothing in this system was full price besides the wiring.

Behind my seat is the gas tank. I don't think I have the space under my seat.

You seem like you know a thing or two about sound systems, I have these jbl GTO 6x9s

amazon.com/JBL-GTO938-9-Inch-3-Way-Loudspeaker/dp/B003KN2TGM

I need an amp, but it has to be small. I saw this Kenwood at best buy but I don't know whether or not it will be well suited to these speakers. Do you think this will be good or should I keep looking?

amazon.com/dp/B00UVWC55A/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I1J843JZO7F11C&colid=2DSV3ZMZA3QSN

That amp will do ~75 rms at 2ohm, realistically closer to 60-65 since it's probably rated at 14.4v not the usual 13.8 vehicles output. It'd work though, since those speakers take up to 100rms each.

If you have a little more dosh, the Kenwood excelon amps are fantastic, used them in a few installs I've helped with including mine.

Mostly what I know of stereo shit was just doing lots of reading and research, and learning how to read specs, it's simple stuff. Really any 4 channel that's pushing 75-150 rms per channel will do you fine, just stick to things like Kenwood, JL, even pioneer and whatnot, no Walmart tier brands.

>my 900rms 5 channel is 2" tall I believe, 6 or 8 inches deep and 12" wide, which is quite small for it's output

I should add check crutchfield for deals and products, they're great. I got my Focal 5.25" components from them for $220 on sale, down from $460. Amp was through car toys, manufacture refurb for $225 whereas new it's $500-600

Do you think I could bridge the channels and it would work well? The price was right but I'll look into that. I just need it to be compact, yet powerful enough. I can afford more though. If you know any other amps that I could mount on the firewall discreetly, I'd love to see a link.

Car toys are literal niggers they hard pulled my credit without my consent.

Not off the top of my head I'll try and take a look when I get home from work in a few hours. That one should be fine, ideally you want to provide 75-150% of the power needed for your speakers, just do a little looking around in your price range and if you don't find anything better then stick to that Kenwood.

I know compact amps have come a long way though, should be fairly easy finding something suitable.

Agreed about car toys, I only got the amp from them due to the price, could not pass it up. Knukonceptz is great for your wiring needs as well.

Gotcha. That being said, I totally wouldn't mind upgrading the 6x9s for more power :^)

But sweet I'll check out this thread later or in the morning.

Not sure how much you really want to spend but this is $40 off , found it in a quick search

crutchfield.com/p_130GMD8604/Pioneer-GM-D8604.html

>For sale at wally world for 50 bucks less
Is it bad to buy from Walmart

If you have any sort of room in your dash go for a set of components, I was able to stick the tweeters of mine inside the baskets of the factory dash mount speakers, only downside was I cut my doors but it's just a squarebody, and the kick panel mounts all sound like ass.

Make sure it's sold via Walmart directly and not a third party seller, and grab the warranty for a few bucks. Any issue with it and you take it back to their store directly rather than shipping it off.

>1966 F100
>Alpine 4 channel where the glove box used to be
>Rockford fosgate mounted on the firewall/transmission tunnel
1/2" tweets mounted where the visors used to go.
>6 1/2"s suspended form dash in the corners.
>5 1/4"s in the corners above rear window
>10"s in a custom sealed box under the seat.

There's room.

How did you fit a sub under there. Let's see some pics boi

OP, the GMT400 platform, like the truck pictured, is great. I have one and I love it, plus the Vortec/TBI engines are wonderful. If you can't get something older, you'd still be ahead getting an 88-98 Chevy truck.

Removed seat, measured, made box, installed box, bolted down seat. Can't get pics without unbolting the seat. They literally take up every inch of space under there, even those couple inches on the transmission tunnel is box.
They're 2 mtx blue thunder 10's. Old school, not the garbage they changed to in the mid 90' and slapped on the same name.

Cat converters don't make cars less reliable, they just add another part that needs routine replacement every couple decades.

I'm sure you'll recognize the seat brackets, floor shape and doors.
Box goes up into the seat and uses every inch I could sacrifice.
Apparently I was mistaken on the trans tunnel- it looks basically flat under the seat. In my defense I built that box over 20 years ago- truck has been in storage while I was doing other life things and I haven't looked at it much.

Oh ya- I remember this part now.
I had to remove all of the seat adjusting mechanism to do this. Not that there's much to it- just a cable and some levers- but it was suspended and in the way. No big deal because its my truck and nobody else drives it.

>I had to remove all of the seat adjusting mechanism to do this.
Ahhh that's it. Mine doesn't adjust. I think mine was custom because this was bill romanowskis truck and he had the interior redone in the 90s. This seat is mounted directly to the bracket solidly in the floor. There's probably like 2 inches of space under there.

Still, that's badass man. Nice job.

Ignore the ghetto brackets. This was my teen years after all.

Ya the stock seat is mostly air, like vw beetle seats.
This pair of speakers did not age well.

Kek. I think I'm going to mount my amp on the firewall by the heater or on the tunnel.
These are definitely not stock. Lots of cushion and they've held up for a few decades now really well.

Pillar is even easy to run cables down.

Wait let me see that mirror, mine fucking sucks.

Oh btw-
For those who are thinking of going classic....
LMC has a catalog, sure.

But finding factory parts is getting harder.
Common trim, body panels, drive train parts are easy to source for most models.
But there is no complete source to all the weird pieces.
Great example is this small cover plate for the door hinge.
Old trucks are full of these types of pieces.
Junkyard donors are slim for pre-70's now (compared to when I was younger and I could find 30 trucks identical to mine sitting there)

Its a wink mirror.
Nobody can sneak up on me.

That's badass.

I feel this pain. I've had a bunk wiper 1 speed switch for the last three years that sometimes doesn't disengage. To find one is next to impossible these days because it became an obsolete part 20 or 30 years ago. I just managed to find the only one in the national parts database 2 weeks ago after 3 years of looking. Don't even try getting factory motor towers or anything like that, those took another 2 years to find.

if you're still around found this one that could work well for you, little bigger than a CD and bridgeable to 150w @2ohm which means you could easily get beefier 6x9s, I'd recommend something from like Infinity, better than those jbl and not expensive.

sonicelectronix.com/item_96712_Kenwood-KAC-M3004.html

I'd recommend looking around, never know when you can find high end speakers on sale for dirt cheap.

Thanks mate, I appreciate it!

No problem, glad the thread was still up, couldn't post last night thanks to captcha breaking :^)

Hey that's the one I was looking at kek

Ha! I didn't even notice that, been running on less than 5 hours of sleep everyday this week, my bad. For your price range though its probably as good as you're going to get, so nicely done.

>just upgrade those speakers

Will do. I'm going to a shop today to look at some stuff. I might have them do it,

Biggest benefit besides easy maintenence is they have depreciated as much as the will and are actualy going up. Buy a 60 to 70 truck that's not rusted and as long as you keep it looking and running good you can have it for 3 or 4 years and get back what you paid for it or even more. Only downside is shitty gass milage.

I went with this guy.

Wait, what?
Is that an amp nowadays??
Looks like a friggin power distribution block.

Haha yeah it's a marine duty amp. 140w output bridged, and super compact.

You can see how I cut the vent/heater box for fitment.
Shiny bracket in the lower left is what that punch 100 from
Is mounted on.

Man I'm just stoked to hear how it sounds, I get the truck back from the shop tomorrow.