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Project 2002 "Firefighter Edition"

cbouissey12

Full Member
Joined
Feb 8, 2012
Messages
137
Location
Constable, NY
So with all my mods planned for my beloved Avy, I figured its finally time to document the adventure for everyone to see. My truck is a 2002 Avalanche 1500 Base 4X4 with 157K miles on it. The transmission was rebuilt in January of this year and that has been the only major issue with it. It does need an intake gasket, knock sensors, and some body work. Living in NNY, the salt is terrible on vehicles and its showing its age.

So current mods is a small list:
K&N CAI Kit
Kicker speakers
Currently putting in LED lighting inside and out
LED emergency lighting, siren, radio and control
Trailer brake controller

Since the weather here is still topping out in the mid 30's during the day and theres still snow on the ground, the body work is on the back burner. Its pretty bad around the rear quarter panel area. Here is a pic of the truck from last spring with the 4 wheeler in the back, and some pics of the rotted quarter panels that I will be rebuilding.


Not the greatest pic but the only one I have at this point.

Now the quarters...




Again, a project for a later date and will post pics along the way.

But for now, My current mod which im excited about, a double DIN android based head unit. Yes this is a 2002 so dash surgery is required. Below is a pic of old and new units.



 
As far as progress goes today, I had a brilliant idea to mount the double DIN instead of making brackets. I had the aftermarket dash install kit for the old Pioneer unit that I took out. Why not modify that to mount the new radio? So that's what I did.



I cut the side portions off so I would only have the clips that slide into the bucket. It turns out that some of the holes happened to line up with the screw holes on the new system. Heres what I ended up with.




After that, I went out to the truck and removed the radio/climate control bucket to bring inside and make it easier to mount.



Drilling those rivets was a pain but it came out in the end. And to my surprise and with no adjustments to the brackets, this is what I ended up with today!





All that needs to be done now is cut that metal bracket in the dash, run the GPS wire for the new radio, ground the parking brake wire for the DVD function, and trim the bezel to fit. Fairly painless install as of this far. We will see how tomorrow goes!
 
Thanks Willow LS. Still figuring that out myself but we will see. Open to suggestions.

Completed the Double DIN install this morning and this new head unit is awesome. Full android operating system capable of using Wifi or 3G via USB dongle.

First step of the morning was to trim the metal support that goes up and down behind the bucket assembly. Other videos ive seen show this being cut with the bucket still in and the "shelf" of the bucket being broken off. This was not necessary but removing the bucket made it 1000X easier to make the cut. I was able to sneak my grinder in there and make a couple quick cuts.





The rest was simple. I reinstalled the bucket assembly and slid the radio into place and buttoned it all back up.




I forgot to take completed pics but I trimmed the dash bezel to fit the double DIN and everything snapped right back in place. My dremel skills can use some work so its kind of messy but I plan on getting some sort of trim to make it look cleaner.

Its nice having built in Bluetooth and GPS with full browser capability. This unit is expandable to have multiple monitors and a backup camera. Not bad for an Ebay item.
 
Thanks! Not going to be much progress over the next couple days as I have to work tonite and tomorrow nite. Just waiting on a couple of pieces for my cluster build. Going to install blue LED backlighting with a white guage face and blue Escalade needles. Also have enough LEDs to do the HVAC panel and other random lights. All parts should be in by Friday.

Edit: before I forgot, here is the completed picture of the radio install. Sorry for the glare.

 
cbouissey12 said:
Thanks! Not going to be much progress over the next couple days as I have to work tonite and tomorrow nite. Just waiting on a couple of pieces for my cluster build. Going to install blue LED backlighting with a white guage face and blue Escalade needles. Also have enough LEDs to do the HVAC panel and other random lights. All parts should be in by Friday.

Edit: before I forgot, here is the completed picture of the radio install. Sorry for the glare.

That looks really good buddy! (y)
 
I have bubbling in the rear door jam and I am hoping when I pull the cladding off not to see the same thing you are....

Looks good otherwise.

Rodney
 
Shes getting old and obviously somewhat neglected. Not 100% sure how im going to tackle it but no body shops in town will even give me suggestions....its not good but im sure i will figure out something. Im ordering the rockers in the next week and if i can even just outline the original shape with strips of metal and figure out a way to attach the cladding, I will be satisfied and it may just provide even more drainage for all the crud that gets in there.  :needhug:
 
Well there is a hack way to do it, if you don't care how it looks because it's underneath the cladding. Easy Rust Repair the 'Hack' Way -EricTheCarGuy: https://youtu.be/Kw5CNQJJkaA
 
cbouissey12 said:
Shes getting old and obviously somewhat neglected. Not 100% sure how im going to tackle it but no body shops in town will even give me suggestions....its not good but im sure i will figure out something. Im ordering the rockers in the next week and if i can even just outline the original shape with strips of metal and figure out a way to attach the cladding, I will be satisfied and it may just provide even more drainage for all the crud that gets in there.  :needhug:
Have you tried a custom/auto restoration shop.  They may be more adept to dealing with the bad rust.
 
Now that i see the extent, a pro shop is out of the question due to budget issues. Just want to get the cladding back on and make it look good for a while until I can afford something newer. Probably another year or so. But for now, I want to have some fun with this one. Honestly thinking about welding a piece on the bottom to extend the rockers, cut some strips of metal to go up each side, and fill with foam and glass over it.
 
So today I installed my new set of towing mirrors. Install was a snap and self explanatory so no step by step pics. Also took apart my power window switch and cleaned the corroded contacts and everything works now.

One with just the driver side done:


And completed!


Love how this looks! Falling in love with my truck all over again!
 
All the parts for my cluster rebuild finally came in. Got the last piece yesterday. I will probably be doing this tomorrow nite because im stuck at work tonite.
 
Changed all my signal/brake/parking lights to LED this morning. All that's left is the reverse lights which I want a high wattage LED, and DRL's and fogs. Looking at some 881 LED bulbs on ebay for the fogs. Any suggestions for the higher power bulbs like the 881's?

Started the cluster rebuild. Switched the backlighting to blue LED's. Got a kit on ebay that came with the bulbs and the twist in sockets. It was a little tricky because the new socket's clock position was slightly off so I had to watch how far I twisted them in so they still made contact. All went well though after that was figured out and as soon as the truck cools down so the temp gauge is all the way down, I will put the new overlays and needles in. Pics to come later on tonite.  :B:

Another plus is I was having problems with the FM radio on the new Android stereo. It would work for about 2 minutes and cut out. Even while it was working, it had a lot of static noise. While I have the dash apart today, I slid the stereo out to find the antenna wire had come loose and was barely hanging on. Seems to work a lot better now so we will see. Meanwhile Ive had my phone tethered to it to use Pandora. Problem is Android and iPhone don't play well together so the tethering is sometimes a pain and doesn't connect.
 
Ok everyone. Just finished the cluster rebuild on my truck. Took several pics to show the progress. Everyone knows what the original boring cluster looks like so I did not take a pic of that. Here are the new bulbs I used. I got them off of eBay for about $15.


And I plugged it in just to make sure it worked before I got too far in the project.


Next step was to take the cluster apart and install my new overlays. These also came from eBay for $23.99. Theyre easy to install if youhave a lot of light to see through the clear markers. Spray the backs with soap solution and press on and use a squeegee to get the water out. Kind of like window tint or a decal.


After that was done, I took it back to the truck to install the needles in the correct positions. This was a little frustrating as most of them took multiple attempts.


When I was satisfied, I took the cluster back inside and finished assembling it.


And finally, the final installation.


It looks amazing. Going to order some blue LED's to change the HVAC control, 4wd switch and headlight switch to blue.
 
It does look good.
 
That cluster looks great!  (y)

Keep us updated on the rust repair, I personally would like to see some progress pictures if you make your own replacement panels.

A lot of the older cladded Av's are getting rusty, especially if they're up in the "salt belt". Pretty much every one of them that I've looked at has had crispy rockers and rust behind those pieces of cladding and above the rear wheels.

Ive never seen photos of how anyone has went about fixing it and am very curious.

Keep up the good work  (y)
 
Got me scared to pull my cladding off.. I suspect to see something like that.. I have bubbling paint around the seam on the back of the door opening for the back doors...

Although I have had my '03 truck here in Michigan for 4 years now it has only seen 3 Michigan winters.. Had VERY little rust on the frame when I bought it. It spend much of its life just south of the rust belt and no other signs of rusting body panels now.

 
I think what I'm going to do is fill those areas with expanding foam and press the cladding on while the foam is still wet. When it dries, it will leave a mold of where the cladding attachment points need to be and I can use that mold to make new pieces from fiberglass. At this point, Im even considering glassing right over the top of the foam.
 
So a little bit of progress today with some body work. First thing I notice while getting my state inspection done today was that the shield over the low beam headlight on the driver side had fallen off. So i took the headlight out and tried sliding it back into place. My big fingers prevented this. Thanks to my great fianc?, the shield is back in place. If they keep sliding out, I guess that's a sign I need to do an HID swap!  >:D Then I started some body work this afternoon. Now remember that im not looking for a pro job here. Im looking to make it look good for a while until I can afford something newer and in better shape. I am fully aware that this is not the proper way of doing body work but its effective for now. Keep in mind that if I didn't use the expanding foam method, it would require full reconstruction of these panels and even the inner panels. But here is what I did today.





While I was waiting on the foam to set up a little, I put the leftover blue LED's I had left from the cluster build to use.  >:D



Also converted the overhead map lights to a white LED as well. Going to trim up that foam tomorrow and pick up some glass mat and resin to start reconstruction of the quarter panels. Been without the rear cladding all winter and its a major eyesore. Excited to finally be working on it again. Will keep everyone posted on progress.

Any input is highly welcome. Again, not the proper way of doing things, but its going to get me by. Rockers are being ordered next week.
 
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