First off, I'd like to say that this will not be much of a build thread. My truck has already been "built" enough and this will be about the road to recovery and being street legal. So anyway...
My dad and I picked the truck up about 5 months ago for $1000. Seemed a decent price, the engine started up and ran good, and he said he drove it for a couple months before getting his new truck, so we bit...It's a 1980 custom deluxe cab and bed on a 1981 K10 frame, and it has a '74 350 in it out of their old Camaro from the best I can figure. You talk about seeing builds so bad even the hillbillies cry? Well, this guys thought process worked so that if something originally used four bolts to hold it in place, one should do it just fine, and that is how the entire truck was put together...
- He had supposedly added a 2" body-lift to it to clear the transfer case, but this consisted of placing home-made metal spacers on the stock bushings. A proper kit is on the list, but yet to come.
- '74 350>TH350>NP203>Can't quite remember the axles, but I'll get 'em up next time I'm under it. And he wanted it to be a mud bogger?
- The tranny was dry when I got it home, and the oil looked like it hadn't been changed in years. Well maintained my crack. It recieved a flush and fresh fluids.
- Changed out my spark plugs and immediately it ran great. Gave whole new life to what I ws beginning to think was a POS.
- Next came a new distributor, rotor, and plug wires. I find out after doing this that it may idle great, but under load it sputters and dies.
- A brand new Holley 4-barrel carb replaces the GM 2-Jet our "friends" had put on. Sputtering and dieing gone.
- A shiny new tach is found under the dash.
- All lights, bulbs, and lenses replaced. No wiring problems, just burnt out. Hooray!
- Replaced the wiper motor, but it still won't work. Not getting any power to it (That's funny, pretty sure it was getting power before we replaced it?).
- Radiator leaks like CRAZY! Have to pull the garden hose out everytime I wanna run the darn thing.
- Steering box leaks quite a bit and has A TON (quarter turn of the wheel) of slop, but I just learned today it should have a set screw to take that out. Still leaks though, so it'll probably get replaced.
- Front seals on both diff's leak. Need to be replaced.
- The front output on my transfer case does not put ANYTHING out, and the speedo output doen't do anything either. Hopefully it's an easy fix, but it may get scrapped for an NP205 (It's a 203).
- Brakes are horrible, and one rotor has has a nasty deep groove in it. Rotor 'll be replaced and brakes will be "fixed".
- Parking brake components on the frame were completely missing, and the locked up cable from the cab was just dragging on the ground. After spending an hour feeing it up and attaching it to the pedal, we realised it was too short to even reach the mount on the frame. Hopefully we can find a model year with a longer cable and we'll be good to go.
- It seems I've also purchased a lot of misc. screws lately. Remember that 4 bolts:1 bolt policy? My Transfer case has 2 bolts half-tightened holding it in, I've got two out of six bolts on my front bumper, 2/3 on one side and one on the other on my rear, and am missing all but one bottom spacer on my cab mounts.
- Oh, and the A/C housing has a huge hole busted in it, but accoring to the guy I bought it from the A/C works great.
- On a good note, I put a Pioneer CD/MP3 Player and new door speakers in it as soon as I got it.
That's everything I can think of that we've done/needs to be done for now, more to come later. If you have any thoughts, please let me hear 'em. And I expect full opinions once I get pics up! Lol, thanks for reading.
PICS WILL COME LATER TOO.
03-21-2011, 10:19 PM
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