87 Ram 50 Sport - Labor of Love - Restoring the first vehicle I owned 25 years later!

[lithonius]

That's awesome to see! A classic getting restored! from my own experience working on my '88 Ram 50 I highly recommend adding Volume 1 & 2 of the 1987 service manuals, and the Chilton manual to your books as well. They give a nice variety of information that the Haynes doesn't contain.

I look forward to seeing this truck come to life!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/125740723659

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266459795038

Thank you very much for this suggestion for the service manuals . I just bought them through the link you posted, that's a great deal for what looks like a relatively good condition set! I should have a Chilton's around in some boxes if memory serves, so if I can't find it I'll grab one from ebay.

Unrelated but in the spirit of gathering 1987 Ram 50 related paperwork from ebay, I found some mint 1987 color brochures for a couple bucks so I bought a couple, arrived perfect condition if anyone is looking for some or to replace your worn ones. Not affiliated with the sale just passing on since he has a few more left and for other year Ram 50's in his other items.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/361552280413

This weekend I'm taking the wheels off to get at the tires and at least put some new ones on, if for nothing else aesthetic motivation. I'm grabbing some wheel dolly's to move it around a bit since it's not quite where I want it, still in the position it was winched off my trailer. That's a whole other story involving mounting my 8500lb SuperWinch from my trailer to a 2" square hitch mount, bolted to the studs of my garage wall and cross braced with some steel beam to pull it off the trailer. The front 2 tires hold air but the rears are obviously shredded, so it was going to roll off about as easy as it rolled on...not well! A little nudge from the cable winch and it pulled off fine.

I've started cleaning out the cab, and have completely cleaned out the bed of all the debris that was inside. A residential outdoor trash can full of old dirt, sticks and funny enough one of the two missing RAM badges from the front fender. It was down deep in the bed pile of years past tree shedding from the huge oak that stood over it, shading it for most of it's outdoor life. So it already provided me back a little 'thank you' for tending to it again after all this time. I should be able to really get at it now that it's warming up and can get to things in the garage! Thanks everyone for viewing my truck and also for the replies and input!