Although the starter vehicle had several flaws, the one that bothered me the most was the color and those nasty 3-tone pin stripes. Supposedly if you're doing things right you make your engine swap before the body work so you don't screw up the nice paint, but at this point I didn't have a lot of money to invest and the existing motor/tranny were functional enough to get me to work and back.

Can you believe a vehicle will still drive in this state? With all that weight gone this thing really moved. I had to be careful not to fall off the plastic crate and roll out the back.

You can see I absoluted gutted the interior. There were several holes where household carpet had been screwed into the sheetmetal. All unnecessary holes were welded and ground flat. This is my buddy Greg who got conned into helping out.

I've heard several people say they want to put diamond plate in the back of their truck/bronco, but mine is the first one I've seen. If you're thinking about it I'll warn you ahead of time it was a royal pain in the behind. Looks pretty cool though huh? I welded 1/4-20 nuts into the sheetmetal so I could use bolts to hold them on. Notice the untouched backseat panel in the middle of the floor. That should have an insert if a factory seat were installed.

The tailgate didn't look that bent when I bought the rig!

This whole rear fender was smashed. I welded, hammered and pulled as much as I could before slapping on the bondo.

The insides are ready for paint!

Ooooooh that looks nice!

Interior getting painted.

Here it is all back together. Hey, even the rims look better! Okay, they were donated from a friend with a '93 Bronco who was upgrading to wider tires. The bumper and grill shell are also brand new.

Total cost of paint/materials: ~$800. I owe much of the quality to my wife who helped sand and paint and yelled at me when she thought I was putting on too much paint (this was my first paint job).