The Hawaiian Blue 1978 GMC.

[HunterRotten]

HUNTER'S 1978 GMC C15 SIERRA BUILD THREAD

We got in contact with an old friend of my dads here locally and asked if we could bring in our block to get cleaned. He let us come in one Friday to get everything cleaned up, I think it cost $85. It's kinda cool how well everything cleans up.

Some of the guys at the shop were saying they never saw rods that looked like that before, my dad said it was because in the factory they took off too much material and brass was added to even them out.

[HunterRotten]

HUNTER'S 1978 GMC C15 SIERRA BUILD THREAD

Well, if you haven't noticed yet we don't have our own shop. Since we don't have our own shop and the work is being done by ourselves (+ this is a huge learning process for myself) it is really hard to find time get the block work done.

I'd estimate that it took us about a month before we started to touch the block again. Here is what we accomplished in the meantime.

We made a trip or two to Lowe's for some casters and bought some treated fence posts and we had plans to remove the bed in a similar way we removed the cab. Here's a really crap photo of the frame we made.

The following weekend we rolled out the frame for the first time since the Cab was removed from the truck. We did a very necessary cleaning to the entire garage (I hate bondo dust) and picked up the bed by ourselves (it was really heavy) and struggled it onto the "dolly" with minimal injury. Take note that the casters are not on.

[HunterRotten]

HUNTER'S 1978 GMC C15 SIERRA BUILD THREAD

Annnnd this is why the casters were not mounted yet. We had come up with a plan to mount the bed standing up however we forgot to measure and could quickly tell that it was not going to fit in the garage like that and I had planned on scraping off all of the undercoat for it to be replaced by bedliner. We bought a lot of wood and cut even more into useless sizes for a whole lot of nothing as the final decision was to stand it up on some ply wood for now.

I'll be back sometime soon to update the project further. For now I will leave you all with a question. In your opinion, what would be the best front bumper option for this truck? I have a set of chrome bumper guards and the rubber inserts. I'm kind of leaning towards a body color bumper with the inserts as that look isn't taken on too much. Thoughts?

[HunterRotten]

HUNTER'S 1978 GMC C15 SIERRA BUILD THREAD

I really hate undercoat, almost as much as I hate removing it.

Scrape, scrape, scrape.

Scrape, scrape, scrape.

Scrape, scrape, scrape.

Scrape, scrape, scrape.

Scrape, scrape, scrape.

So, just like before on the cab I also discovered rust on the underside of the bed. Awesome! After taking a close look at it we should have just replaced the whole part instead of just the bottom (which we had done before the bed was off.) I poked out all the holes and circled them until my dad and I could come down to a decision.

For some reason almost all of the rust we have found, besides what was under the battery tray, was all on the driver side. We think maybe because this is the side towards the center of the road. Opinions?? Here's what the other side looks like.

[HunterRotten]

HUNTER'S 1978 GMC C15 SIERRA BUILD THREAD

Now, I'm not sure just how well this encapsulator works but I figured a little bit is better than nothing. While that piece was cut out from the fender well I poked my phone up there with the camera and it was scaley scaley! I put a big leather glove on and went at it the best I could with a cheap wire brush and then stuck this can in there with a nozzle. It did a pretty good job at coating everything.


For some reason I didn't take a photo of the inside of the bedside, maybe because it was wet. In my last photo you can see it got all the way up inside of the bedrails as it oozed out from the holes previous owners drilled and the ones for my nice rails.

[TKCR]

Keep at it!! It's coming along great.

[HunterRotten]

Originally Posted by TKCR

Keep at it!! It's coming along great.

Thanks!

[HunterRotten]

HUNTER'S 1978 GMC C15 SIERRA BUILD THREAD

I guess now is time to share a little bit on the progress made on the 454. We took the block down to my dads old workplace, who is being kind enough to let us use this equipment on a block that really didn't deserve it. This is my first engine build of any kind so getting to see all of this was really cool. In the end the block is bored .060 over and has two sleeves installed.

This is the first cylinder that received a sleeve. These sleeves were all installed because of some relatively severe rust damage to the top of the cylinder walls, which can be see in the next picture. I was pretty bummed that the block turned out this bad and we both learned out lessons. Probably should have taken the heads off before leaving but it was cold and we were a long way from home.

Installing the sleeve was pretty straight forward. Take out all the material in the cylinder until the sleeve fits, leaving a step at the bottom so the sleeve doesn't somehow suck itself down into the block and grenade everything later. Little bit of WD-40 and a hammer was all it took.

[HunterRotten]

HUNTER'S 1978 GMC C15 SIERRA BUILD THREAD

Now, once that sleeve was done.. you guessed it. One more sleeve, fun!! We actually spent about 12 hours at this shop just doing the cylinders and decking the block. I understand why usually sleeves aren't worth it now....

You probably get the picture from here. It was the same procedure as the last. Once it was said and done the block looked pretty good but I was concerned about how obvious the sleeves looked, and to my surprise after decking the top of the block you'd never know the difference.

And after a long 10-12 or so hours of work, I had a really clean and brand new looking block. Then my dad and I had to go to actual work.