86 K10 fire rebuild

[capone550]

We bought my son an 86 K10 that was in really nice shape, and was in pretty much stock form. Only thing the previous owner did was added some Doug Thorley headers and they deleted most of the emissions crap. Well living in an emissions county I had to put all that stuff back on. We got it all working just perfect and then the original 305 started knocking something fierce. So the kid saved his pennies and bought one of those new 350 4 bolts that Summit sells for around $1500. Thats where it all went to hell. The day before we were going to install the new engine I told him to get the truck loaded on the trailer so we could get it over to the shop. When he started it something happened and Oh lordy there was a fire... Talk about taking a few steps back!!!

So after a few long nights of lurking other peoples posts I found the answers to most of the questions I had in my head of where to start. I must say it looked a whole lot worse than it really was.

First step was getting the old engine out so we could asess what was hurt and what was salvageable. To my surprise the main damage was to the wiring and the A/C box. So after a few good days of pulling misc parts from junkyard trucks and the wiring harnesses from GMACHINZ, I was ready to start getting it back together. I handed my son a wire wheel and said get all the burned paint and crap out of the engine compartment. he did a great job and stripped all the paint down to bare metal. I tore out all of the burned wiring and cables. Today we primed and painted everything and started putting everything back together. The harnesses are amazing. GMACHINZ does an amazing job! Highly recommend his work.
Anyways here are some pictures right after the fire, and some where it is finally at today. I will take more pictures as we go along.

[capone550]

Here are a couple of shots of the day of the fire. Thank god he was smart enough to grab a fire extinguisher and get the fire put out.

[K5owner]

Any idea of what caused it?

[capone550]

Best that I can tell is the ground cable from the battery melted and dropped down on a rubber fuel line. it spit gas everywhere.