2000 Isuzu Hombre - A Grumpy Truckling For the Streets

Wow, that's quite a transformation! They look great

With my Audi on the road for winter  I tore out and threw away the Isuzu interior to find this pleasant surprise.





 

The only significant rust on the truck, but it's ugly.

I picked up a few things to help with the repair last night, but got home late, so no more pictures as of yet.  Big things are in the future.

Progress on this floor pan... less holes and cleaned up.

Damn rust! I had to have a cab corner and some spots on the box fixed this year. I undercoat it every fall but it doesn't seem to matter!

Looking forward to the 'big things to come'

I was rather shocked with how rust free the rest of the body is that it was so bad on the floor, but those saggy and leaky doors can do some damage.

Hood, tailgate, roll pan, and grill should be done with paint tonight.  Should be some heavy disassembly and reassembly going on this next week or two and the truck will be looking better than ever.

eek. glad to hear the audi on the road again.

screwdriver poke check that body mount bushing area too, seen a couple of those go through the floor.

The rest of the floor is pretty decent, but with the current trajectory won't be my problem much longer.

Looks almost like new...



And I needed some way to dry out the carpet I cleaned up for this truck since it was well below freezing outside.  Not sure if it was the hanging or the fan, but took less than 8 hours to dry out.  A good power washing outside would have gotten it cleaner, but I think the seats and the floor mats will hide the worst of the permanent staining.



Still moving and should have this truck reassembled by the end of the week.

nice progress, why can't you do this with the blazer?

The 45 minute drive kills motivation, which I could find a solution to, but I keep making excuses and slacking on finding shop space.  Having the Isuzu in the garage within 50 ft of my bed makes a huge difference.  This is also all Lego-like work and not much fabrication for my mind to overthink.  The garage isn't really setup well for anything more than hand tools either.  I've got plenty of excuses haha.

Interior is mostly in and cleaning up nicely.  Need to find a set of door speakers (3 of the 4 original speakers were dead) before tossing the door panels in, but everything else is on the way or sitting on the shelf.  Had to modify the dash wiring as the donor truck was a 2000 and the Instrument Cluster wiring is slightly different from the 1998 dash.  If I had been thinking beforehand I would have just swapped out the harness, but only took me about an hour to compare schematics and modify the circuits.  It isn't as exciting as chassis work, but progress toward the end goal.  Another late night of work will have this truck out of the garage and heading to the barn for more part swapping.

   

i miss that color dash.
I preferred it over my current darker color one.
no autohvac yet?

I'm partial to the darker dash myself.  Or maybe it is the darker seats and carpet as they don't show stains nearly as well.

Auto HVAC is part of this whole tear up.  It probably doesn't make sense the order I'm completing things to get that in, but should become clear once I get this truck out of the garage.  I think I've got the heated seats figured out too.

Interior is completely back together (sans speaker grills; they're waiting to be cleaned up).  It looks much better.  I found another wiring difference, but swapped 2 terminals in the dash/ip connector and the truck finally has 4 working speakers after a visit to the junkyard.

     

Swapped out of the garage and will be driving it out to the barn sometime soon.  Appears like a proper work truck now.



And ready for round 2.  This floor looks like a much better start.

Dash & steering column are out.  I disassembled the steering column for some repairs and upgrades.

I've never installed an alarm, but I've certainly removed my fair share.



Cleaned up another set of headlights.  Just waiting on the protective film I ordered before putting them backtogether.



And started sanding down the grill tonight.  Some past owner gave it a paint job for some odd reason, but really didn't do a great job of it.  Much of the paint had runs, the rest of it chipped off over time.



I've got a few more parts in the mail, but I'm still checking items off the list.  Next up for the cabin is to pull the HVAC system and wiring harnesses to convert it over to the auto HVAC and other upgrades I'll be installing.

Today was a delivery day and I put all the packages to use.

Finished putting the headlights and the steering column back together.



The painted grill looks good with the NOS Isuzu badge.



Finished stripping the cab and ready for prepping and paint.  Also pulled the body harness and HVAC from under hood.  Saturday might be a good day to tackle that part of the project as it could get above freezing.

     

As long as the harness modifications go smoothly the new interior could be in soon.

Ryo's post reminded me I had a pile of photos hanging out on my phone.  I finished up round 2 of cab rust repair.  Wasn't as good as I hoped, had some rust happening behind a good section of seam sealer (isn't that supposed to prevent water intrusion??), but still a much better start than the other cab.  I'm a bit further along than this, but the paint is down and the seams resealed.  I'm still putting time into the electrical modifications as I'm having to merge several harnesses and add a few circuits of my own to get the result I want.  The dash and roof harness are tidied up and onto the body harness this week.

Here are the areas I had to clean up rust or repair.  Much much smaller footprint than before and 95% of it was light surface rust or peeling paint.

     

Results after paint are satisfactory for something going under the carpet.

     

While I was heating the cab for painting the floor I turned it into a small paint booth for spraying the grill I cleaned up.

     

Finally have the truck whole again, but won't be staying that way for long.  Still ugly, though.

i've noticed that chassis (in this case cab) flex from either impacts or just vibration can crack seam sealer, and cause water intrusion + retention.
I first noticed this on the ex's Honda Fit which is apparently known for back hatch area roof's drip rail sealer cracking from just flex of the sheetmetal by opening and closing the hatch. luckily I noticed before any damage/rust but I did have to pick off all the cracked sealer and re-seal it

It looked very much like the truck was in a flood too.  That thought was certainly encouraged by the warning on the CarFax that it came from a floodzone during Hurricane Katrina, but I've seen no issues elsewhere.  There was a distinct "water line" of rust wherever the seam sealer had peeled away.  The peeling wouldn't' have been as big a problem if it hadn't been raw metal underneath.  Personally I'd think they'd put some sort of paint underneath, but I'm guessing for whatever reason the order of operations was easier to paint last on these trucks.  I repaired some surface rust on the Blazer in the exact same spot.

So this is actually still moving along.  I sold the original '98 truck I had and put in the gray interior after cleaning up that ugly rust.  It was just way too beat up and I would have rather repaired with a whole new floor if I were to keep it as a project.  Instead I found a 2000 Hombre on craigslist back in January and swapped interiors & suspensions.  That was round 2 of the rust repair. Cab is cleaned up waiting for all the new wiring and interior.  Just got the body harness finished up this week and started taping it back up last night.  The underhood portion is looking nice so far.  Another night of taping should have this back in the truck and reassembly can begin.  Debating if I want to do a relay mod to the H/L harness while I'm splicing the temperature sensors in, but I do want to drive this truck again sometime in the next few weeks.  Still have the entire ZQ8 suspension to swap back over too.