Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Awesome build. I love the color, too. Good job on the engine. Look forward to seeing how you like the FI set-up.

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Now that the chassis was a roller I took the opportunity to bring it down to the exhaust shop to get a front section put together. Again I need to keep this smog legal, so using a single CARB-approved Magnaflow catalytic converter. Since this is a cruiser we went with a stock-style routing using 2.5" downpipes into a combined 3" into the cat and on to a Flowmaster FlowFX muffler. I'm hoping this muffler choice won't be too loud. Without the bed on the chassis, we decided to wait on routing the system post-muffler.

After getting everything welded up, I sent the whole system out to get Jet-Hot coated...it seems I don't have any photos of that though :(

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

One thing about the Ridetech rear setup I didn't like was how bulky the axle brackets are; I think this is mainly due to it being a bolt-on kit. Since we don't have that restriction, we took some time to fab up our own bracket assembly utilizing the Ridetech arms and panhard bar.

I had the 12-bolt rear rebuilt locally in San Jose. We went with a 3.42 gearset and a Tru-trac limited slip unit, and the whole assembly was powdercoated to match the chassis.

At this point I bolted up the first of a few different rear disc brake kits I've moved through. The setup pictured is from Little Shop Mfg, and is a super nice kit! It includes everything needed to convert a 12-bolt over to discs, comes with lines, and everything is nicely powdercoated. The kit uses the small diameter 79-85 Cadillac rear calipers (which include e-brake). Unfortunately I had too much contact with the 15x10 wheel setup I want to run on this truck.

After a LOT of trial and error, I found that front discs from a 90's era Astro van have the correct bolt pattern and enough offset to put the caliper away from the contact points in the rim. Amazingly enough I came across Captainfab's post in the vendor marketplace where he sells brackets that work with the astro rotors. Unfortunately this needs the 76-78 Caddy large diameter calipers, so I had to find a set of those too. Even with this setup I still needed to do a small amount of grinding on the caliper face AND run a 1/16" spacer for clearance, but all is well now.

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Looks amazing!

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Been checking out your build!!
Very clean!! I like where your going with it!

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Now that the chassis is a roller, and after one last drive, it was time to start the tear down and swap over.

Something I don't think has been previously mentioned is we are converting the cab over to factory air conditioning. This required tearing apart everything under dash as well. This was also a good time to prep for hiding the MSD boxes.

I'm running a MSD 6AL spark unit in this project so eventually I can have ignition timing controlled by the Atomic EFI. I found a good place for the 6AL box mounted to the side of the brake pedal box, and the long extension on the throttle pedal bracket made a perfect place for mounting the Atomic EFI power module.

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Very nice! Seeing your username reminded me of the stepped bed you did for the 74 Sierra Grande. I had to go browse through that thread again too.

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

My buddy Wes said he'd never do another one again...then last fall he did one for another friend's 72 that came out just as nice!

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Awesome work. I enjoy following your build. Thank you for sharing.

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Nice. I bet he'd have a lot of fans if he was willing to document one. There's something about it that makes it stand out compared to most body mods I've seen.

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Been so busy lately I haven't had time to continue with the progress that has happened. All these photos are about 6 months behind where its at right now, which I've put just over 1000 miles on it before it got taken back apart 😃

Anyway, back to the point where I started moving body panels over...

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

...and finally made it to the cab and bed swap...

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

This was also a great time to test fit the cab to the frame with the engine in place; I was quite nervous because the engine seemed so far back in the chassis, however it all fit in with a few millimetres to spare 😃

You can see in the photos how rough the firewall was. I left the cab at the shop for my buddy to deal with the rust repair, opening for factory A/C, and paint.

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

...so the remainder of the "truck" came back home with me. This was also the first time I got to see how low it will sit in the back. As the days went on I realized just how low the front was sitting, and had to adjust spring rates and crank up the coilovers to get a drivable ride height. After a few hundred miles the rear has come down about 3/4" from these photos.

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Love this truck! Are you planning on having it back out to C10Intervention this year? By the way you’ve been nominated for truck of the month, and you’re currently in the lead!

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Yep, if the intervention happens then we'll be there with this one and a couple of others that we've been wrenching on the last few months.

Very cool about being nominated for ToTM! Since this build thread still hasn't caught up to current progress I'll drop a teaser photo of the current state.

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Sorry if you’ve already mentioned it, but what’s the specs on your wheel and tire combo?
Truck looks awesome

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Wheels are from The Wheelsmith and are their OEM replicas in "triple chrome". Prior to the chassis swap I was running:

Front: 15"x8" with 4" backspace, 245/60R15
Rear: 15"x10" with 5" backspace, 295/50R15

After the swap (like in that last picture above):

Front & Rear: 15"x10" with 5" backspace, 295/50R15

It took a lot of work (and some spacers) to get the 10s all around on this truck but I really like the "square setup on a square" look 😃

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

I didn’t think it was possible to get a 15” wheel with a 5” backspace up front.
I had a set and they hit the control arm.
What’s the secret to making them fit?

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Yep they won't work on a stock chassis. We had to shave down the lower ball joint cup on the chopping block control arm, plus their track width is (I believe) 1.25" narrower per side, and I'm running 1/2" spacers...form over function LOL

Everything clears and there is no rubbing, but turning radius is not very good (some would say terrible).

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

beautiful paint color and truck! what brand paint did you use? Dupont? PPG? etc

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

I'm not sure what my painter used to be honest. It wasn't PPG cause after he was a few coats into it he was regretting that he hadn't started with PPG product 😃

If anybody can take one learning lesson from me, its to not use cheap product when shooting this color!

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

The C10 Intervention crunch was real this year. I took apart the front end a couple of months back so we could measure up for modified inner fenders, and as per usual, we waited until the last week to get them painted and fit back up.

The goal with these inners was to keep it as close to factory look as possible, including possible storage for the factory jack 😊 But also allow full wheel travel with the significantly lowered stance. I believe these ended up about 1.5" taller than stock height. They were a LOT of effort to build but really finishes things out under the hood!

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Finally I could put together all the last pieces that have been sitting in boxes for the past year. I'm using a charcoal canister off of an earlier square that only has two ports, which works great with the Atomic EFI system. Still need to figure out the jack mounting brackets which work with the two holes in this new fender...the '77 original ones used 2 brackets with 2 bolts through each. Remaining to-do is paint the underside of the hood and final alignment of everything.

After driving back from the C10 intervention in 100+F heat I thought having cold air coming into the motor might be a nice thing to do, so I also put in a factory snorkel to finish out the look. Regardless of that, the truck ran amazingly well with the heat, and the A/C kept me cool the whole way. Glad to have this back and ready for more miles to be put on!

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Well done.

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Man, such a detailed beautiful build. I'd be scared to drive it! haha.

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Ive stopped by a few times during his build and I have to say his level of detail in all his builds is nothing but top notch. I honestly feel like I don't know what I am doing when I look over his work.

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Mikey, very cool build thread.... I am glad that I read through it.;) now you guys have to do one on the blue truck from Dino's!:metal:

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

I have a thread on the blue truck we had at Dino's, but it hasn't been updated since when we completed the Cannonball truck in 2016: http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=684425

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Engine bay is finally complete!

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Got the factory jack and tools to fit with the modified fenders 😃

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

You did too good a job! Nobody will have a clue what they're looking at.

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

LOL yeah so true. There were a lot of questions from people when we had it at Dino's last weekend.

Speaking of that...a few photos from our booth at the Git Down.

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

I had the interior apart again to finish wiring up a hidden stereo, so I took the opportunity to add a few more factory options.

First up is the (U16) Tachometer...

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

...saw this ad for (K30) factory speed and cruise control in the parts section, so I took a chance on retrofitting it.

I had to design up some custom brackets to adapt the cruise servo to this motor, as the factory rear throttle/cruise bracket doesn't work with the vortec-style intake mounting. Rest of the install was pretty straight forward with the exception of having to drill a 1 5/16" hole through the freshly painted firewall haha. I also couldn't find a correct length upper speedo cable being reproduced, so I had one made up by speedometercablesusa.com, which was nice as they added the factory grommet to it so I didn't have to wrestle that afterwards...

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

...also finished out the front Silverado appearance with the (V22) deluxe grille.

Luckily Jeff (azpartslocators) had a set of the grille trim still, so he polished them up and sent them over. I masked them up and sprayed the centers trim black.

It's a subtle detail but I like the layered stainless/chrome look.

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

I love this truck. I'm kinda odd tho, I like the straight six in it :)

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

You still continue to blow me away with your details and quality. Great job on the cruise control! Where did you get your tachometer? It looks perfect.

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Thanks! I ended up putting together two tach clusters mixed from OE parts and new stuff from LMC. Not sure what to do with the second one yet...perhaps for the next project 😊

Re: Mikey's 77 shortbox - Greenie
 

Well over the holidays I had the truck back apart again to put in a new steering rack I got from Flaming River. The reasoning behind this was an attempt to get more turning angle with a longer travel rack. These 79-93 racks that Flaming River builds in-house have about one inch of additional travel over a standard Fox-body rack. They also use the better o-ring style fittings from the newer cars, and come pressure tested.

I was hoping to keep this a bolt-in swap, but the one downside to these racks IMO is they feature Flaming River's "power" connection input shaft, instead of a standard 3/4 36-spline shaft. This meant a minimum of a new lower u-joint...but once the new rack was in the truck I found there to be more interference problems with my steering shaft setup. I ended up redoing most of the steering linkage, and also clearancing the frame some more.

While I was in there I also swapped the generic power steering hoses with some new ones that I made up from Earls pressure hose and fittings. The generic ones were far too long for this application and I had concerns about stress from the severe bends to get it lined up, so the fresh hose was an added bonus.

The end result was well worth the effort, as I've regained most of the original turning radius. No more 3-point manoeuvres just to get into a parking spot. An added bonus is the new rack is significantly smoother than the reman unit that I had in prior.