1994 GMC Jimmy - The RHSC

bahaha

It feels good to get these old clunkers fixed up.

It felt great for the 7 hours it ran... then the starter died. 

LOL  Sounds like my sons 2002 S10 its a Fla truck so its not rusty but at 240,000 miles everything that can does break.

I really want to love this thing but it's not making it easy! When it does run, it's quiet, comfortable, easily fits my mountain bike in the back, has a sweet tape deck (I only have a Platinum Blonde and a Midnight Oil cassette so far so I'll have to build my collection a bit), and is super easy to drive/park. Some day it will be reliable!

What you need is a tape to aux cable adapter. At that point there is nothing you can hate about this truck.

The cassette deck was a major selling point! 

Replaced the other 5 spark plugs and they all came out easy, no extractors or cursing required. The idle is still a bit rough and the only thing that hasn't been changed on the ignition side is plug wires. I have some extras on my turbo motor that I may swap on. I'm also going to sea foam it down the intake and see if that helps, the upper intake was pretty cruddy when I changed the FP reg so the valves probably look similar. It runs fine under load so I'm not really worried about it either way.

I raided the junkyard and found a solid '93 Jimmy donor truck. I pulled the rear bumper (mine's rotten), a class 3 hidden hitch, outside spare tire carrier, full set of OEM fender flares (only needed 2 but grabbed the lot), driver's visor (material has separated on mine), center console (lid hinge broken on mine), front hood seal (mine is all warped), wiper reservoir cap (mine was split), and a few interior switches.

Need to find a non-photobucket host for pics but will get them up eventually.

Lots of great goodies there. I'm glad the other 5 plugs came out with 0 issues.

ah yes the great photobucket crisis... Flickr has served me well. I've actually had their paid premium account for several years, but it's only a few bucks/year unlike photobucket's idea of a subscription cost haha

A few updates but nothing major - 'new' all season tires are on and I've started sealing up holes in the rear wheel-wells as a temporary measure for the winter (I'll replace them eventually).

I was getting a code 46 and it has been down on power for quite a while. I bought a new knock sensor and fought for hours trying to get the old one out of the block. After tearing off the 'nut' part of it I eventually gave up and plugged the harness back in to the main body of the sensor, which was still mostly intact. When I started it up the engine light was off and it's running perfectly...

Sometimes a very large hammer is the best fix.

I guess it wasn't so easy after all - problem returned (it was a code 43, not 46) so I had to drill out the sensor and use an extractor to get it out of the block. New sensor didn't fix the problem so I went hunting shorts again and found this:

knock sensor pigtail by Rented Mule, on Flickr

Wire was broken right at the connector. Soldered on a new one and all is well; SES light is off and it runs great.

At least you know it's fixed now. Any snow up there yet? Had a light dusting around the workshop this morning.

No snow yet but the temperatures are right for it. I also fixed my rear defroster so it's pretty much ready for it now

Exhaust rotted off so I put on a Dynomax superturbo (2.5" mandrel bent) catback. It actually feels like it may now have some portion of it's original 200 hp back again!

Red Jimmy the snow-touring project is still alive. It hasn't broken down since the spring when I snapped a front lower control arm (that was fun) so I decided I would splurge. I bought a new set of decent all terrain (snow rated) tires (stock 235/75s) and put one of the leaf plies from the sonoma in to fix the saggy ass. It's not evident from the picture angle but I'm guessing it lifted the rear 1.5 or 2". It was enough that I had to adjust my seat back when I got in!

I painted the belt-line trim a while back too, it had turned grey and looked like crap.

red jimmy new tires add a leaf Dec 2018 by Rented Mule, on Flickr

It still has a small exhaust leak which I'm hoping is just at the Y pipe and not the manifold. The wipers are truly intermittent when it's cold out too, which makes for some interesting Ace Ventura driving moments.