We Breathe New Life Into an Old Truck and So Can You Chevy K1500 Pickup Makeover

Oh dang. Hey, check out this cool old truck. Now, this thing is cool. This is a 1994 Chevy K1500, four-wheel-drive. As you can tell, it's a little bit outdated though. It's got some plain old boring headlights that you probably can't even see down the road. I don't know what somebody was doing with these wheels and tires, and of course, the tail lamps and everything else, well, basically, this thing needs to be a little bit more modernized. We've got some pretty cool parts that we can put in it, I want to get into it, let's do it.

Okay, okay. That's about enough of that. Let's get this thing in the studio and get to work. All right. So I got the truck inside the studio and one of the first things that I see as soon as I'm looking at pretty much any vehicle is the wheels and tires, of course, because it's a safety thing. I go ahead and I go like this with my fingers, I'm trying to stick them in there, there really isn't very much tread on these tires. For me, I'm all about safety. I know in New England, which is where I live, we get a lot of snow. Something like this isn't gonna be the safest while I'm driving down the road so tires is definitely an upgrade. Looking at these wheels, I don't know what the person was thinking when they went ahead and put these on here. I don't know if they're trying to dress it up, they wanted to go with something a little bit different. I know it's not the wheels that originally came on this 1994, but they need to make their way off of here as well. Luckily for me, I've got these wheels and tires that were sitting behind my shed. These things look like they're gonna be amazing, I can't wait to put them on here. There's a couple of things that we need to think about. So, let's go ahead and take off one of these wheels and talk about it.

Now that we have the vehicle up off the ground, the first thing I like to do is just go ahead and check the front end. I'm gonna go up and down and make sure my ball joints are good. We'll go side to side and make sure the tie rods feel good. Everything's nice and tight. Let's remove all the lug nuts and then remove the wheel. Before we can go ahead and try to put our new wheel up on here, there are some things we wanna pay attention to. Of course, you have the mating surface, you wanna make sure that this is nice and clean. But mostly what we wanna pay attention to is the lugs themselves. Now, these are the areas that your lug nuts are gonna screw right onto and that's what's gonna hold the wheels to the vehicle. Of course, different vehicles are gonna have different lug stud patterns. Sometimes you're gonna have only five studs, sometimes you'll have six or even eight. This one, in particular, has six. This is a GM or Chevy vehicle. So, if it has a six-lug like this, more than likely the pattern should line up.

If you're using aftermarket wheels, you're gonna wanna make sure you double-check. You don't only wanna pay attention to the lug studs though, you're also gonna have this center area right along here that's actually part of your wheel bearing which is located behind your rotor. But this area does need to fit into the wheel. And when it fits in there, you wanna make sure that it fits nice and snug so that the wheel can't wobble up and down. The reason why this is important so it can transfer the energy if you did happen to hit a bump through the hub rather than the studs. So, now like I said, I found these wheels behind my shed, they were just kind of hanging out back there. They were in great condition, but when you look along the back you can see exactly where the mating surface is, this has a lot of flaky build up on it. We wanna make sure we get all that off of there. That way there, when we put it on the vehicle, we don't have to worry about a shake while we're driving down the road.

All right. So we got the wheels on here and I think it looks amazing. This is gonna really dress up the truck, especially from a distance. Something that I wanna mention is, of course, if you have the wheels off and you're exchanging them, you always wanna make sure that you torque them to manufacturer's specifications when you're done. Now that the wheels are on here, you can tell that these are a little bit oversized in comparison to what there was originally on it. Things you wanna pay attention to is clearance. You wanna make sure that you've got plenty of clearance in between here and here, just in case you hit a bump of some sort, you don't wanna go [inaudible 00:05:11] as you're driving. Also, when you're turning. When you're turning the vehicle, this wheel is gonna wanna turn. As you turn to the left, this is gonna kind of kick in towards the right, and it's gonna kick this in along this way. So, if your tires come looking like they're just barely away from this fender right here, you're probably gonna rub, probably gonna hit, and you're gonna cause some damage. I think we've got plenty of room right here, let's move along to the next project.

Something else that we wanna think about is does the vehicle have a whole bunch of accessories on the outside that you don't necessarily need? Now, this one has a big old plow frame on the front, a 1994. I don't necessarily need it for plowing, I've got another truck that's meant for that. So, I'm just gonna go ahead and take this right off of here. I've also got a big old plow sitting in the bed, I like to use the bed for other things such as maybe a kayak or something to like. I'm gonna go ahead and get the plow right out of there, and of course, get the frame right off of there and now we can continue.

All right. So we got the plow frame off of here, let's just continue on by getting the rest of the hardware out of the way. And then, of course, we're gonna make sure that we take care of this plow frame and the plow and move it along to its new home. All right. Now, this is looking amazing without having that big old plow frame hanging off the front. Of course, I do have the area on the grille where somebody went ahead and made cut a couple of holes, I could either patch that or just replace the whole grille. That's something that I'm gonna wanna think about. But what I'm thinking about right now is the front lighting. I wanna make sure that I've got the best vision while I'm driving down the road to be as safe as possible. I'm gonna go ahead and replace these headlights right along here. You know what? I'm even gonna do these parking lights as well. I think if I go ahead and put these in there, it's gonna look amazing.

Okay, friends, I got it all put back together. As you can tell, it looks amazing. I had some chrome lenses down here, I went ahead and I put a light spray tint over them just to darken them up. Let's take a look and see what they look like. Not bad. Now it's time to talk about some tail lamp assemblies. As you can tell looking at these, they look like they've been on there since 1994 when this truck was manufactured. The light emittance that's gonna be coming through here isn't necessarily gonna be bright enough. If you're driving down the road in a dark circumstance or even worse in the fog, somebody's driving behind you probably isn't gonna be able to see what's going on. And if you ask me, it just really doesn't look that good. So, luckily for me, 1A Auto's got these great tail lamp assemblies right here. They've got the areas in the back where you can go ahead and put in your bulbs or if you're lucky enough, smart enough even, you can go out and get some LED bulbs and that's gonna be nice and bright inside these assemblies.

Now, these mirrors are something else that bothers me partly because they're a little bit worn out. And as I'm driving down the road, that's probably gonna get super annoying. Other than that, all these trucks that you see on the road right about now have the same type of mirror on it. Boring. I wanna try something a little different. Check this out.

Okay, friends, so we took this 1994 Chevy from old to bold. If you ask me, I think that this looks amazing. 1A Auto has a whole bunch of parts for this vehicle, even though it's already over 20 years old. I think they kind of spruce it up a little bit, bring it up to the 21st century and really overall bring up the safety aspects of this vehicle. The lighting, as you saw, in the original version, it was dull. You couldn't even see this from a distance driving down the road in the dark or God forbid, dark and fog would be almost impossible to see this thing driving down the road, especially since it's so black. The front means everything to me obviously. I wanna be able to see down the road, I wanna make sure there's nothing in front of me that I might potentially get in an accident with. We also replaced the mirrors on this. I wanted to go with something a little bit larger or something a little bit different than what's normally on it. We've all seen the way that it looked before, it's kind of more sporty looking. This one kind of gives it more of like an older look, but it also kind of dresses it up and it gives me a larger view for looking behind me while I'm driving.

Now we can just come on back here we've got the tail lamp assemblies. Now, this is just as important if you ask me as the front headlights. People driving behind me need to be able to see me so that's why we went ahead and we put these on here. The old lenses, you couldn't really see any of those halogen lights coming through it. So, I went ahead I replaced it with the smoke lenses because it looks great with the black and we put some LED light bulbs inside of it. That makes it much brighter overall, so when we're driving down the road in the dark or the fog, people are gonna be able to see me and when I stop, they're gonna stop too. Other than that, these wheels and tires, you saw what was on it before, it didn't really look very good. I kind of want to go with something a little bit bigger. But like we said in the video, you wanna be careful how big you go. It's nice to have some big old 35s on there, but are they gonna fit? Maybe they'll fit until you try to turn or maybe even go over bumps. Do your measurements, make sure you know what you're doing.

Aside from that, we upgraded the horns and we blacked out the grille. I think that the black looks a little bit better than chrome, crome's not really my thing. We're probably gonna do something with the bumper, but that's not really something that I have to put in this video. I hope you liked the video. Maybe you learned a little something, maybe you've got an older truck like this and you want to get on our site and see what we have to offer. If you liked the video, go ahead and smash on that like button. For me, it means the world. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe, ring the bell that way you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.