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1979 Chevrolet 1/2-Ton Stepside Project, Part I

An Older Truck With a New Feel

By Steve Warner
photographer: Chuck Lombardo, Jr.


Older sport trucks such as Operation Retro Ride offer a fine platform for modern sport truck tricks. Our 1979 Chevy had previously served a relatively easy life, but it still needed a dramatic makeover. Will it get a wild paint and graphics job? At this point in the buildup we’re unsure. What do you think? One thing that will be corrected is the truck’s stock ride height. We’re not going for a ground-scraping stance as we have in the past, just a more aesthetically pleasing altitude adjustment. One surprising detail about Operation Retro Ride is that even though it’s a work truck that has seen countless hard miles, practically all of its parts are there, and it just needs some major cosmetic redoing. The paint is typically worn-out on these older sport trucks, and ours is no exception.
One area of obvious damage is the right front fender. It needs to be replaced, but the cost of brand-new sheetmetal from the dealer is prohibitive. So a less expensive but equally impressive alternative is a matching pair of fenders from Golden State Pickup Parts. Available for a reasonable sum, the new fenders will also make the bodywork chores less cumbersome.
Does this look like the makings of a true sport truck interior? We think not. So a new Designer Tweed seat cover kit from Seatz Manufacturing will be installed. Each kit includes tweed fabric, new seat foam to rebuild the unit, hog rings to attach the material to the seat base, and hog ring pliers. Each kit is inexpensive and will propel our older interior into the 1990s.
One of the main reasons we bought this 1979 Chevy was the inner bedwalls--they’re pretty darn straight. They’ll need little bodywork to look showroom fresh. However, the wood floor is another story. It isn’t rotted out, but it’s worn. So it’ll be replaced with a custom bed wood kit, a recent emergence in the sport truck scene.
The engine in Operation Retro Ride would probably pass a smog test’s sniffer, but we don’t want to take any chances. A brand-new General Motors crate engine will be transplanted into the engine bay and hopped up with numerous aftermarket performance bolt-ons. If your sport truck budget won’t allow for a brand-new engine, just remember to replace all the tubes, hoses, and diaphragms. Paying close attention to the details can make your engine look newly reconditioned.
Repeated battery spillage left our factory tray dilapidated. After scouring the junkyards for days in search of a battery tray that wasn’t rusted out worse than ours, we decided to replace it with a new piece from Golden State Pickup Parts. Fortunately, the rust was confined to the battery tray. If it had spread to the inner fenderwells, it would have increased the repair costs.
We’re still up in the air about whether to shave the gas tank door and relocate the filler tube to inside the bed or simply clean up the door to match the sheetmetal’s eventual perfection. Not shaving the gas door will keep the costs down.
We could do a frame-off restoration of Operation Retro Ride, but we chose simply to remove the truck bed. This will be a daily-driven sport truck, and we don’t want to up the cost by doing a frame-off job. Black spray paint will be used to revitalize the underside.
Our 1979 Chevy’s tailgate is supported by chains when it’s open. Rather than go to the expense of fabricating a new support bracket, we’ll just replace the tailgate chains with N.O.S. pieces, which are still available from the factory or Golden State Pickup Parts.
Because this truck was from sunny California, it hasn’t suffered any body rust woes from exposure to harsh elements, so there’s no need to replace the body panels. One area we will address is capping the bedrails. This will be covered in a later article.
For those sport truck enthusiasts looking to tackle a project such as Operation Retro Ride, we highly recommend finding a truck that has spent most of its life in a warm, sunny, dry climate. Not only are the expenses minimized by the lack of rust, but removing the bolts is also much easier.
Once the bolts have been removed from inside the truck bed, remove the rear fenders.
The stock taillights work fine, so we don’t need to replace them or go to the expense of relocating them to a molded-in roll pan. The lenses will simply be polished and 22 To detach the door panels, remove the small piece of carpet at the bottom of the plastic door panel. All these pieces will be replaced with new items.
Several bolts at the front of the truck hold the front sheetmetal to the cab.
On Operation Retro Ride the battery box is connected to the inside fender. Disconnect it to ease the removal of the front sheetmetal clip.
Remove the radiator and inspect it for any damage, or send it out to be routed and checked for leaks.
After taking out the bolts that hold the front clip to the cab, remove the entire portion. This takes a little patience and a lot of help from several of your big, strong friends.
Our 1979 Chevy doesn’t suffer from major rust, but it does suffer from a severely pitted windshield. No amount of polishing will remove all the imperfections and minor rock chips, so we’ll install a new front windshield from Golden State Pickup Parts. Removing the glass requires breaking the factory seal.
One piece we did elect to shave was the lower window trim. It removes with a little push of your hand. Nothing is wrong with the molding itself; it’s just not in keeping with the sport truck theme of the 1990s.
A series of spring-like clips attach the trim to the back of the truck. Remove the clips and grind off the nubs that are left. Once the nubs have been ground off, a thin coat of body filler will rid the area of any traces of the molding.
Prior to taking out the engine, disconnect the power steering hoses.
Use an engine hoist to remove the original engine and transmission as one unit after releasing them from their mounts.
To detach the door panels, remove the small piece of carpet at the bottom of the plastic door panel. All these pieces will be replaced with new items.
Pop off the manual window crank handle with a window crank handle remover tool and take off the decorative plastic door lock knob. Remove the door panel.
We wanted to remove the headliner as well. To do this, remove the plastic trim pieces from the A- and B-pillars as well as the portion above the door.
Because the rear window is out, removing the seatbelts and their assemblies is relatively easy.
Remove the door handles so the new paint will cover the handle area. Since the handles are nearly 20 years old and suffer from poor chroming, they’ll be replaced with new pieces from Golden State Pickup Parts.

Sport trucks come in all shapes and sizes, and no one thing differentiates a modern 1988-to-current fullsize sport truck from earlier 1967-1987 trucks. With the escalating prices of brand-new sport trucks, more and more sport truck enthusiasts are turning to older, used trucks and applying modern truck tricks to them. The ultra-affordable price of most older trucks, particularly 1973-1987 Chevys, and the abundance of available OEM or new old stock (N.O.S.) parts make these trucks great platforms for building really cool sport trucks. A great example is the 1979 Chevy 1/2-ton Stepside we’ve affectionately dubbed Operation Retro Ride.

This truck will be transformed from a dilapidated hunk o' metal into a restofied sport truck using the same modern-day truck tricks currently applied to later models. By taking advantage of the array of aftermarket parts available for older trucks, we'll turn Operation Retro Ride into a truly cool sport truck. California Street Rods (CSR) will be handling the majority of this buildup, and we'll follow along each and every month until Operation Retro Ride has overcome every obstacle to become a true road terror. Modern sport trucks already have nice factory paint jobs--they just need a little cosmetic enhancement--so people often add graphics to make their trucks stand out from the crowd. However, the paint on older trucks is usually dull and faded from age, warranting a new paint job. On the other hand, older trucks usually have decent sheetmetal that doesn't take much to be whipped into shape.

The suspension mods made to today's sport trucks can be performed using mail-order lowering kits and the latest beefy billet wheels and tires. But older trucks usually need to have the entire front suspension rebuilt with new factory rubber or upgraded with polyurethane suspension components. Then the same lowering principles that apply to modern trucks come into play. A slammed suspension is the key for both modern and older sport trucks.

Other modern tweaks commonly found on older trucks these days are conveniences such as air conditioning and power windows, locks, brakes, and steering. Most of the time, these pieces just need a little T.L.C. to return to optimal working state. Fortunately for us, our older Chevy had several of these items.

With all this in mind, the project is to make our truck a showpiece ride that maintains its practical nature. We plan on dumping this bad-boy several inches, but not so low as to scrape the road reflectors off the highway. The interior will be given a more contemporary sport truckesque feel, but not one so complicated that the average sport truck builder can't emulate it. Follow along as we get into the tearing down of Operation Retro Ride to see which parts and pieces need replacing and which parts just need to be spray-can detailed.

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