A daily driver, fixer-upper thread

[Lugnut64052]

I have a cousin who has a pretty decent plain-jane '68 C10, which he bought in about 1980. One of those ubiquitous light green ones, and was his daily driver for 20 years. It started out life as a 6 cylinder, 3 speed. About 15 years ago we happened onto a '69 $200 donor truck and turned it into a smallblock 4-speed over a Thanksgiving weekend. The engine was pretty well worn out, but he drove it that way anyway until it got to smoking so bad it looked like a mosquito fogger going down the road. Right about then we happened onto a 1990 $700 TBI donor truck. I got about half-way into swapping the TBI into it and got stalled. Bunch of life, etc, started happening, plus I had some installation issues I hadn't worked through yet. So my cousin's truck has been sitting in my garage for nearly 10 years. Last summer I was cleaning shop and sweeping around it as usual, and thought, "I gotta either get this thing done or haul it to the scrapper, one or the other."

So, I went in the house, fired up Google and started hunting for some information. Came upon this truck forum, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Sat up probably half the night reading. And reading. And reading some more. Got stoked about finishing up the '68. What I didn't count on was getting all fangled fired up about getting one for myself. My dad had one of those ubiquitous light green '69s when I was a kid. I had always liked them and finally got to thinking, "well, why the heck not." So I started surfing the local Craigslist.

About a month later I bought a '72 C20 Custom Camper for pretty cheap. It had been a very nice truck, but the previous owner . . . in fact probably several previous owners had run it down so far it was finally dumped. Lots of broken, rigged, missing, wrong and abused parts and systems throughout the whole truck. It started and drove . . . sort of. I did make it home with it . . . barely. Figured it'd be a lot of fun to fix it up and so far it has been.

Here it is the day I got it home. That green truck is my cousin's C10.

[Lugnut64052]

My plan is to basically restore it back to a bone stock daily driver with a few upgrades here and there for better reliability, then have fun using it as a work truck/daily driver.

It had on it some cheapie headers which were leaking badly, some steel packs which the whole back half of were rotted off and missing, some chrome valve covers, the wrong air cleaner can, part of the choke linkage had been removed from the carburetor . . . well, you get the idea. First thing I did was pull the engine and start hunting up O.E. parts to put back on it. The engine is a 3970010 block and seems to run fine, so I'm going with it. I didn't bother to find or look up the front number to see where it came from, but it had a late '70's throttle cable bracket on it, with the throttle cable and the TV cable both zip-tied to it. Fairly fresh orange paint-- looks like a couple of years old rebuild.

I hunted up some rams horns and put some fresh studs in them, then started putting plug wires on it. Also found some stock valve covers, and screwed a new temperature sending unit into the head.

[Lugnut64052]

Two sets of '75 Corvette plug wires with the four longest ones sorted out of both sets. I did run the front pairs down behind the motor mounts, but I shouldn't have to change them very often.

An early mockup. Bolt holes in the manifold are still full of mud dauber nests.

[Lugnut64052]

Got the plug wire heat shields and rail clips from LMC.

The rail clips are just hanging there by some longer bolts in this pic. I found I had to cut some pieces of thick wall tubing and space them down a little to get them to sit properly. They didn't fit into the turned down edge of the pan rail quite right. I think I ended up cutting the bushings about a half-inch long, spacing them down by that amount, and then they worked fine.

[Lugnut64052]

Zip tied some 3/4" split loom on the wires where they lay behind the starter.

Put a heat shield on the solenoid too.

[Lugnut64052]

Then on up the back side.

I know this isn't how the stock wires were laid on there, but it ended up working out good and they're practically invisible with the engine in the truck.

I fabbed a couple of tabs and bolted them onto the holes in the end of the head and used some parts store wire looms to contain them.

[Spray-Bomb]

Sweet

[Lugnut64052]

Originally Posted by Spray-Bomb

Sweet

Thanks, Spray-Bomb!

[nuke1]

wowsers, looks like you got somework done on her there, coming right along, whe will definelty pull or haul anything.

[Lugnut64052]

Thanks, nuke1. I've already done an enormous amount of work to it that I haven't shown. Didn't take good pictures all along like I should have. Still got a few to put up, and I'll keep better track as I go along from here.

Still looks like a piece of junk, but it's very fun to see it gradually come back to life from being so far gone. Very satisfying to take a seemingly worn out part or system, work it all through, and end up with something that's fully functional and gonna last for a good long time again.

[Lugnut64052]

I hooked up the CS style alternator that came with the serpentine drive. As a jumping off point on how to do it I studied this thread by toddtheodd which explains how to get an SI style going.

You connect your original brown wire to the #1 terminal on the SI. When the #1 terminal sees power, it turns the unit on.

The #2 terminal senses system voltage so it knows how much power to put out. A lot of people make a short jumper and connect it right to the output stud as toddtheodd did, but while doing research I happened onto this article over at MAD Electrical. I now understand why the #2 wire originally goes clear over to the red wire junction, which is several feet away in the harness (red circle in the wiring diagram). Your system will perform better if you’re sensing voltage somewhere else other than the alternator power stud due to voltage drop through the system.

A better way to wire it up would be to cut and connect both pairs of wires at the old regulator plug, then plug your brown wire (now blue) into terminal #1, and your red wire (now white) into terminal #2 (see the old regulator plug on the modified diagram) thus preserving the built-in remote sensing feature.

[Lugnut64052]

So I sorted all that out, got it straight in my head, then started looking at how to further upgrade to the CS alternator that came with the ’95 serpentine drive. The factory plug on the CS contained only one wire, which was, appropriately, a brown one.


Here’s the pin assignments for the CS:

"P" Not used.

"L" Hooked to key power (a switched ignition source). Turns the regulator on and connects to the original brown wire. If this circuit has a dash warning light, you're fine. If it doesn't you need to wire a 35-100 ohm, 3+ watt resistor into it or it'll bake the regulator.

"F" Not used.

"S" Voltage Sensing wire. Connects to the red wire splice, or in my case, the added junction block on my firewall.

ACDelco makes an adapter harness to go from an SI to a CS. P/N is 8078. Long GM P/N is 12102921. It has the resistor built into the "L" wire. Delco also makes an adapter without the resistor. I cut the "SI" end off and spliced it into my harness. Evidently the regulator inside this CS is sensing power right in the alternator, hence the one-wire original plug. I hooked up the remote sensing feature anyway. A replacement one may not be internally wired the same (edit: looks like it's remote sensing now, since I enabled that circuit).

The result: a steady 14.3 volts across the battery at idle. Works great.

[ERASER5]

Thanks for mentioning the difference between the 12 bolt and the D-60. You saved me a big oops!

[FRENCHBLUE72]

Nice build thread keep up the good work.

[tdave00]

Subscribing. Good info here.

[Lugnut64052]

Okay, back to the Dana 60.
Mine is a 3.54 Posi unit as well, but an 8-lug full floater. Andy drove his 'Burb home from Washington state to Ohio and thought the brakes might be okay, or at least driveable for a while.

Um....no. Once I got the rear hung in there I took the brakes apart for a look, and everything was junk. The only thing save-able were the star wheels and the brake bars. The backing plates had deep, heavy grooves worn into them where the shoes ride. Never seen that before. I welded up them up and ground them off flat.

[Lugnut64052]

Fresh brakes.......and drums.......and E-brake cables.
Yow-wee! Cost me three times as much to fix the brakes as I gave Andy for the whole rear. Should be good as factory fresh at this point though.

[Lugnut64052]

The more I look at this truck, the more I think it's a 1/2-ton wearing a 3/4-ton body. No matter. I'll put some fresh rear springs in it pretty soon.

Finally got it all fitted together. Got the rear half of the driveshaft shortened. It's the smaller 1/2-ton shaft but I'm going with it for now. Had to get a conversion U-joint to hook up to the Dana. The shaft has a 1310 series yoke on it, while the Dana's yoke is a 1350 series. The Precision brand part number for the conversion joint is 348. Dana/Spicer part number is 5-460X.

Here it is, wearing 8-lug steelies on the rear and 5-lug rallys on the front. Should have entered it in this month's Beater contest.

[ERASER5]

I am right behind you, but my brake system was in a little better shape, but not much. I hope to keep the drums. The rest of the wear items will be replaced... unless I figure out a cheap disc brake alternative. Hmm...I wonder if Danna 44 brake parts will fit?

How much did you shorten the rear section? About 2"?

I am hunting a factory shaft right now. LHM no longer has his d-shaft from your Dana, so I am out of luck there. I have a few more places to check before I have one made or cut. I have time and I am trying to keep costs down.

[thelonerife]

I notice its a Highlander too. just like mine started out as. 3/4 ton camper special.\/build thread

[Lugnut64052]

Originally Posted by thelonerife

I notice its a Highlander too. just like mine started out as. 3/4 ton camper special.\/build thread

I'm diggin' the 3/4-ton Custom Camper thing. It was way run down when I got it, but I wouldn't have bought any other truck, now that I've had it a while.

[VA72C10]

Nice truck, and GREAT writeup...I'm sure I'll come back to this for information as I work on my truck.

[robmrtnbb5]

lookin good there bret

[chuckmc8]

subbing for this helpful info-thanks!

[chevyndn]

awsome