Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

What's up guys, thought I'd start a build thread on here since I just joined up. I miss forums and am glad there's still a few active ones around. I've got an '85 GMC Sierra Classic I picked up a couple years back and have been slowly building it up. It's not my first C10 or classic but it's been the most fun yet.

My first one was this '85 Blazer I picked up in '14. 350/T350/33s. Drove that through snowmageddon (Georgia lol) and sold it in the spring of '15. Should've kept it, paid $3300 and all it needed was one floor patch and a little repair on the tailgate. Everything worked great and had a fresh crate 350 in it.
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Then my cousin's husband sold me this '70 SWB stepper 6cyl/3OTT for $1 later in 2015. I just did maintenance and drove it that way for a couple years. Got married, bought a house and it had to go to pay some bills :(
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Re: Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

Then got divorced a few years later and decided I needed a project to help keep me sane. Was browsing FB marketplace and saw this two tone blue truck and fell in love immediately. You hardly ever see this color combo and blue is my favorite color so I had to have it. Worn out 305/T350/2.73 combo, PW, PL, cruise (non-functional), tilt, loaded. It was originally a longbed that this guy paid to have cut down, paint spotted in and clearcoated. There was even a hole in the floor (filled with aluminum foil and bondo lol) for a 5th wheel ball. This thing apparently was used to haul horses.
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A buddy of mine found a picture of it, pre-cut, on FB from the shop that did the chop
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Re: Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

A few more from when I first bought it

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Got tired of the torque thrusts so I sold them and picked up a set of rallies with trim bands, center caps and stock size 235/75/15s
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And picked up a tonneau cover for some extra dry storage
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Then wire brushed and fogged on some GM light blue metallic over where they'd cut the bed and removed the center stake pockets
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Re: Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

It's time to leave work, so I'll continue later on lol

Re: Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

You’ve had some sweet rides there buddy! Digging the new truck.

Re: Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

The interior was pretty nice, just needed a good cleaning. Everything worked, windows were slow but functional. Locks worked, AC and heat would run you out, tilt works. The only thing that didn't was the cruise because one of the bellows was torn.
Before:
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After:
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Re: Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

And a shot of the engine bay as purchased:
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So I bought this truck with the intention of LS swapping it. I'd become good friends with the guys from United by Trucks and the local C/10 Club of Ga and several of them had LS swapped trucks. My now good buddy Ron (Two Trucks Ron if y'all follow UBT) had a 5.3/4L60/3.73 '84 at the time and followed me up to a car show in Greenville, TN. He told me "I'll follow you cuz I know what it's like for a small block to keep up with an LS" :lol: Needless to say, after it would barely hold 35mph up the mtn, the swap got serious after that.

Started collecting all the parts I'd need that could work for any engine combo since I hadn't picked one up yet:
-Tejas Steelworks engine mounts, trans mount and fan shroud for dual 13" fans
-'87 fuelie tank from work (Auto Metal Direct)
-Spectra '87 fuelie sending unit
-AC Delco EP381 pump
-Vincos DIY AN line kit from Amazon (2 of them, for fuel and trans lines)
-Spal 13" fans (the middle of the road CFM rating since the top dogs were $100 more each)
-Speed Engineering 1 3/4" headers with their plug wires



We have a friend/customer of ours that runs a local junkyard so I went to see him one Saturday to see what he had for LS motors and came home with this out of his personal project stash. It's an '06 LH6 out of an Envoy Denali with 104k miles on it. These are an aluminum gen4 block and rods, flat top pistons, 799 heads, 10:1 compression and a TBSS style intake. That with a 4L65E and the E40 computer. They're rated for ~320-335hp depending on your source :metal: I had already stripped the mechanical fan/accessories/manifolds off and washed it at this point. **edit** IDK why it rotates some of my pictures :facepalm:
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Since I had the motor, the next round of parts was ordered:
-BTR Stage 4 V2 truck cam
-LS6 valve springs
-Chromoly stock length pushrods
-new valve stem seals
-valve spring tool
-lapping compound
-cam handle
-timing set
-half a set of lifters to get rid of the DOD
-Circle D 3000 stall converter
-PSI Conversions wiring harness

Once the cam stuff came in, I started the teardown on the engine. No shock, it was clean as can be. The bottom end rotated like butter so we didn't go any further, just rebuilt the top end, threw the cam in and reassembled it.
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Re: Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

Freshly assembled head
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Cam in and everything coated in assembly lube
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Taped up and primed
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First layer of Chevy red-orange
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Had to throw everything on it to see the final product! :bann:
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Re: Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

Thanks! I've had a bunch of cars and trucks over the years but these old Chevy trucks are my favorites

Re: Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

That's a well-kept truck. Glad you are having a good time with it.

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So now that the engine was finished up, time to yank the hurt 305

Hood off, starting disassembly
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Removed most anything that would get in the way/wasn't going to need
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Mid pull
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All out! Nasty ole lump in the corner of the shop (it's still there, 1.5yrs later lol)
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Pushed the truck out to the edge of the shop to clean/degrease the engine bay
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The bay really wasn't horrible, I've certainly seen worse
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All clean
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Back in the corner with some of the aftermath lol
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Fresh coat of paint
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Then up on cribbing to start painting the frame/Raptor lining the underside of the cab
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Re: Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

Then I grabbed some various wire brushes to use in a drill to start wire wheeling the bottom of the cab clean. I knew this truck was solid when I bought it but man, not a SINGLE SPEC of rust anywhere, just dirt. I was blown away at how clean the inner rockers/inner cab corners were. Working at AMD, I constantly see squares with no rockers or cab corners left so this was a major win :bann:

These are looking at the passenger side inner rocker from the middle of the truck. Front of the truck is to the left.
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Then started applying the Raptor liner. Prepped with a final pass of a red scotchbrite and then a thorough wipe down of wax and grease remover. I used the aerosol cans they sell on Amazon. Took a chance on the blue but it was nowhere close to either of my colors. Oh well :dohh: It looks great underneath, even if it doesn't match.
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This shot is looking forward along the passenger side
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Then grabbed some VHT Chassis Black for the rails. I'm impressed with this stuff, laid down nice and dried to a nice sheen, not too shiny at all.
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Re: Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

Very nice.

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Bump

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Work and life have gotten crazy lately, haven't had a chance to update but I'll pick it up now.

So next was prepping the motor to drop it in. Pulled the front drive back off, filled the converter and got it all married up
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First try
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Turns out the Envoy PS reservoir was hitting the frame rail, keeping the motor from dropping all the way in
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Pulled that off for now and got 'er set in
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So much room with the TBSS/Envoy A/C compressor setup!
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Re: Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

Ok, serious question. Does anyone know why pictures keep being uploaded sideways? This is the only forum it does it on. I've uploaded these same pictures elsewhere with no issue

Re: Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

From what I understand, you want to shoot your photos landscape with the bottom of the phone to the right. You might PM a moderator and see if they can fix your photos. I'll see if I can repost the most recent five. You can probably do what I did and that is save the photos off the thread as posted, go into edit and spin them as needed and repost them. For whatever reason when you do that before posting them it doesn't seem to take. But all I did is save your photos to my phone, twist them, resave them on my phone, and then repost them and then delete them from my phone.

Re: Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

Sorry for dropping off the face of the earth guys. I somehow got logged off after that last post in June of '22 and couldn't get back in to save my life. Eventually gave up on it. Somebody sent me a link to check out on here and I just randomly tried again yesterday and managed to get in! Idk what happened but I guess I'll continue on with the build thread lol. There's been quite a few exciting new changes since my last post :bann:

Re: Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

So the next thing to do was wiring...I hate wiring. I can run a harness no problem but tracing issues and combining original wiring with swap wiring is where I struggle. But with some help from my tuner buddy, I slowly got it all done. Ran the harness through the factory ESC hole and mounted the computer above the HVAC box. Also got my Tejas fan shroud set up and installed so I could tie that wiring in while I'm at it.

Re: Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

I'd also been getting parts in for the rear axle rebuild around that time. I ordered everything through Quick Performance. They have a killer package for the diff - it comes with all the bearings and seals, a Yukon Dura-Grip clutch style locker and your choice of spline count and ratio with Richmond Gears. I upgraded to the 30-spline and chose 3.90 gears. Also grabbed their matching axles, a T/A girdle cover and a 1350 yoke while I was at it.

Re: Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

I'm diggin it!

Re: Huck's 85 GMC shorty
 

So working for AMD and being one of the car show "carnie's" that's always travelling to shows, we have contacts all over. Joe from Squarebody Syndicate had reached out to our marketing manager to see if we'd throw in some sheetmetal for a build he had going on. My marketing guy mentioned my build and Joe told him to tell me to just go order some stuff from his website and I'd get a surprise in the mail. I didn't know what was coming, so I bought a whole bunch of stuff from him and wouldya looky there, he sent some of his Squarebody Syndicate Dakota Digital VHX's for me to try :jdp::D:D

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So I took 'em home and started wiring them up a couple weeks later. They were super simple to wire once I found the master schematic for the gauge plug for these trucks

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