Project Chronicle

While I hadn't intended to put any more money into the Trooper RS before relocating - especially with the news that the headgasket had started leaking - logistics demanded that I do something with the truck before moving it over to my mechanic Jay's house as a fall/winter project. 

The bodyshop I use has been performing some smaller projects so I can focus on simply maintaining the vehicles going forward rather than also dealing with cosmetic repairs. When the bulk of the rust was repaired on the Trooper, it was a grueling, messy project. The shop hit a breaking point where they just wanted the truck out of the way, so we left one section of rocker un-repaired on the passenger side.

With a gap in their schedule and the Audi S6 Avant not quite ready to come over to the bodyshop to replace the windhshield and fix some very small rust on the A-pillar, the Trooper slid in to get the remaining rocker rust taken out and repaired. As of now, the RS is effectively rust-free - which will make parking it outside at Jay's place for the colder months a little less unnerving. 

I have been attempting to check off some long-standing to do's, and one of them was installing period-correct audio components in the 1989 Isuzu Trooper RS. I had snagged an old Blaupunkt and have long had a vintage K40 CB radio to install and finally found time to get to Sights & Sounds in Wakefield, RI for the install.

First, the Blaupunkt I got out of a junkyard was no good. Fortunately, Scott - the owner of Sights & Sounds - reached into his deep inventory of NOS equipment and found an awesome JVC cassette deck with perfect backlighting to match the neon green glow of the Trooper gauges. It works beautifully and the stock speakers still sound surprisingly good.

The K40 CB I rescued out of a junked Mercedes eons ago powered up as expected, and Scott drilled a small hole in the drip rail to mount the whip antenna securely. The unit itself mounted neatly under the glove box on the passenger side.

All told, for a very modest investment, the Trooper has a tidy audio setup that matches the cabin perfectly and gives some classic 90s audio equipment a new lease on life in a truck that came back to life itself just last year. 

There comes a time when a project is finally to the point that you can drive it - for an extended period - and you realize it was all worth it. 

More than other efforts, I struggled at times to understand if restoring this rare 1989 Isuzu Trooper RS - code for short wheelbase and 3.77 gears - was worth it. I had to move it multiple times, starting with going from Massachusetts to Maryland, where I thought my brother would hook me up with a shop to work on it (he didn't.) I then decided to haul it back north to a shop that was all of 15 miles from where it was originally found as they promised to work on it (they didn't.) I was about to lose all hope when a chance encounter on Instagram of all places led me to a guy named Jay Gaston who offered to bring the Isuzu back to life as part of a moonlighting gig he had working on Japanese four-wheel-drives. 

Jay did everything he promised and then some, revealing the Trooper was a healthy truck under years of faded paint and gummed-up fuel systems. However, as is often the case, it was not just bad gas that needed resolving. The floors were gone, as were the rockers. There was a heavily compromised control arm assembly on the driver's side. The time in the body shop was far from cheap and made me question my decisions on a very personal level. 

But finally being able to drive it for 30 minutes like any other car and finding out it fits like a warm glove with the perfect door placement so your arm rides on the window sill with your hand gripping the vent window frame - all while it bounds happily down the road like some metaphor involving a labrador puppy - well, that's the stuff, kids. That's what you hope for when it's all done. All the mental anguish caused by small problems that become big and only you alone can solve make owning a restoration project a master's class in project management. 

This Trooper RS is a honey, and we are psyched to finally give it a forever home after sitting in a western Massachusetts junkyard from 2005 to 2020. 

As we know by now, I've had some unfortunate surprises related to rust on the '89 Trooper RS. The first was the driver's side floor, which was effectively, gone. What I thought was floor turned out to be a very robust carpet pad and when lifted away, there was daylight everywhere. 

While this was a monumental job in and of itself, we weren't out of the woods. Jay - my mechanic - noted that the driver's side control arm assembly was compromised by rust. Not the arm itself, mind you, but what it bolted to. There had been, at one time, a little housing that held the brake line and likely also provided some reinforcement to the shims that were used to align the front end. That housing was effectively gone on the driver's side, along with the plate that lent support to the motor mount. Needless to say, there was no avoiding this work given how deep I am into the truck. Not going to roll the dice on life safety. 

Take a look at the pictures and you can see the night and day difference. After grabbing a panel cut from a Trooper frame with the housing intact, we learned that Isuzu overhauled the front suspension in 1988, so the cut we got didn't line up with my suspension geometry. I called a friend who had a pretty rusty truck in his yard, and he managed to carve out enough of that section of the frame to give us a useful amount of metal to repair the bad areas on mine.

The work is done; the before and after is hugely satisfying, even if it means this second phase of bodywork isn't going to be much cheaper than the first. 

One of my favorite things about old-school cars is single-stage paint. It's a shame the industry moved away from this (though I understand why) as there are few things more rewarding than scrubbing off some chalky, faded paint and seeing original luster come back to life in front of you. 

As we near the end of the bodywork phase on the Trooper RS, my body man Nelson started to buff some small areas. He sent me these photos as they capture what the rest of the truck will eventually look like. It's absolutely incredible and probably one of the most rewarding moments of this journey; when I laid eyes on the Trooper in a salvage yard in Western Massachusetts, I was pretty confident the paint would come back to life. Now I have near infallible proof that it will. 

Before I picked the truck up, I had never looked at the odometer. It wasn't until it was being loaded I peered in and saw it had just 55K miles. From the lack of wear on the pedals to the cleanliness of the interior to the perfect compression numbers, we had all the evidence we needed that this mileage was genuine - but buffing ou that small corner of the fender leaves no doubt this is one of the lowest mileage short wheelbase Troopers in existence. 

The Trooper RS is over the biggest hurdle it has faced since becoming a running vehicle. The driver's side floor and rocker were basically non-existent, so this represented two problems: it was the most expensive aspect of its restoration and the most time consuming. 

It quite literally needed almost all of the front half of the driver's floor rebuilt from scratch; the same for the rocker. It took about three weeks to get this done from start to finish, and it included hanging and re-hanging the door multiple times to get it sit evenly. 

My bodyshop has left the lower panel in primer for the time being, but we're likely going to fudge the math a little bit and paint up to the molding. The next step is to repair the passenger side which isn't nearly as destroyed, and I also have a very nice piece of original passenger floor from a junked Trooper for that section. We'll also be removing the driver's side control arm assembly and replacing it with one that isn't quite so rotten.

None of this is easy, but quite literally, the hardest job is done. 

When we last checked in, the awfulness of the floors in the 1989 Isuzu Trooper RS was on full display. Nelson, my trusted body guy who is going to charge me way more than he expected, has turned my porous Trooper into one that is structurally sound yet again.

Seeing sound metalwork back in place is a relief, especially since I acquired this for my wife to use around town. Doubtful she’ll appreciate all the work that’s gone into it, but that’s not what it’s about.

What keeps me in this is that it’s likely the lowest mileage RS in existence. It will clean up incredibly well, and even if we need to sell it at some point to make room for a new project, it should return the investment to me when we move it along.

When I bought the 1989 Isuzu Trooper RS out of a western Mass. salvage yard, I figured it had rust....somewhere. I didn't look too hard. Basically, I wanted this dumb short wheelbase Trooper badly enough that I just looked at the odometer and decided its unicorn-like low mileage made it worth saving.

I still believe this, but now that it's in my secret bodyshop, I'm mildly concerned at how much floor work is needed. The driver's floor is basically gone. Or, in my glass half-full voice, it's halfway gone. The rockers are destroyed - I knew that - and thank God I had the salvage yard near my in-laws in Georgia cut up a pretty decent truck to get the rockers off of them, as those pieces are saving my butt in a big way right now. 

Nelson, my secret weapon body guy, is blowing apart the other pieces I've pillaged from parts cars over the years, but I honestly wish I grabbed a bit more. One truck in particular had a big chunk of the floor still intact that we could really use at the moment. 

The other side has issues as well, but not quite to this extent. Plus, on the passenger side, I was able to get a huge chunk of the floor from a local truck that was solid on the right side but looked just like this on the driver's side. 

I knew long ago this project would never make any financial sense as it's purely my illogical desire to save this 1-of-800 shorty that's keeping it moving forward. But this latest phase of work will be the biggest investment yet. 

Big news! The 1989 Isuzu Trooper RS is moving out of Jay's 4WD shop and heading over to *another* shop; this time, it's for bodywork. I am very excited by a few things, namely: this brush guard. This bull bar, brush guard, whatever the hell it is was on the first Trooper II to sell on Bring A Trailer in 2016. The truck ended up in Utah being parted out, and I found the listing on a Salt Lake City classifieds sight from a very sketchy seller. Needless to say, he followed through on sending it to me and it's been in my garage for the last two years, taking up a ton of space. Great to see it finally reach its intended destination. 

Jay got it mounted up and wired in two Hella 4000 spotlights with a custom switch. In addition, he's replaced the valve cover gasket; replaced all vacuum lines; replaced the PCV valve; drained and replaced the transmission and differential fluid and transmission filter; and adjusted the valves. He also mounted the bumpers and replaced the lights / bulbs with OEM pieces; the original lights, grill, and front bumper were all stripped off the truck while it was in the junkyard. 

I am getting it picked up and moved to the bodyshop this week. Unlike the Cosworth, they have not seen this truck in person so it will be interesting to see how much they hate it or love it, but truth be told, the Trooper has less rot to address than the Mercedes. Not much, but every little bit less makes a difference.