Well, thought I introduced my truck / project / doom...

I bought it a little over 1 year ago and it's a late 98' K74 Club Cab with a 2.5 Intercooled Diesel; it was racking a considerable 240 000km and not in the best shape possible (although running and driving fine, and starting up reliably and strong).

As a small footnote these trucks were (and still are) incredibly popular here in Portugal; this one spent all of her previous time in the Alentejo region (vast plains; hot and dusty in summer, cold and potentially muddy in the winter, but more on that later...).

I bought it out of the conjunction of a few different objectives:
- My house is always a work in progress and I wanted something that was good at hauling some construction supplies
- Wanted something that allowed me to get bikes (or whatever other toy) in the back and get going
- Off road ability that allowed me to try some of that driving possibilities
- Trying to get something with solid, reliable, “somewhat accessible” engineering and “space for improvement” at the same time. It needed to be the right amount of “beaten up” so that I could work on it as I extend my skill set.

When I bought it, it had a valid inspection (kinda like the UK’s MOT, I guess) but I knew it would not pass the next one. So I decided to not even try it and slowly started the TLC.
That last inspection had one remark about the headlights height/level (both were in obvious bad shape), the tires were (and still are at the moment) essentially dead and the test drive showed a very clear rattle in the steering.
Apart from those possible fail items in an inspection, the interior was bad (dust, dirt, tobacco smell), the tailgate was bent and the amount of solid mud was more than I could ever imagine.

Some recent contact with different media about offroad is making me think more about the possibility of evolving this project into some sort of overland / camper build (but that’s for the following posts).
I'll stop writing now and leave you some images. More catching up to come

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welcome to the froum cant wait to see the build take place

Always liked the club cab shape

Aye, Club cabs are quite sporty looking.
Good luck man, your adventure in classic shitfukery begins.
At least it's not been subjected to 20 years of Scottish road salt, lol.

So... About the mud...

!First off!
Let me tell you that I understand that talking about a Portuguese muddy pickup truck in a forum with so many from the UK is... questionable.
But bear with me; think not only about the quantity (simple car washes have done the basic job here) but more about the detail and refinement in the locations.

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Bonus content with the inside of the 3rd stoplight... (how this thing worked is beyond me)
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Quote: Mallinman wrote in post #3

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Always liked the club cab shape

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If that was a Scottish truck all that shite would be rust mate When I cleaned mine down I needed a needle gun and got about 20kg off it lol.

Bonus Mud Easter Egg location

I'll eventually get to explaining why all you see in the video is partly disassembled...

But here's a surprise location (maybe not much of a surprise)

I will follow this one, looks interesting as I am converting my B40 into an overlander at the moment but if that was a British truck it would be much worse than that, trust me!

Quote: Saudirick wrote in post #9

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... but if that was a British truck it would be much worse than that, trust me!

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The way the weather's been round here lately , we need to add our own water to get mud lol.

The road to... erghh.. roadworthiness

So... Apart from some cleaning there was wrenching work ahead.

- The windshield washer stopped working meanwhile, but that was solved by a simple swap of the motor/pump. The rubber wipers had been changed just after buying the truck. Took the opportunity to thoroughly clean the water tank.
- That lead to cleaning the overflow tank from the radiator; wish led to draining the radiator and attempting to minimally clean the cooling system.

Moved on to the bigger issues...

- After a lot of investigation I was pretty confident the steering rattle was from the steering column itself (similar problem to same era toyotas, sometimes solved by welding the 2 overlapping shafts). Some youtube videos pointed me in the direction of the bearing that allows movement between both shafts; but it got solved by some persuasion on the inner shaft to slide into its correct position in the outer.
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- Next up was the only problem reported on its "MOT" when I bought it. "Incorrect alignment of left headlight".
The original ones were in real bad shape (yellowed, scratched lenses; horribly repaired broken tabs) so I got some brand spanking new aftermarket headlights only to find out they don't come with the electric adjustment motors and one of the motors I had was completely crusty from being flooded by a headlight that must have been an aquarium at some point in time. Returned those...

Found out the motors are gone from Hella's catalogue, chased some used headlights (with the motors), spent too much time applying DIY solutions to get them polished, tried to install them. All that was left was to focus/level/align the beam and the "MOT alignment thingy" would be done, right?
Right???
But things still seemed strange up front...
As I didn't really like the bullbar you see in the first images and it looked slightly crooked to one side (probably due to some nudges into something), I decided to remove it. Because the upper supports of that bullbar were welded to the bumper support brackets, ended up learning how to remove the bumper to get to those brackets and grind that clean.

And that's when it hit me! The MOT alignment issue wasn't about the headlight beams; it was about the headlights themselves! The left side of the truck was lower than the right side.
The chassis was sitting level in front of me but the body wasn't.

So one thing led to another and...
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Turns out some of the body support bushings were fried. Mainly the first one on the left side (here compared to a new one)
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After some battles with old bolts (passenger footwell)
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And old (but solid) structure
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Some wire wheeling, rust converter, primer and chassis paint after

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With this much disassembled it became apparent that the truck must have had some strong-ish impact on the front right side. That front support you see in the pictures seems to be slightly out of its original alignment and height and the welds don't seem original. (something to maybe tackle later on... or maybe a reason to let it go altogether??)

Stay tuned for further updates! and thanks for the patience if you read all of this