jesse's b2200 mexican cadillac beater..

might as well put stuff in here for the stuff i'm doing to this truck.
it's a beater and anything i'm putting into it will be transferred to a better condition b2200 if i look for one in the summer

the previous owner called it his "mexican cadillac" so i'm continuing with that name, as it's quite fititng for these trucks


here's the original stuff i posted about:


most progress/pics on page 2


i had put a cheap sony stereo in it cause it comes with an ipod cable.
i'd been having issues with the sound cutting out at low volume, and cutting out if i fade front or rear.

well i realized it was due to the crappy wiring harness from the last guy only had 9 wires - so he wired front left/right to the same common ground, and same with the rear.

fixed all that last night and put in some cheap speakers and all is working now SO SO much better

in the process of doing that i wanted to find out the 1 wire i left hanging, what it was for... after a bit of chat this morning on here, looking at the12volt.com (thanks andrew).. i realized the previous installer happened to also reverse the illumination and switched 12v+ wires around, so my switched 12v+ is the blue/white and illumination is red/black. oh fun. anyway it's all working now, here's the progress from today removing the old wiring harness:

* NOTE i KNOW pyle is "a pyle of crap" but it's better than oem and that's all i want. it's cheap, it'll work. plus they are the same depth as oem so they'll fit great! i just need to check the screw holes.

old vs new speakers


so much power!!


360w.. LOL... as long as they handle the 20-25 from the deck, since the oem ones cut out
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i'm going to remove the harness off the oem speakers and solder wires into the harness, then they can be removed easily later if need be (well as easy as removing the whole rear interior to get at them!)

pyle speaker with the terminals bent up. turns out i didn't need to do that


old terminals/harness pulled off oem speakers


how they fit together


popped wires out


popped the cardboard mount and terminals off


this was nice to have right now


old terminals riveted to new speakers


wires soldered in


harness clipped on





what i started with, minus some of the elec. tape holding it together


old harness, only 9 wires, needs 11.


left and right common wires, only 1 of each which caused an issue fading front/rear and also caused issue with not being able to raise volume above 18-20 on the deck before it crackled and cut out


new strip


self cleaning flux paste


corrosion resistance applied under the shrink wrap


shrink wrapping


rear speakers done and wrapped


front and rear speakers wrapped and tied


everything wrapped and tied


and the mess left over

well i also had an excellent meet with crazymikey and grabbed some of his stuff
VERY cool guy, it's too bad to hear him going as this may be my first and last time meeting him
have a safe trip out west when you go man!

cab tinted glass














door skins from a b2600 (this is current one in my b2200)


this is new ones from b2600 (extra fabric cushioning and lower pockets)


cab skins from a b2600 (this is current one in my b2200)


this is new ones from b2600 (extra cushioning)


the fabric difference (current)


the fabric difference (from b2600)


old cluster


new cluster, km's with tach. plug and play
having difficulty with speedo cable coming loose, otherwise the new one was working great with all other functions.. will try again later


2 grilles, primered one is from a b2600 4x4, other one is oem b2200. mine is cracked, i might sell the 4x4 grille


painted redded out tail light lenses

so i made sure to remove all the interior to replace with some of the above mentioned pieces...

speakers in, had to use self-tapping stainless screws since the holes didn't line up. no big deal, they are same depth and don't stick out front any more so a great fit


put the bottom trim pieces with the extra cushion in to hide the speakers... they may be cheap speakers but they show up bright blue so better to hide them


finished installing the rear mismatching interior

rear trim piece. the dark grey one i got had a crack in it


rear cushion. this one from the b2600i was a softer backing. and it flows around the back with same pattern


prior seats with mismatched pattern


side window trims back in


rear plastic trim above cushion, crazymikey didn't have this piece in dark grey


all in all i'm happy..

if i happen to get a better condition b2200 i'll try to source out the rest of the dark grey to complete the interior.. i have the a pillars but there's a bit of junk on one so not going to use them... i'd need the little caps, plastics.... and seat belts.. really not much left since the dash is already dark grey

i still have the door skins to do, but i want to figure out the cluster with tach before i tackle that... maybe look at that tomorrow

Looking good man. Yeah Mikey will be greatly missed as he is a great person.

we need more pictures... lol j/k looking good

don't people LOVE pictures?

i love the padding on the side panels. ive been looking for some but cant find any. great score. the wiring looks 10x better. good to see you take pride in doing stuff right, even though its your beater.

Good call. His beater is going to be in much better shape than some peoples projects! Keep up the work and the pics.

i wish.. the frame is pretty bad shape, and i noticed that i could see the ground through the spare jack compartment... eek!

the front rad support is completely rotted across the lower part due to a pole being hit (why the bumper was messed up)...

that's why i'll try to keep this as good as possible, but if i ever wanted to take on a proper project i'd want a fuel injected 5spd with a much better frame to work off of.. however i'd like to keep this around in case the gf's cav dies so i'm trying to keep it as good as possible

got house cleaning to do today, if all goes well i'm going to tackle the cluster w/ tach again... the speedo cable isn't staying on as it looks like some of that was hacked up on the plastic mount, so i'm going to see if i can transfer the one form my current cluster over so that it'll clip on properly.. wish me luck

Good Luck!