It is a 1991 G20 shorty with 130k miles. The posting on the auction claimed that it ran 2 years ago when parked, but has been sitting since. I drove up to Alamance County School Systems yard to inspect it, and found it to be an unmolested original G20, with very little rust or damage. It obviously had been sitting out for sometime, as the yellow paint had turned to chalk. The bidding hoovered around $800 for days, but in the final tally I had won at a price of $3350.
My idea was to build this van as a retro early 80's custom for our band to haul our equipment from gig to gig. I intend to put a logo on the side of it and lower it. I was not too crazy about the school bus yellow paint, but that part comes later.
Our band is called Captain Poncho and the Superspreaders. We play 90's alternative rock, so I went on Fiver and got an artist to design a logo for our band.
After I won the van on the auction site, I drug it home with my vintage ramp truck. The van was heavy and the trip was long. I lost 2 rear tires due to tread separation and barely made it home. But it got here safe and sound.
Now that I have it at the shop, I wanted to lower it and do something with the paint. I researched the forum and was unable to come up with a definitive answer on lowering my G20 shorty with drop spindles off a C20 truck. Bel Tech says that they don't make anything and Western Chassis says that they make a 2 inch drop spindle for a C20 but nothing for a G20. I saw it was mentioned that the ball joints are different on the two examples, so I decided to go ahead and order a set from Western Chassis and see if I could make them work.
Well when they did arrive they look about the same, but the stud holes are larger on the C20 spindles than the stock ball joints on the G20. The threaded part of the ball joint shaft is physically thicker than the G20 ball joint staff. This is both on the top control arm and the lower control arm.
I presumed that you could buy a set of C20 upper and lower ball joints and have them bolt into the G20 control arms - NOT SO. (sort of)
The C20 upper ball joints will bolt in when you remove the stock G20 ball joint rivets and bolt the C20s in. Part number on the upper ball joints are a Moog K6292
After a detailed investigation I realized that YES - there is NOT a "conversion" lower ball joint that could marry the two parts together. Aside from finding another set of lower controls arms I had another idea. So where to go when nothing factory will work? To the race shop, of course!
I live in the middle of NASCAR country, so there are many race shops selling new and used race parts. I toke my problem to Heinze Racing, and the guy looked at it and said "I have just the solution! There is a "racing" lower ball joint that comes with a undersized ring that the ball joint presses into. On many applications this is welded into tubular lower control arms, so it is quite common and inexpensive.
I took the lower control arm to a local fabricator for him to machine the hole to fit the ring and then tig weld it into the lower control arm.
Here are the part numbers and the prices for what I used. Also note that I had the line going to the fuel tank mashed by the factory when they put the fuel tank in originally, and a replacement fuel line is "no longer available". The race shop was able to make a fresh new line with the proper O ring fitting with no problem.
Remember what the shorty looked like when I bought it at the government auction? Well, I started buffing on that yellow paint and it is surprising what was just under the surface....
My process to get the paint to wake up was a 5 step system.
1. Use WD40 and go over the entire body with a green scotchbright pad. This removes most of the dead paint and gives a dull shine. Then I used lacquer thinner with the same green pads to get the spray paint and lettering left by the school system on the sides of the body.
2. I went to Harbour Freight and bought there $100 buffer and 3 pads - one polishing pad, one medium pad, and one aggressive pad. I also purchased the Mcguiar's #83 and #105 dual action polishes. I went over the body in small 1 1/2 sections with the medium pad and the #105. Going back and forth, up and down, and then diagonal. Then I would wipe it off with a clean rag.
3. After completing the body with #105, I did the same thing with # 83. Same process taking care not to cut through the paint by pushing too hard or staying too long on one spot.
4. I then used Majestic Solutions Vibracut 1000 with a wool pad. This is very agressive in removing the tiny scratches that dull the finish. Same process, same care.
5. Finally I sealed the paint with Meguiar's #21 sythetic sealant 2.0. You put this on like normal wax and then just wipe it off.
Keep in mind that I have NEVER done this before, and so it was all on the job training. I was more confident about the results, as this was a county school maintenance van, so I new that it had likely never been buffed before and still the paint was pretty thick. I also looked at a bunch of Youtube videos on how to polish a can.