1969 C10 Longbed BubbaTruck

[jamyers]

Anyways, the interior is now painted, and it came out pretty nicely if I do say so myself. We wet-sanded with 1000 and 2000 grit to kill off some orange-peeling on the dashboard, but I'm leaving the orange-peel on the door panels just because it's so uniform that it looks like I meant to do it that way for effect. Tell no one...

[jamyers]

Started on the interior wiring harness (from American Autowire, iirc). This is when I realized that the harness doesn't have anything for a voltmeter because the OEM gauge is an Ammeter and the new harness has no provision for an Ammeter (go figure, seems that it'd be easy enough to do...).

So I hacked up a $15 voltmeter from O'Reilly's autoparts and trimmed off the lower edge of the housing like the OEM gauge for lighting - I'm not using the supplied gauge light, hopefully the OEM gauge lighting will be sufficient.

I also cut the printed circuit board and drilled / ground the holed in the back of the instrument cluster housing to fit the new gauges flat spade terminals.
Then I used the cardboard insulating piece to insulate the mounting screw into the back of the new gauge, although I'm not sure it's needed.

The finished gauge looks close to stock, has numbers, and reads voltage instead of amps plus/minus. I know the white surround looks out of place, but I'm waiting until I get a battery hooked up to see how well the gauge illumination works at night. I can always go back in and paint it black.

[jamyers]

Finishing up the wiring harness, getting the wiper motor installed, heater controls and wires, defroster tubes (used 3" plastic/aluminum dryer vent hose from Lowe's), ignition switch, and all of the other misc wiring switches, lights, and stuff.

There USED to be a lot of room behind the dashboard, lol.

Note the green ashtray, it's the original and I didn't repaint it on purpose, just cleaned and lubed it up. Bubba needs a reminder of what it used to look like.

[jamyers]

After getting the glovebox and door installed, along with a pair of 4" speakers in the dash center, it's time to mock up the seats. These are FM600 Wrecking Yard specials, $120 for the pair and console. I know they don't match, but after looking through every truck in the place (120 acres or so), I don't care.

[jamyers]

Brother-in-law Bill and son Bruce helped get the windshield and newly-tinted backlight installed with new LMC gaskets.

Thanks to this video from Precision (https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=SOU_0HpS7To) and lots of discussion threads here, it went far easier than I was dreading.

We used paracord to pull the gasket over the pinchwelds, started at the top of the windshield and at the bottom of the backlight - getting the sharp corners done first seems to help make the rounded corners easier.

For tools, we used a wooden paint stir stick that I shaved the edges down on, and a cotter-pin puller for the hook tool.

I'm SO glad we don't have the chrome trim, this sure looks easier to do without it!

[jamyers]

Good Grief, it's been far too long since I updated this thread!

Got the Fenders, Hood, and Cowl into the garage and makeshift paint-booth, pounded out more dents, applied body filler, sanded, applied filler putty, sanded, more putty, more sanding, then more sanding, then finally a coat of primer - and more sanding.

[jamyers]

Did the same for the Body, lots of scars on the bed sides to sand/putty/sand/etc...

No wonder body work is so danged expensive, the hours are crazy!

[jamyers]

Apply the filler putty as thin as you can, then sand with a long board. Ugh....

Putty on:



Sand it down smooth:

[jamyers]

Same with the hood and fenders. High-solids Primer, sand, then filler putty, then sand, rinse and repeat.

After awhile I start to wonder just how compulsive am I, and how straight does this metal really NEED to be, lol?

[jamyers]

But then I finally (August/September) got back in gear, and after shooting everything with a final coat of primer, a light sanding, and a nice calm day (a rare thing around here), started actually painting it green I believe it's GM #503 "Light Green", the original color that Bubba left the factory in.

(Sorry, but my iphone makes the colors look different)

[jamyers]

Driver's side:


Door jambs and Door insides are green as well, the metal door panels are White:



Gonna be a "Custom 5-tone" interior, haha - white/green/black/tan/gray

[jamyers]

Jacked Bubba up onto 4 ramps (facing each other to keep it from even trying to roll away) and dropped the TH400 transmission. WHY is that transmission crossmember bolted in with 4 bolts on each side, and WHY is it captive inside the frame rails? Grrr.... GM and their "Production Engineering"

And yes, I know there are still dents in the bed. For Pete's Sake, I had to stop somewhere, and it's 90% better than it was when we started! Besides, this is going to be driven by teenagers, and I'm sure it will get some more dents / scratches. I'm going to leave them to the next go-round of body work...

[jamyers]

That was/is one nasty and dirty, mud and coleche-caked transmission! It's been painted black, which leads me to think it's been rebuilt at some point (no surprise given the years), but the tag shows it to be a '69 Chevy Pickup tranny, so it might even be original to the truck. I need to remember to look for the VIN stamping and compare.

As dirty as it was on the outside, the insides looked decent - although the fluid had this streaky white stuff in it, I'm thinking it's water that got in and hadn't mixed with the fluid completely? Looking in the pan, just the usual thin layer of "stuff" on the bottom, no apparent metal, filings, or anything that would make me think the tranny is junk.

Background: As far as we know, the tranny worked, but it leaked fluid like a sieve and shifted REALLY hard. I'm suspecting the vacuum lines and or modulator.



The rear Band lugs have been epoxied over for some reason, and the epoxy has cracked, likely due to years and years. I took a drill with a wire brush to the epoxy, and apparently the case plugs under there are pitted and may be leaking, so I cleaned them up and put some JB Weld back over them, and I'll be watching that area for leaks once it's back in.

[jamyers]

The insides of the trans look nice and clean. It took a day and a half, but I got all the external seals, gaskets, and o-rings locally. Rant: With all of the millions of these transmissions that GM built, and as long-lived as they are, and with the 4L80 being basically the same trans but with an overdrive... WHY DOESN'T ANYBODY STOCK PARTS???

[jamyers]

SO anyways... while it was apart, I checked everything I could, like input shaft runout, torque converter thrust clearance, etc. I also found that the Vacuum Modulator was leaking, it wouldn't hold 20 inches of vacuum more than the 30 seconds, it lost about 2-4 inches a second. Also, the vacuum modulator valve in the trans was sticking, it was only moving maybe 3/16" and was hanging up at the ends of its travel. I worked it back and forth awhile, and finally worked it out, then put a tiny bit of carb cleaner on it, reinserted it, worked it back and forth some more until it moves freely, then removed / cleaned / oiled / reinstalled it. Hopefully that will correct the harsh shifting issue.

While I had it apart, I removed the valve body. The fluid inside, and the various valves all looked great. I reinstalled it using the 3-piece spacer plate from Trans-Go, part of their Shift Reprogramming kit. Didn't drill any of the passages, so it's their "Level 1" out of 3 for shift speed, plus their VB plate allows for full pressure to the Primary Clutches for much better holding capability.

All new external seals, o-rings, gaskets. New Vacuum Modulator and filter, and buttoned the pan up with some "Right Stuff" gasket adhesive.

[KRamsey07]

looks like a good start to me ... good to get them kiddos involved !!!! Have fun with it

[jamyers]

Thanks! It's been a good project so far for both the pickup and the kids.

[jamyers]

Started putting the doors back together, beginning with new seals out of a '91 Dodge Dakota from FM600 Wrecking Yard, $20 bucks for both sides. Gave them a bath, and trimmed about 5 inches, and they go right in very nicely. Profile of the seals:

[jamyers]

New mirror and base, old handle w/ new gaskets. No locks yet, don't have keys - need to either get rekeyed or replaced.



New Vent Window rubber (what a pain), Vent Window handles, inner and outer window felts / seals, glass channel, and glass seal. Thanks to this forum for some AWESOME tips on getting all the pieces back together in the simplest way!

[jamyers]

Finished the door inside, complete with new chrome trim, handles, arm rests. The chrome bits along the floor are yet to be screwed down.

[jamyers]

Back under the hood, we cleaned like mad, masked and painted the engine and did some repainting some body parts that got oversprayed body color

[jamyers]

Installed the Quadrajet, Ignition, and it's starting to look like an engine!

[jamyers]

We ran into a problem with 2 brand-new Pertronix II billet distributors - NO SPARK! After MUCH testing, bench-testing, etc, we determined that either one would spark once, then no more until power was switched off, then back on for one spark. Called Pertronix customer support, and got a lengthy runaround.

Bottom line, Pertronix products apparently work great for some people, and not at all for others. And if it doesn't work for you, that's just your tough luck because they aren't very interested in doing much more than telling you that you must have wired it up wrong. GRRrrrrr....

So we cleaned up the old points-style distributor, put in some new Blue-Streak points, added in a ballast resistor, and the ignition is working very well.

Shown is the GM Part # stamped into the points distributor

[jamyers]

For the carburetor, I got a rebuild Quadrajet from my friend Mark Northcutt down near Boerne, TX ( http://www.quadrajetpower.com ). I highly recommend Mark's work, he's built two Q-jets for me and they both work great. Start like champs, run like scalded dogs, and there's nothing like that Q-jet roar when the enormous secondaries open up!

Picked up an air cleaner spacer from the classifieds on this board, Thanks again!

[jamyers]

The Q-jet is from a '67 Chevrolet, so I had to slightly modify the throttle rod to get a solid connection to the carb. Welded a washer on the rod a little back farther back than original, and then with a small nylon spacer, a spring/washer/cotter pin, it's good to go!