Overdue build thread: INSIDIOUS '86 AKA AhsataN

[INSIDIOUS '86]

In case your wondering what Ahsatan is for it's the name of the truck backwards. That's right I secretly call my truck Natasha. This "build" thread isn't so focused on just the build if the truck but the stories of how it came about and the things and reasons it's been built the way it is and how like many of our trucks is simply a lot more than a brick with wheels and a bathtub on back.

So let's begin. This is kinda long as it's an intro leading up to the events that got me into the best trucks ever made.

It was six years ago, I was in high school still getting rides from the freshman limo (bus) unlike many kids my age I was into the raw power of American v8s. I had been for the past four years of my life in high school building two strokes and modifying them And selling them for profit stuff like pocket bikes motorized scooters and such which were popular then. Pretty much getting around town on a 50cc hot rod along with my buddies. Our back door project was a little hotrod mini chopper made out of a new Schwinn stingray. Being 2008-2009 the economy was worse than a one legged dog trying to bury a turd on a frozen pond...basically there were no jobs. So here I am. I have a fleet of hopped up mopeds basically and a sweet mini chopper. At this point I was looking to get a 68 shortbed truck to drive as my first car, thinking if it's got a bed I can use it for work and a job hopefully. But...no they were to expensive. And thanks to Barrett Jackson and rich old men that didn't lose their jobs. I have yet never been able to afford one of my dream cars. A 69 Camaro or 70 cuda. So during the school year I noticed in Craigslist that for $1000 you cold own an ugly square shortbed truck from the 80s. So I did what I didn't want to do. I sold my mini chopper and scooters for less than I invested. I got $600 for my custom mini chopper and $300 for all the rest of my stuff.

So here I am an 18yr old with $900 cash. I convinced my old man that I wanted to go look for a vehicle. So naturally we drive to this lot that my old man has been buying and selling his muscle cars for over 30yrs. Pretty much we go there and they know money has rolled in. So here I am at my first dealership of the week. And there's corvettes and camaros impalas, tri fives, a $90,000 cuda. (Yes I tried selling my soul to him) everything my dreams were made of. By now you can tell this is a specialty lot. There were many trucks there. Most newer or 90s trucks. A $5000 68 shortbed with a sweet 427 and only two squares. On was a rough 1980 shortbed stepside. Had a posi and a 383 stroker we test drove that and yes it was definitely faster than a 45mph mini chopper. My old man knowing that 18yr olds and high hp trucks is a bad idea in today's world promptly said NO! So next to it was a 1994 gmc 1500 it was two tone with decent paint and some nice torque thrust twos that were going flat and it had a 5/6 drop. It's obviously been there for a while. He wanted $4300 for it which was just way out of budget and I just didn't like the plastic coffin interior. Then right next to that was his "special" of the month. This old beat up red 1986 c10 with a stock 305 and truck rallies that were just rust. And I remember all the details clear. He wanted $2400 for the truck. Which was expensive back then for one. I opened the hood and almost puked. It was all stock with emissions and and A/C and was a dreaded 305. The paint was faded and had no shine. It was lowered horribly at one point with cut springs. The dealer got new stocks springs put in and never got it re aligned the rear still had drop hangers and shackles so it listed to the rear like a boat on the water and due to the alignment when you looked at the front wheels the looked like this - V - a lot of positive camber. The tonnou was old and the interior looked like the prev owner smoked 6 packs a day inside and smelt like it too. So my old man already made up his mind on the truck before I ever knew or did myself. So we took it for a drive...IT WAS HORRIBLE... Handled like a Cadillac with no shocks and was as weak as a moped. I hated it. Pure and simple i thought it was a heap. The seat and a/c were great though but that was it. We got back and decided to talk business. I said I like the the 1980 but $900 down and he would only take $4000 for the truck and my old man said I couldn't keep that motor in it. So we talked numbers on the ugly red 86 Scottsdale. He wanted $2800 for it but I said he was inhaling to much of the trucks smoky exhaust. He agreed to take $2400 for the truck but no lower. He said I could take my time paying it off if I got the truck. Which no other dealer will offer me I knew. Soo said yes. But on one condition. Those torque thrust twos on that other truck looked better on the red one. I convinced him he could lower the price on the 94 with ugly wheels and sell it. So I at least got some nice wheels on this ugly truck. I was happy and we drive it home. In 100* heat with the a/c on and a cloud of smoke behind us. Here it is when I got home. It looked like a glorified old mans truck.

And thus my life would change forever.

[INSIDIOUS '86]

And early comparison this is how she is today. It may not look like she's much different but there's miles and miles between how she was and how she is.

[INSIDIOUS '86]

So on to the next chapter, unfortunately not many pictures exist or survive of the early years so bare with me because there's a lot of catching up to do.

So here I am 18yrs old and halfway through senior year of HS. I find myself with a need. A need for speed. I proceeded to strip the beaten and nasty trim off the truck only to find that they used kryptonite as tape or something. The truck had euro lights on the back that I took off before I took it's first picture. I posted them on cl but in 20 mins I had a guy call and offer to buy them. Me being me said "sorry they sold" and I decided to kill at least one set of these off in the world with a bat.
Now I set off on my mission to go faster. Applying what I knew about two strokes I looked the engine over and said "what would a hot rodder do?" BAM I came out of the garage with with some garden shears and cut the bolts to the leaky power steering pump, the air injection pump and the A/C. Sweet. That's maybe 8 precious hp I got back and prob more in torque. A quick drive confirmed that it felt better. My old man hinted that smog motors have low initial timing. So I went ahead and got our good ole dial back out and bumped the timing from 6* to 12*. And boy the engine liked that. I knew that timing changed that I would have to tune the carb again. It's how it was on the two strokes and I figured that the 305 was the same. So I looked up all the stuff on a quadra jet And retuned the idle mixture and shaved the metering rods some I plugged the leaky passages underneath it that I found about on this wonderful site full of wealth and knowladge -67-72chevytrucks.com- And again there was an improvement and she smoked less now but smoked. My old man noticing that I'm now have a pile of a/c parts air pump parts and many vacuum hoses on the ground next to the truck starts getting concerned. So he starts helping me (hot rod it) points out that I have an egr that can be pulled. And that the distributor is controlled by a computer and the curve is real slow. So I go in the garage and get some springs from the msd kit for our racecar and I recurred the distributor. And then did a nice oily running valve lash. While doing this my father says. Your engine smokes cause the valve seals are all cracked and in pieces from age and heat. So being that we build our own engines I found a set of valve seals and went about replacing the the seals all day by filling the cylinder with nylon rope and pulled the springs one cylinder at a time. Then took an oil bath again. So now I go and test the truck out again and to my amazement I could get past 55mph and it was way stronger. So a few weeks I drive like this and the silence is killing me. Literally so I decided that since we just ordered new glass packs for our race are that well...we wouldn't need the purple hormones that were on it for anything else...so I drive to my friends garage in the middle of nowhere and bring a Sawzall with me. And I lop the factory exhaust off and get rid of the heat riser on the one manifold and welded the purple hormones straight to the cut exhaust and strapped them to the frame for support. But only after driving around town for an hour trying to find collector extensions to weld on the pipes. Straight up drove around sounding like a b18 bomber haha! Up to this point I had prev not really liked the truck but it was growing on me. Slowly earning my respect and my heart. At this point the engine was as strong as it could ever be. And it was off to the races for me...literally

[rusty76]

I guess I'll tag along.

[TheBlueBomber]

Originally Posted by rusty76

I guess I'll tag along.

As well as I!

[naphtali5725]

count me in

[Billett]

I'm down!

[INSIDIOUS '86]

So on to the next adventures. So on to the next adventures.

I got the truck in March a little more than halfway through my Senior year. I took one if my elective classes as auto tech. Luckily they had a nice alignment rack and I was able to get the toe and caster set but the camber couldn't get less than +2*. Ick. The prev owner had put in long bolts and the nuts were at the shank of the bolt. At this time I got to familiarize myself with craigslist. I found a guy that had three inch drop springs and some nice original BLACK door panels on craigslist from his truck that his little brother rolled. Only issue was I had to take a ferry over there and a two hour drive total. By that time I had only $50 out of my $100. I met the guy and he at least sold me the springs. Now mind you the truck at this point had only the 305/700r4 and 2:73 gears... Gas only cost me about ten dollars that day. Pretty dang good if I do say so. Once I got home I threw those springs in in under two hours and the stance was most refreshing. The lean to the rear was gone and these springs were slightly stiffer. The truck wasn't equipped with a swaybar from the factory so whenever I had a passenger in the truck it was always fun to rock the steering back and forth and make your passenger almost fly out the window! Not to mention the laughs we got when people would stop thier cars in the road when I did this...truck must have looked aweful swinging and lurching three feet up and down.
So with all my improvements the truck remained mostly unchanged for quite a while. Like I said. I was off to the races. And by races I mean street races. The famous kent races were the THING to do for us kids although there was a lot less racing than there was everyone just flocking to a gas station and then getting told to leave by kent police and literally having thousands of cars meet up at a warehouse or Burger King or jack and the box which ever was the flavor. If anything it wasn't just the cops that helped make things more dangerous. "Read thousands of cars scattering at once" it was the fact that a lot of irresponsible drunk, high, uninsured unlicensed kids that caused many issues. Now when I did race there was three groups. Everything was 8th mile runs cause it's a warehouse district. Now you had fast cars. Then you had slow cars. Then there were cars like my truck. Now Hondas being gutless as they are couldn't launch and out pull me. And the fast cars made me look like a brick house in the middle of he road. It was a lot of fun and a great learning experience about the end of high school I was getting sick of avoiding accidents and having helicopters follow our groups. At that time I found a new group of fellow street racers that were sick of the same thing and had formed a new group right in the heart of my home town Everett. Only about a few hundred of us and we went mostly unbothered. Local PD would come in and and make sure nothing was stolen and nobody was drunk. We had our own roads chosen for thier length and were in the middle of nowhere. It was perfect. And still is today. The thing about Tuners I remember most was that on our 1/4 mile roads was that at 80mph they stopped accelerating and I could get to a whopping 95mph. Oh yes life was good. But there were bad times. My last run in Kent was the night I almost got tagged, and in a bad way. It was towards the end of summer and little did I know that Kent does big sting operation. About 200 of us were doing runs in a warehouse district when all of a sudden ten cops flew out of nowhere and blocked off the road ahead of us. Behind us they had a semi and trailor come out of a warehouse and block in behind us. Everyone was running to thier cars to get the hell out to a road to our rights that was much wider and harder to block. While everyone went that way me and a guy in a hummer hopped the sidewalk and drove around the semi. I guess we both thought the Same thing. The cops figured the semi was enough and there was no patrol cars to enforce that side. Shaking with mass adrenaline I drive home and didn't come back for four years.... We were the only two that got out free. Everyone else ended up with $2000 in tickets and licenses revoked.

In one of those races a raced a guy in his fox body mustang. It must have been real crappy like most fords because I did something risky and made a bet. We agreed to race for the emblems on each others rides...

[INSIDIOUS '86]

Next chapter:

So I've been driving my truck with a official 3/4 drop going through the summer doing a bunch of shenanigans with my friends. But nothing to important to note.
I saved money up from work for a few months looking to ditch the 2:73s. I found a guy that had a 3:73 posi for $125! I drove down and got that and swapped it in prompt. Boy it ran strong then and could waste the tires. But being a truck diff this wasn't actually a posi but a gov lock g80 differential. I didn't know that trucks didn't have factory eaton clutch type posi units. Anyways it was fun to punch it in first or second and drift around the corner or do donuts in empty lots at night. It was fun the tires I also had on the back were bfg 275/50/16s competition t/a. Basically an early 90s version of drag radials of sorts. Anyways they were old but they still got sticky. Enough for one burnout/doughnut to many to kill that g80 in a bad way. Prob the worst noise I've heard ever. Imagine cast iron rocks in a giant pebble grinder and spider gears smacking the underside of your bed and the truck pissing a trail of gear oil on the ground. And that's not the worst part...
This sent me into a spin before I knew what happened or could react. As I counter steered the truck caught grip and...I was way over corrected as it snapped straight and I was basically steering hard right at a curb... The TTII's up front hit that curb at 20mph and I went over the sidewalk and two inches before some guys fence.... So I reversed it out anyways with a couple of spots that I had to drive forward and then back again to clear carnage out of the ring gear. Luckily I was just down the road from home. So with at least one flat tire I limped her back...so the 2:73s had to go back in after a month of fun and my front rims are bent with one tire literally exploded the side wall... On cl I found a set of rims and tires for $120. Little 15" chrome modulars with spinners. I called them pizza cutters. Cause they looked like it on this tall ass truck.

[INSIDIOUS '86]

So now that I got the truck back up and running it was time for more improvements. The dash bezel was once that brushed silver but it had been cleans so much it had splotches of white. So I taped off the bezel and painted a base white over it then covered in pearlescent paint. While it dried I took my bulbs out and replaced them with red tinted bulbs and pulled the speedo out and put in a Camaro speedo. Mostly because the 85 mph speedos look pretty lame.

[rusty76]

What kind of CB you got in that thing? I'm a CB'er and just had to ask. In this day and age of smart phones it is nice to see a CB.

[Hankster]

Jus read the whole thread! Pretty cool, What year camaro speedo is that?

[INSIDIOUS '86]

Originally Posted by rusty76

What kind of CB you got in that thing? I'm a CB'er and just had to ask. In this day and age of smart phones it is nice to see a CB.

It's a midland. The model escapes me right now but I run a small magnetic antenna and an astatic power mic.

When me and my friends would go out and drive we are always yacking on the airwaves. Very usefull tools when you have someone literally playing bumper tag with you on the highway.

I'm looking to upgrade it with a better antenna and try and get a small 50w amp kicker. Nothing to big. Unlike some truckers running some 400w inline amps that just run over ten channels of bandwidth of unintelligible banter and garbage mouthing. Ugh

[TheBlueBomber]

I'm just about the only one 96 my friends left that still runs a cb. Got a Cobra 29 in my 96 and a little 20 in the 79 which I will be upgrading. Love the steering wheel, gonna have to go out and polish mine up.

[naphtali5725]

Originally Posted by INSIDIOUS '86

It's a midland. The model escapes me right now but I run a small magnetic antenna and an astatic power mic.

When me and my friends would go out and drive we are always yacking on the airwaves. Very usefull tools when you have someone literally playing bumper tag with you on the highway.

I'm looking to upgrade it with a better antenna and try and get a small 50w amp kicker. Nothing to big. Unlike some truckers running some 400w inline amps that just run over ten channels of bandwidth of unintelligible banter and garbage mouthing. Ugh

ever think of getting your Ham radio license? pretty easy test nowadays, morse code not needed... pretty cool when you want to talk long distance

[INSIDIOUS '86]

Originally Posted by naphtali5725

ever think of getting your Ham radio license? pretty easy test nowadays, morse code not needed... pretty cool when you want to talk long distance

I haven't really looked into one myself but I have accidentally shot skip and talked to a guy in Idaho for about 30 min. I also catch some local hamers and talk it up when driving. It's definitely fun to do and I can't see why it ever went out of style haha.

[INSIDIOUS '86]

Alright so next chapter. I will try not to make it to long.

After a year of job hopping I've been saving up getting ready to ditch the 305 that's been flogged like an old man with bacon flavored air. Haha. It happened to be my luck that my old man at the time decided to part out and get rid of his old iroc Camaro. Many years prior me and him built a TPI 377 for it. This was a virgin bore. 400 that we had got with four bolt mains and back then in the late 90s some if the first commercially made de-stroker kits. Why we did a 377 I can not remember or even know why. We ran a custom tune with a supercharger cam and it was plenty torquey and fun to drive daily. Anyways it sat under a bench for about a year. I wasn't able to convince him to sell it to me at all cause he wanted to get another 55 bel-air or nomad panel car. So with my itch for speed I did what I could at the time and grabbed the original iroc 305 block next to the 377 and started building it. You can see that yellow 377 sitting behind the engine in the corner.






At the time the company cams thumpr line was just out and it looked like the hot ticket for sounding good running strong and being able to drive daily. And to this day anyone who has said it's crap can't seem to explain why my engine (now) isn't as bad as they say it is. It's a great daily driver cam. I have the flat tappet small one but with 1.52-1.6 staggered rockers
I have full manifold vacuum and it pulls till redline. Great street cam guys.

Anyways I had some nice beehive springs put on the heads some comp magnum pushrods the motor was bored .030 over and on craigslist for $75 I got some 1.6 ratio rockers. I even had the pistons hung with 350 rods. Then and only then did I hit the deal of the century at least for me and up to this day. My friend new I was looking for a carb to top of the engine. And having just spent $80 on a nice weiand polished single plane intake I was beginning to run low on greenbacks. But alas he found me an early Barry grant silver or gold claw 750cfm carb. Race prepped and choke horn milled off. Just plain baddass in the shape of a carb. And get this...$75 for this carb...WHAT?! Yes we called him and drove ten miles in like 30 seconds. Turns out this guy was super sick of the carb flooding his engine and he could never get the float levels to cooperate. He just wanted it gone pretty much. I came home without and spent an hour trying to get it to come apart. Kid you not those gaskets and service parts Barry grant uses are crap. The gaskets may have well been glue. But I got it apart and cleaned it out good and I had a feeling that maybe the Barry grant needle valves were not as good as Holley. So I got Holley blue gaskets and needle valves along with Holley floats and put it together and set it on our race car. Sure enough it ran great and never gave me any problems.

So I had everything I needed to get the engine together. I was getting everything together for the bottom end and went to the oil pump to torque it down. And no. The oil
Pump threads on the thrust cap just completely sheared. All this work and effort just died as quickly as those threads pulled. So I would end prob having to tear the engine down and get a new rear cap and have it line honed. Pretty much dead in the water for a month or two till I got the engine fixed and back together... The harsh reality of hotrodding is now starting to rear it's head again...

[Hankster]

Man! I cant wait to hear the part where the built 305 cranks and burns the tires down. You never did answer me what year camaro speedo that was you put in there..

[68Timber]

Subbed.

[rusty76]

Originally Posted by INSIDIOUS '86

I haven't really looked into one myself but I have accidentally shot skip and talked to a guy in Idaho for about 30 min. I also catch some local hamers and talk it up when driving. It's definitely fun to do and I can't see why it ever went out of style haha.

I though of getting my license years ago. When I first started out playing with CBs and such I had an old Cobra radio and a power mic. That thing really did great and I could talk as far as away as I would like too. I later bought my Uniden from a pawn shop for my '76. I've owned several base stations and regular CBs. I have a Uniden Washington with about 400 channels. I don't use that many but when you want to escape some run over and bleed from others it helps.

[TheBlueBomber]

I'm actually tossing around the idea of getting an 8 track, AM, FM, CB radio that dealers installed...

[rusty76]

That'd be neat.

[INSIDIOUS '86]

Originally Posted by Hankster

Man! I cant wait to hear the part where the built 305 cranks and burns the tires down. You never did answer me what year camaro speedo that was you put in there..

Sorry. Depends on which one haha. I have an 86 iroc one in there now by I had a 73 Camaro gauge in the pics above^

[INSIDIOUS '86]

Originally Posted by rusty76

I though of getting my license years ago. When I first started out playing with CBs and such I had an old Cobra radio and a power mic. That thing really did great and I could talk as far as away as I would like too. I later bought my Uniden from a pawn shop for my '76. I've owned several base stations and regular CBs. I have a Uniden Washington with about 400 channels. I don't use that many but when you want to escape some run over and bleed from others it helps.

Man 400 channels. Lol I would get lost haha. The power mic was a really nice upgrade though

[Hankster]

Originally Posted by INSIDIOUS '86

Sorry. Depends on which one haha. I have an 86 iroc one in there now by I had a 73 Camaro gauge in the pics above^

Okay, Thank you very much!! I'd like to see the current one too! Bet it looks good.