72 C20 "Old Mustard"

[Mustard72]

Also got the "new" roller, as promised, on Monday. They included a core support with the deal, as well, mostly because I think they just might not have wanted to remove it. It's in better shape than the original one from Mustard, with only rot on the inner fender connection flange under the battery tray. It's a GMC version, though, which I think is only different because of the headlight mounts, which I think I can just swap around. Drill out the spot welds and either weld or bolt the chevy one to the GMC core support. I might have to have the front clip somewhat assembled to do this to make sure it goes back together with the proper alignment. Anybody have any input on this?

I now have the rear axle removed and am working on replacing the midship cross member. The new roller has the larger midship bearing, and the driveshaft that was included is basically junk. The one from Mustard was just all rebuild a couple of years ago and is essentially new, so I'll reuse that one and it appears to be a different cross member. So I'll yank the one off of the old Mustard frame. The front cab mounts look better on Mustard, as well. The rear axle on the new frame is a Dana 60 with 4.10 gears, which are much better for what we're planning with Mustard than the 4.57's in the Eaton, I think.

The leaf spring frames (which the "new" frame is) don't have the cladding on the inside of the frame rails above the rear axles like the coil spring frames. This appears to be much less problematic from a corrosion standpoint. The "new" frame has some rust issues, as it turns out, but nothing like the original coil spring frame.

[Mustard72]

Here are some shots of this "new" frame. It's ended up needing quite a bit of work, too, but nothing near as bad as the old one. The one pic tries to show the deep pitting on the bottom of the rail just behind the mid-ship bearing crossmember. I replaced that. I thought I took a picture, but apparently I didn't save it. The crossmember between the front leaf spring mounts was pretty rotten on the ends and the frame showed some rot where this cross member connected, as well. So I replaced the rotten sections of frame rail and actually boxed those little sections so I can mount a heavy angle cross member. Cut, cut, cut, grind, grind, grind, weld, weld, weld. It's getting there, though.

Anything I cut with a torch looks like it was cut by Og or Thak. I should come up with a straight guide for the torch or something. But, it's on the bottom of the truck, and I'll be able to laugh about it in the future when crawling around under there. I should probably grind the crude cavemanish cut edges smoother...

Then the last pic is of the engine at the engine builders. He's obviously almost done with it. 9.0:1, over 0.030, new exhaust valve seats, valve guides, HEI ignition, Summit equivalent of the Melling MTC-1 cam, double roller timing chain. Nothing really fancy, but it should be a great engine for pulling a horse trailer around with. Dyno break in either next week or the week after that. The engine builder builds lots of race motors around here and has an excellent reputation. My little 350 looks kind of meek compared to the built 440 Mopar in the background.