74 K10 Honey Badger Build Log

[Kolton5543]

I bought a '74 K10 Cheyenne in the beginning of January. The story goes I have a '92 Caprice. It was my first car with a TBI 305 and 700r4. I bought a '95 Caprice with an LT1 initially to use as a parts car but it was too nice to tear apart. A friend of mine wrecked the '92. After driving it for three months it got parked 200k+ miles and I fixed the '95. Two years later the '95 got some non-repairable frame damage and is time to be replaced. From the same guy that wrecked the '92 I bought the K10.

When he had pulled the original 350 and traded it for a torn down big block. He was going to put a 468 and TH400 into but then didn't. He bought another k10 with a 305 and SM465 and put the 468 in there instead. He then sold me the engine less truck to me for $500

Here it is when I brought it home.


I promptly removed TH350 and gave it to another friend and put it into his '81. I decided to use the 305 and 700r4 from the Caprice. I wanted the 700r4 for the lower first gear and the overdrive allowing me to cruise 75+ with reasonable gas mileage. I intended on replacing the 305 with something bigger later down the road.

There's a few ways to do the 700r4 swap. I could have moved the cross member back and re sized drive shafts or moved the engine mounts forward. I opted to go with the motor mounts because I am on a tight budget and re-sizing drive shafts is expensive. Also moving the engine forward would make it easier to access things at the rear of the engine. I tried to mate the NP203 to the trans using a 4WD out put shaft. I cut it short and turned it down to fit the t-case. I decided to not use it as the spline engagement was only about 5/8". It would work fine for a street queen but this is a toy and I'm afraid it would fail pretty quick. I decided to just get a conversion shaft from Advance Adapters instead. P/N 50-6900 Worked perfect. I moved the motor mounts 1 3/4" forward. Don't let anybody tell you its anything different. They lined up perfect. If I were to do it again I would slot the holes just to give me some room for fine tuning. The shift linkage hooked right in to the cars shift rail connector thingy just fine. I can manually shift into all gears except first. I have a lot of slop in my linkage though so your mileage may vary.

Moved motor mounts


The t-case shifter linkage hits the valve body of the 700r4 needs to be raised

I haven't found an easy way to install the VSS with out spending good money on one from JTR or something similar so I just havent done it yet but I will post when I figure something out.
I used two pieces of 2x2 1/8" angle iron with holes drilled 2" apart to raise the t-case shifter up.


Had to re-size the dog house a little to fit the shifter.

[Kolton5543]

I just reused the TBI harness and just powered it with a switched ignition circuit from the fuse box. The computer gets it's power from a junction block on the firewall. I used some self tapping screws to mount the ESC, MAP sensor, ECM fuse holder and Caprice junction block to the firewall.



For the fuel I bought a pump from Summit that was rated for 20 PSI it made only 5 PSI so it it didn't really run. It also had some weird issue where it would pulse a fuel injector every time it pulsed. It only did it with the key on engine off. Its an issue I never would have been able to solve if I wouldn't have removed it. I then bought a pump that was commonly used on many Ford vehicles. P/N E2000. I simply power it from the same source on the fuse block.



To regulate pressure I usually would have gone with an adjustable regulator but I couldn't find a decent one that was at a reasonable cost. I ended up just using a brass ball valve with a gauge on it connected into the return line. It isn't the most elegant solution but it works and cost only $10.



For a return line I just drilled a hole and installed a barb into the tank. I don't happen to have a picture of it. For the cooling system I just used the k10 radiator and hoses. They attached fine to the Caprice pump. I had to use a k10 thermostat housing though.

[Kolton5543]

Here it is when I finally got it going.


I decided I wanted some bucket seats so I installed seats from a '95 S10 Blazer that I had sitting around.


I just drilled a new hole in one of the holes and used the original mount in the cab for the front. The others I had to drill holes in the cab and put a spacer on the front inner legs.




I then tossed in a random 12" sub and box I had laying around between the two seats. It fit like a glove and make for a nice arm rest.

[Kolton5543]

After a few weeks of driving it a hose clamp broke causing it to overheat taking a head gasket with it. I tore it down to replace the gasket hoping the head/block wasn't warped/cracked and found that it had a broken ring on cylinder 8. It had low compression on that cylinder when I had originally parked it but I just thought it was worn rings. By the time I tore it down it had trashed the cylinder wall.



I didn't bother putting it back together and just pulled it. I soon found a TBI 350 from a '93 C1500. I bought it real quick for $250 with out first inspecting it for certain reasons. After getting it home I pulled the plugs and coolant poured out of cylinder 5. It was not only hydro locked but made as low as 30 PSI on three cylinders. Surprisingly, cylinder 5 made about 155 PSI. I'm gunna tear it down and inspect it. If it's any good I may rebuild it making it my first rebuild. The next day I bought the 305 from the was pulled from the k10 talked about earlier for 175. It made good compression but burns oil from leaking valve guides. I might swap the TBI heads over if they're still flat. It leaked oil from the intake manifold gasket but it didn't bother me as I swapped the TBI intake over and just re-drilled the center bolt holes on the manifold.

After getting everything prepped


After getting it all in the truck yesterday.


How it sits at the moment.


The 305 is only going to stay there till I get something else to take its place. It'll cruise at 75 but it takes some time to get there and chugs fuel while doing it. Around town though it gets around 15MPG which is quite surprising as the Caprice it all came from averaged 12MPG.

[Kolton5543]

So the 70s 305 died Friday. it ran good for maybe two days. The first time I went for a longer drive where it would get a good heat soak at higher speeds (about 15 miles) it started making some questionable noises. I took it to a friends house and looked at it briefly and set the base timing (why I drove it there). We didn't find the source of the noise but it sounded deep. On my way back home it started getting louder then a bit of squealing. After about two minutes of that it started loosing power then came to stop. It will still crank but super slow. The bottom end is not liking something. I suspect the killer was a combo of the balancer was not centered on the crank and it looks like the oil drains in the head may be a bit clogged and pumped all the oil into the heads and valley. I'll try to get it torn down and see what failed in the next day or two.

Good new is I had managed to possibly fix the 350. It made very low compression on 3 cylinders and one cylinder was locked on coolant. The engine was rebuilt with a .020" over bore and it has a tag from the builder. I pulled the heads to see what condition it was in and found the bores to be in near perfect shape. The cross hatching was still clearly visible. I suspected blown head gaskets from the low compression but the looked perfect. After further inspection I realized only the bottom end was rebuilt and the untouched heads were reused. I then noticed the exhaust valve on cylinder 1 was sunk into the seat being nearly flush with the surface of the combustion chamber. Cylinder 1 also made only around 30psi dry. I filled the chambers with ATF and found that every valve leaked some and the low compression cylinders leaked almost everything out of the exhaust valves. I then found that the coolant was entering the cylinder from a crack within the intake runner. I took apart the water pump and the impeller separated the from the shaft so my assumption is heat was the killer. The cam and lifters look to be in great shape so that gives me hope the crank and rod bearing are still good. Checked the deck for flatness and bolted the TBI 305 heads and checked compression and it brought all the cylinders back to good compression. After doing the math my compression ratio is going to be about 9.7 with the smaller chambers and the gaskets I had laying around so hopefully it'll run ok on cheap gas. I'm crossing my fingers that the hydro locked cylinder didn't wreck the bearing. I didn't find anything in the pan that looked concerning and the oil was in good shape. Im hoping to get it running and in the truck by tonight. Normally I would just take a bit more time on it but I have to get it going before I have to move again and that time is coming quick.

[Kolton5543]

Well I'm a bit late with an update (as usual) but here it is. I got the 350 in the truck around 11pm on the 21st and called it a night. I got back at it again around noon the next day and had it wired and plumbed by 2 and attempted to start it. It did. It fired up with no problems and ran nice and smooth. I drove it around a bit and was quite pleased. After it got to temp though it would no longer start. I didn't think anything about the 305 starter not being able to crank the bigger engine but that was a thing after heat soak became a factor. Sadly, I have a 350 starter but it requires a 168 tooth flex plate. I have one but due to laziness I opted to spend $120 on a mini starter as I didn't want to pull the engine again unless I really needed to. So a week later on the 28th I got the new starter in the mail and installed it. Started driving it around and it does great. The water pump started leaking from the weep hole so that got replaced. I was attacked by a damn mouse in the truck (he's still in the some where). The benefit of being attacked though is when I jumped out I found one of my missing cab mounts that fell off during one of the very first test drives. I don't know what the chances are of accidentally stopping on top of it in the middle of nowhere but I'm sure I need to buy a lottery ticket. I've been driving it to work all week and have done some longer drives with probably close to 200 miles and it hasn't had a problem. Its way faster and seems to be averaging 15ish mpg combined cty/hwy. Bad news is it does detonate a bit. The knock sensor plug fell off once and it ran terribly with out it. After it was up to temp I tried cranking it with the key off (no spark) and it fired a couple of times on residual fuel in the intake. That was with 87 gas though so hopefully running 91 will help with that. It also has a 195 thermostat in it now and runs around 200. That's high for me and I'm gunna put at most of a 180. Hopefully the cooler stat will help remedy this. I'll try to get some pics of the old heads because that's what people like. Also gunna maybe start tearing into the last 305 tomorrow because I'm broke and cant afford to work on anything else.