Hi! My name is Curt,i'm from Green Bay, WI I have been a constant reader of this fourm for a while now and decided I would share my "Winter project" with you. its far from done but I couldnt be happier with the outsome so far.
This is my 1999 Quigley Express 2500 the day I brought it home. It is an old Cellcom service van that was actually bought new from a local dealership from my home town in Green Bay, WI. The van had around 200k miles and was sitting outside for a good portion of its life.
I spent a good bit of time cutting, grinding and replacing rusty metal. I used P.O.R 15 on most of the underbody and gave everything a fresh coat of undercoating after that.
With the rusty side doors it was cheaper to buy non-rusty doors than welding new metal. It was also a good opportunity to change out the old door pins and bushings
Getting the van dependable and driving like new was the next task, I contacted quigley and got the original build sheet and began ordering new parts. I replaced all the seals, bearings, races, u-joints, brakes and anything else that was left in the front axle, and then gave it a coat of P.O.R.
When it came to the tie rods,drag links and other steering parts, i was caught off guard with some of the parts being quigley specific. The longest tie rod is a quigley specific part and came with a pretty hefty price (around $500 plus shipping). Being that it the van has a Dana 44 axle, i found that it was very popular with other off road enthusiast, there is a bunch of options of some build your own tie rod kit. I got my setup off of ebay, and it was cheaper than sourcing all the pieces my self and having them shipped. The kit uses K5 blazer tie rod ends, which are easy to get replacements from the local auto parts store. The only additional to doing it this way was having to purchase the proper reamer($90) to change the taper of the knuckles.
It was pretty simple to put together, I laid the old one next to the new setup made some marks and started cutting and welding.
When the alignment was done, it went with out any issues.
I am going to stop here for now and will add more later.
The next step was the interior, but i will leave this teaser shot for now..
Thanks for reading!!