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Part 4: Tail Lights
Jim Weimer

When Kevin and I were at the wrecking yard (bumper grille...) we were waiting for the yard guys to pull our parts, and Dad happened to look out and see a Caddy bumper sitting on the ground. I asked how much for the tail lights -- $35/pair: Yee Haw! They were mine right then and there. I love this mod to trucks but I don't like the $400 - $600 price for the lights from aftermarket companies. There went the LED tail light idea!

I had to purchase filler panels for the tail lights along with Caddy light buckets. Originally I was going to keep the upper bodyline on the truck, so I called everyone to specify that I wanted tail fillers WITH the bodyline.

Nobody seems to think that anyone would want to shave the tails on older S10's anymore -- everything I found was for '94 and up. Anyway, I did find a set with the bodyline in them. After I got them I saw the biggest joke of a bodyline ever. After the filler panels were trimmed to fit and welded in, I decided to smooth the bodyline out.

I was NOT very happy with the company that I bought my sheet metal parts from. Everything was poor quality and had to be modified to fit the truck that the parts were made specifically for. You would think that S10 parts were made to fit an S10, right?

I had to weld in the filler panels first and then measure, mark and stand back and look to make sure everything looked good. I did this about 200 times until I was happy with the location of the Caddy light. After I got it where I was OK with it, I trimmed out the filler panel for the light bucket to fit into. Making sure everything was straight and lined up, I started tacking in the light bucket to the light filler. I then ground everything smooth and started on the bodywork. This was when I decided to go all out on the body by smoothing everything.


        
(Click photos to enlarge)


Click here for Part 5: Tail Gate


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