My 1976 Palm Beach Total Overhaul

Justin Brady

Active member
Oct 4, 2019
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Bell Buckle TN
www.thegmcrv.com
Alrighty lets get this party started.
Way back in 2014 started looking at GMC's.
I'm a craigslist junkie and was looking for an RV for a buddy and stumbled into GMC's.
I couldn't stop obsessing over them so after a few months of looking I said screw it and pulled the trigger.
Brought her home looking like this:OldPhones - 4093.jpg

Not in awful shape but certainly not good either. Had Honda Odyssey seats and Alcoas, a 455 and we drove it 4 hours home. It was a rough drive but we made it.

The plan was simple. Add some paint, clean her up and run it around.
That plan lasted all of 2 days before that went out the window and we went nuts.
 
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Hi Justin Brady, great looking GMC! how nice are those new front slider windows? can you drive with them fully open? thnx
 
We went from a simple clean up and repair to full on rebuild basically overnight.
I'm the typeof person that can't leave well enough alone so once I started tearing into it it was the classic "well if I'm doing this I may as well do that while I'm in here" and we ended up here in pretty quick fashion:
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From there a little more work got us to here:
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And then inevitably to here:
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Around this point it really dawned on me what a project we had started!
 
So from there the project really got rolling.
First up was to R&R the fuel system so we opened up the tanks (nice and clean) and replaced all the fuel lines with fuel injection rated modern hose. This is a MUCH easier job when the floor's out than it is laying on the ground. I wish I had had the foresight to do the Exhaust at this stage as well but I wasn't thinking that far ahead unfortunately!

While working on the fuel system we also noticed that the body mounting cushions were either missing or flat as a pancake. This makes the body ride rougher on the frame, crush the fuel lines, bend in the middle etc. Bad news.
There are a few commercial options for replacements but like most things GMC they are pricey for no reason other than small production runs and limited vendors. A trip to TSC and a 4 x 8 x 3/4″ sheet of rubber solved this problem. We used a band saw to cut it into pieces the appropriate size and then used the forklift to lift the body enough to get them under the frame. Big improvement!
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Now that everything under the floor was fixed it was time to take care of the actual floor. To do this we reinstalled the aluminum pieces underneath the floor, replacing the ones that had holes in them from the original plumbing. We insulated underneath with 1″ poly sheeting cut to fit snugly and filled any remaining gaps with spray foam insulation. This should give us better road noise isolation than the ultra crappy job the spray foam guys did at the factory.

On top of the insulation we laid 3/4″ marine plywood and took a note from GMC and glued it down with 3M 2 part panel bonding adhesive and screwed it in with stainless screws and a bit of antisieze. Another theme here: Replace with better than factory.

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From there it was time to tackle the insulation. It's super crappy from the factory. The guy who did our insulation at the GMC factory was either drunk, stoned, or just a lazy bastard. To say it was poorly done would be the understatement of the week or sure.
In the large areas it was not too terribly bad when you looked at the dead center of the panel, except nowhere was it more than an inch or so thick. The real problem was in the smaller panels, and on the edges of all the panels. When spraying, our genius GMC worker sprayed a layer in the middle, and because he didn’t want to have to clean off or trim back any overspray just didn’t spray ANYTHING near the edges. We were at bare aluminum in a lot of spots. This is a big no no as far as insulating goes and almost negates the point of having any in the first place.

We decided to rip it all out and start fresh. We spent many many hours with a sawzall and a scraper blade getting all the old insulation out. It was a nightmare.
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Once that was all cleaned up we resprayed it with Tough-N-Seal Spray Foam.
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Once it's sprayed you have to go back after and cut it all back flush the the walls are clean etc. Easy peasy with a flush trim saw from harbor Freight.

If I was to do it again would I do it the same? NO
Do not bother to remove all the old insulation, in the few areas that I didn’t remove it (behind the caps) the new foam adhered just as well. So if you’re thinking of doing this at home save yourself a HUGE hassle and just spray over the old foam. You can use an angle grinder with a flap wheel to rough up the surface to help with adhesion if you see fit, but I don’t think it’s necessary.
 
Next up on the agenda was to get the lighting and ceiling sorted out.
We did our ceiling a little differently than most.

We started with 26ga Aluminum sheets, the same stuff that is used for the sides of enclosed trailers. It's already powder coated white and is smooth and beautiful.

We cut it to be a nice tight fit against the ceiling, it's a bit of work to get in there but it holds itself up. From there we cut Walnut strips that are also a nice tight fit. Once they are finnagled in over each seam the ceiling is done, no screws or visible fasteners of any kind.
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10,000+ miles without issue so far.

For lights we went with LED panel mount flush lights. They look amazing and put out a nice clean light. We used 2700K color temp for a warm pleasant feel.
We imported ours directly, but they are now available all over amazon so they are easy to get now!
 
Now on to the real fun stuff!

I'm a woodworker by trade, we own a butcher block countertop manufacturing company so I have lots of woodworking toys.
We wanted to do something totally different with the cabinets on this one.

I stared where I always do, on the computer drawing it up. After many, many iterations we came up with a low profile side cabinet setup for all of our storage:
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From there it was just making sure everything was sized correctly and on to cutting it out.
Everything in the coach is made from lightweight Garnica "euro-ply" around 40lbs/sheet.

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Test fit:
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And assembly:
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i wanted to do something special with the faces, so instead of doing a normal cabinet door setup with overlap we chose to go flush. I cut the face of the whole cabinet from one sheet of ply with a 1/8" endmill so all the gaps are even and all of the grain lines up. The overall effect is very cool. When we finished it we went with an opaque paint on the cabinet doors so you cans till see the grain underneath. Same goes for the drawers underneath.
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For the dinette we wanted something that would transition from a couch/loveseat thing into a dining area.
What we came up with works fairly well, if I were doing it again I'd make the table a little bigger and the seating a little smaller.

We started with the curve, we canted the entrance to still feel inviting and the best way to do that is to make it open and airy. The curve here allows the space to feel bigger than it is.
Plywood is curved by kerfing, you cut a lit of little slots in the back to allow the front face to curve:
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You can see the one piece grain on this piece as well. The cutout is for a large slide out drawer that houses the white cooler in the background (beer cooler accessible from inside or outside the door without going into the coach)

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From there it was on to paint!
The doors were all finished outside the coach with a light green paint thinned to be opaque, followed by a clear conversion varnish finish for protection.
The rest of the cabinets were sprayed inside the RV using an airless sprayer. Many many hours of taping, but the results were quite good:IMG_20170213_201456195-1002x1336-768x1024.jpgIMG_20170216_163136600-1336x1002-1080x810.jpg
 
Hi Justin Brady, great looking GMC! how nice are those new front slider windows? can you drive with them fully open? thnx

Just saw this comment, my apologies!
They are nice for tolls and talking to folks out the window and I think they look better.
They are not however much if any better for airflow,. At speed with them open no air comes in, just a function of the shape of the coach nose, air goes around the windows. Maybe with wind wings they would be better
 
We finished the cabinets and were ready for the finishing touches in the last post I believe so we will start there:

Cabinets out of the way it was time to move on to the fun stuff: Making it look pretty.
First order of business was countertops. We’re big fans of Butcher Block (obviously, that’s what we do for a living (Walnut Wood Works) so it was the way to go.

We started by gluing up some Black Walnut.
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The main problem with butcher block for an RV is that it’s HEAVY. We don’t want heavy. So we took our 1.5″ thick countertop over to the CNC and Cut a checkerboard out of the bottom side. I didn’t weigh before and after but I imagine we cut the weight roughly in half by doing this. Finished product is very light, but still 1/2″ thick with reinforcement ribs left over from the hollowing at a full 1.5″ thickness.
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After that it was in for a test fit:

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Looks good to me!
Notice that tiny little hole to the right of the sink? That’s where at the last possible moment the CNC machine decided it wanted to go absolutely batshit nuts and bore all the way through the countertop. I ran screaming across the shop and stopped it, but not before it had pierced a nice 3/4″ hole through the top. Shit.

So, as has been a kind of theme for this build we decided to embrace the chaos and do something cool with it.
Our countertops are finished in Conversion Varnish, which is a beautiful light waterproof spray finish. The drawback being that you can’t cut on it. After a lot of thought and ideas we finally decided to recess an end grain Oil finished cutting board into the countertop to cover the hole there and to make a nice work surface. It turned out wonderfully and has been a really great addition. We have a center island at home that is butcher block as well so it’s nice to have a prep/cutting/chopping surface in the GMC as well.
We’ll skip all the finishing details here, it’s pretty basic: Sand, Spray, Sand, Spray, Sand, Spray, Done.

For those interested in DIY here, we make custom tops of all sizes. We do a lot of countertops for high end tour buses for musicians, GM bus reno’s and of course homes so if you’re interested don’t hesitate to contact us. (/shameless plug)

And here’s the finished product:

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The spice holder up there in the bathroom window is also CNC cut to accept those spice holders, so they don’t rattle or fall going down the road.
 
Just saw this comment, my apologies!
They are nice for tolls and talking to folks out the window and I think they look better.
They are not however much if any better for airflow,. At speed with them open no air comes in, just a function of the shape of the coach nose, air goes around the windows. Maybe with wind wings they would be better

thanks, I was thinking it would be the opposite and have way too much airflow. Im considering them, do they open and close easily? it appears one could make them into power windows without too much hassle.

also, how hard would it be for you with that great wood work equipment to replicate the original GMC wood panels for use as replacement panels for folks restoring original layouts? I think there my be a small opportunity there with the right equipment.
 
thanks, I was thinking it would be the opposite and have way too much airflow. Im considering them, do they open and close easily? it appears one could make them into power windows without too much hassle.

also, how hard would it be for you with that great wood work equipment to replicate the original GMC wood panels for use as replacement panels for folks restoring original layouts? I think there my be a small opportunity there with the right equipment.

It's my understanding that the later ones do. Mine are the early ones and have a poor handle placement that causes the window to bind. They wanted me to pay for new handles to fix the issue which is absurd so I haven't messed with them.

I see no way to convert them to power windows, there's nowhere to hide a motor, no mechanism to connect w motor to, etc.

Cutting pieces out would be no problem, but matching veneer from the 70s is next to impossible.
 
I like the fact that one could stick their head out of them much easier than the original. If they were defective and had to be updated to correct defects then I would have to agree that charging for the updated parts is not cool.


you know, I recall reading on GMCnet (while searching for something totally off that subject lol) that someone had three huge rolls of the original laminate that they had acquired from GMC somehow when the motorhome production cam to a halt. it was a ten year old post that I wont even attempt to find again but I do wonder whatever became of that.

could/would you replicate your existing layout easy enough if someone were interested in purchase? its really is nice!
 
I think we have that same faucet in our house! Your coach is looking gorgeous so far; I wish I could see it in person.