[sameyeam]

Time for an update, its been a year :-(. I took the truck apart down to a rolling frame, had the frame blasted and epoxy painted. Got it home and put new leaf springs in the rear as those were all busted up. Acquired a vortec 350 out of a 98 suburban. Cleaned that up and painted it, slapped a speedway motors vortec carb manifold on it, also have a GM hei distributor to put in. Bolted that setup to the old th350 and put that back in with new motor mounts. Also got a stainless steel line set from bent tubes, really happy with the quality of that. Then the truck got kicked out of the garage for the summer as we needed the space for a graduation party for my daughter and the 2 additional snowmobiles we acquired. Well as of a week ago those got the boot and the truck came back in and we mounted the very clean texas cab on the frame with new rubber components. That all went pretty good, i am concerned about clearance for the HEI dizzy cap. might have to clearance the firewall a bit as i am not finding any type of low profile cap to put on. Going through the steering components trying to get those decent and gonna be getting the brakes hooked up soon to see what we have there. I rebuilt them when i acquired the truck but they didnt feel up to snuff so maybe new lines and a new master cylinder will help that otherwise there are other issues. A vortec swap is fairly straight forward, there are some things that i didnt know that i am hoping work out with putting a regular steel timing cover on with a non vortec harmonic balancer and getting the belts to all work good. they seem like they line up but we will have to see. also have to come up with a circuit to run an electric fuel put because vortec blocks arent drilled for a mechanical pump and i am unsure if the stock cam has the lobe to actuate it anyway but an electric pump is fine. thats where were at for now, just trying to get a running driving project again with a decent/safe chassis underneath it.