Doing an 86 power window swap tomorrow

2nd son came home from work, tired, thought the Bully was in gear but it wasn't. Rolled backwards and cleaned off the driver door on a post. No fender damage, some bending of hinge mounts which we can surely dress with gentle hammer massage. Some pics below, threatening sky too. Got the door off, tarped a bit due to incoming rain tonight, Texas gully washer, pulled him under the carport too.

We have an 86 XLT Lariat parts truck that has the same color interior in xlnt shape, but crank windows.  I'm presupposing that we'll have no trouble moving over the power windows from the damaged door to the  parts truck door.

Anybody BTDT?  We'll find out tomorrow.

Yes, the door innards will swap manual to power or power to manual.

Bummer!  But Bill is right, it'll all swap.  You'll just need to drill out the pop rivets used to install the window hardware and install 1/4-20 bolts, or more pop rivets, to secure the stuff going back on.

If you do the bolts dont forget to use nylock nuts but its all strait forward. Crap happens fast but accidents are just in interuption in your plans . Carry on😜!

Well the job took a little over day, mostly because I had to search all over for 1/4" thick rivets. Harbor Freight finally had some, the hardware stores all only went up to 3/16s. Today we finished up and put the damaged door on the black parts truck to protect its sweeeeet XLT Lariat interior.

But now tan/brown Puddles has a black driver door, and we look like Jed Clampet. This morning as I was sorta awake, sorta not, I had an idea.  The tan/brown 2-tone Bully color scheme sure looks like two of the colors in desert camo, eh?  What if we sourced a few rattle cans of good paint in those two colors, plus one more that's mil OD?

We could camo this bad boy with 3 colors of flat paint.  My neighbor did his Taco that way, with a bench seat welded in way up high in the bed and a rifle rest too. It's a camo hunting rig that Jed would kill for.  Now I'm not going to turn Puddles with his loud IDI into a hunting truck, but camo, heck that would be cool.

Seems that every time I find a decent parts truck candidate in that color scheme, it's rusted badly in the bed. My eldest daughter did in the forward left side of the bed - just missed the cab - when Miss Math Major forgot about the laws of physics and tried to occupy a space that already contained a very solid cattle guard. The bed lost.  We pulled it out as possible but it still looks goofy. Camo would help hide that too.

Anybody here have a camo'd rig?  Given our uncertain future, being less detectable could be an asset.

I've not done any rattle-can painting on one of these trucks, but you might want to read a bit in this thread about the # of cans it took.

But, it would hide a lot of "issues".  

Cammo?.. not cool. You have great potential to make this fantastic head turner...Original style.. 

Yeah, rattle cans add up quick!!

reamer wrote

Cammo?.. not cool. You have great potential to make this fantastic head turner...Original style..

This particular truck, Puddles, would take a lot of spendy body TLC to get him into a head turner.  He looks good from a distance, but up close you see quite a few battle scars. The PO was a heavy equipment mechanic, not given to detail work, a little heavy handed. His hands were like baseball gloves, huge and leathery. It looks like a light FEL kissed a front fender all the way back to halfway down one door. Our eldest daughter did the aforementioned cattle guard trick to the bed just behind the cab. And back when we had that bad spate of brake responsiveness issues, one of our boys bumped the Bull nose into a tree in the church parking lot.  

The interior is also rather rough, cracked dash and beat door panels, but we are slowly replacing those with a very nice XLT Lariat parts truck from WA, where the sun is not so fierce. Carpet has some welding damage from, again, heavy-handed work to install the Bronco buckets that were in there when we got him. They cracked the floorpan.

On the other hand, this truck Redhead I bought for parts, but after inspection we decided to put him into shape. He's a much better candidate for a beautiful Bully. The 6.9 IH motor still has the original grey paint on it! So I think the 85k on the odometer is accurate. He sat in a farmer's field for a decade or more, has a little rust in the pan, but the 6.9 fired up quickly after we tow started him for about 50'

i love the red truck. one of those is on my wish list.   been building street trucks for a while and its time to build an overlander.