72 C20 "Old Mustard"

[sduckworth13]

Nick, Thanks just recieved the paypal. Here is a picture of the exhaust manifold. It is in great shape and the heat riser still works.

[Mustard72]

Awesome. My budget thanks you. Part of me was a little excited about maybe getting headers, but your manifold combined with the year old one I have on the other side should last for many years, and I probably wouldn't really notice the difference from headers on this mild engine, anyway. Plus, I won't have to modify the exhaust pipes for headers, and with May rapidly approaching, I don't need the extra work added in. (Don't ask me why I'm painting the suspension or, for crying out loud, the torque converter)

Thanks again!

[sduckworth13]

Glad I could help. Lol, I think we paint those things just to satisfy our sense of pride. No one ever looks at our projects as hard as we look at them ourselves.

[Mustard72]

Not too exciting, but I just ordered about $250 worth of Moog and Monroe parts from Rock Auto. Upper and lower ball joints for the front, along with upper arm shafts, and a set of HD Monroe shocks for the rear (fronts are pretty good, although I'll of course have to paint them). Lower arm shafts are still pretty good, as well, as are all of the steering linkage rod ends. Already got a good used steering box from another forum member, so this front end should be tight as a rock star when I'm done. It was REALLY sloppy before, but most of that was in the steering gear box.

Engine completion is still probably a couple of weeks away. I'd be a little disappointed, but I still have plenty to do with the rest of the truck. It'd be nice get the engine/tranny installed and then put the cab on and finish it up on the frame with the bed in the other stall of the garage, but we'll work with the schedule as is. A couple weeks from now will be here before I know it anyway.

[sduckworth13]

Cool, i dont remember exactly how much I saved but it was alot and I really dreaded trips to the parts store after that knowing how much I could save thru rockauto. This is the truck I did, sold it but it had the 4.5/6 inch drop on it. It drove like it was on rails with all those new parts.

[Mustard72]

Nice truck.

I had a 76 Chevy 4x4 trail beater truck back in the day that had EXTREMELY worn tie rod ends that basically fell apart when we replaced them with a better set out of the junkyard. Scary to think that I really don't believe they had too many miles left on them before they would have self destructed on the road or trail somewhere. Just putting the used tie rod ends on that truck made a huge difference, so I'm really expecting a noticeable improvement with Mustard, too.

[Mustard72]

I got the exhaust manifold the other day. Thanks, Scott!

Finished disassembling the front suspension components (ball joints removed, upper shafts removed, rubber bumpers removed, stabilizer mounts removed). Hauled them off to the do-it-yourself car wash place to blast them clean, but it didn't work as well as I remember. Not enough pressure to really blast them clean well enough. I'll wire brush and scrape the gunk off of them and haul them off to work to clean in the big parts cleaners we have there.

Stripped all of the white paint off the roof of the cab. We spraybombed the white paint over the original white paint on the roof in the late 80s, and it was splitting all over the place from exposure to the sun, I would imagine. It didn't fare nearly as well as the ochre enamel we sprayed on at about the same time (somewhat officially with a compressor/spray gun). Used a 60 grit flapper disc on the white paint on the larger flat surface on top and a knotted wire wheel on the 4.5" grinder for the pillars and drip rail areas. Wire wheeled all of the original sealant out of the drip rail, too, as it was all split up and failing. I was able to wire wheel through any rust along the drip rail, so I think I'm good with that, fortunately.

Gooped a bunch of seam sealer into the under cab area where the cab corner wraps around the back corner of the floor panel. I'm thinking this was supposed to be a tighter fit originally, but it's not. I'll have to check the sealant up in there every once in a while and maybe come up with a Plan B if it doesn't stand the test of time, but for now I've really got to get the cab work behind me.

[Mustard72]

Also got the filler work (yep, it's Bondo) pretty much done on the cab. I might have a little more sanding to do here and there, and maybe another dab of that wonderfully aromatic putty, but I'm thinking it's pretty close to pretty good. Sand, sand, sand, sand, sand, sand, sand......

And, of course, I put some fancy silver paint on the rebuilt tranny. This step was critical to getting this project done on time Note the exquisitely painted red handle on the dipstick.

My poor woodshop will be happy when this project is over. It's currently serving as extra parts storage and as the parts painting area. Made a stepstool in there the weekend before last for somebody at church and it was definitely a pain doing any woodworking in there with everything in the way.

[mjensen]

Looks like some good progress there!

[sduckworth13]

Your welcome Nick. You've got alot done, looking good.

[Mustard72]

I apparently forgot to post these pics after I primed the roof of the cab last Wednesday. So here they are. Using the 60 grit flapper disc might have been a bit aggressive to get the paint cleaned off (or maybe it was the operator) as there are LOTS of areas where it dug into the steel and left low spots. You can definitely see them in the primer, although with the phone cam, it looks pretty dang good. Primed all the bare spots around rest of the cab, too (rockers, cab corners, etc.)

Also, the several days ago when disassembling the front suspension, found that the rear upper arm studs were rusted pretty bad on both sides. Not sure why the rears got that way when both fronts looked pretty good. Knocked the rotten ones out with a hammer and will be looking for replacements.

[Mustard72]

Spent most of the time on Saturday cleaning and painting front suspension parts. Disassembled the front brake calipers and prepped them for a rebuild, too. Cleaned up the firewall on the cab a little bit (sealant around the heater box, greasy gunk in the tunnel area, rust converter on some rusty areas under the master cylinder area, etc.).

Also used a can of Eastwood inner frame rust converter/encapulator/sealant stuff inside both rockers and a-pillars. I think this went rather well. It is thinner than I was anticipating and therefore quite messy. I basically stuck the tube into each rocker as far as it would go through the grommet hole in the front and the door bumper hole in the back. Once it was in as far as it would go, pulled it out slowly while spraying. For the a-pillars, I pushed the tube in through an upper hinge hole and ran the tube down the inside of the pillar as far as it would go and did the same thing; pulled out slowly while spraying. I was able to double coat almost everything, falling just a bit short. Ended up with quite a bit on the floor as it ran out the bent over seems on the bottoms of the rockers and through any other nook or cranny it could. I guess this is probably a good thing, actually.

I tried to take some pictures of this, but the battery was dead on the phone, so I couldn't. Sorry. I really did do all that stuff in spite of the lack of photo evidence. The Sunday update is better......

[cleansquare]

loving the progress pics

we also had several of these mustard colored trucks at home over the years, they arent so rare to me cause of that. I love the color

[Mustard72]

On to Sunday.

Got a late start after church in the morning and then helping get the house cleaned up in the early afternoon. Picked the cab off the jack stands and put it off towards the back of the garage to make more room for pulling the bed off. My son (also named Nicholas, aka N2) helped out with the bed removal. He's usually not so interested in helping out, but actually managed to get tired of Legos and Pokemon in the house and came out to help today. Awesome. I wish he did this lots more. He picked a good day, because removing a bed is lots more exciting when you are 9 than sanding bondo. He got to use the air ratchet in the bed while old Dad crawled under the truck with the combination wrench to grab the nuts on the bottoms of the bed retaining bolts (which for whatever reason were already spinning by the time I got to them). The snow is melting pretty rapidly here in NW Wisconsin at this point, during which time it likes to come in under the course of concrete blocks under the walls of the garage and pool under the bed of Mustard, but I managed to get a lot of it swept out of there and didn't get too wet.

The old 67 bed has what's left of a wooden floor. The advanced state of rot made it easy to wrap straps around the bed rails for removal. Where there wasn't already a hole in the floor, N2 whapped it with a hammer a little bit to make one for the straps. Normally, there is 1/2" treated plywood on top of the rotten wood. This probably accelerated the rot, but at least made for a decent floor. Once we had it rigged up, N2 jacked the bed off and we set it off to the side on top of some saw horses next to the relocated cab.

Next it's time to go through the rear suspension and axle. I've already got shocks purchased for back there, and am anticipating that I'll need more stuff once I start digging into it (pretty much been the way things have gone here). The last pic is N2 pointing to the broken auxiliary spring bumper. I think I'll have to make a new one of those, as I haven't seen them anywhere else.

I really enjoyed working in the garage with my kid today. I've been trying to get him to help out more, but he's never really interested, and at this point I didn't really want to force it on him. When he said he'd help out today, I didn't even send him back in to change out of his church pants out of fear he might find something else to do back in the house and not come back out. We just dug into it.

[Mustard72]

A couple more pics for good measure....

Had to make sure to leave enough room in the second stall to be able to get the engine to the front of hte truck frame when I get it back in a couple of weeks. It's a bear to get it off a cherry picker and onto the engine stand that I have due to the spread out front leg configuration of the stand (PITA 2 ton Harbor Freight job), so I'm thinking it'll go right back onto the frame when I get it back.

[Mustard72]

Sorry, forgot the pics. Here they are...

[mjensen]

Awesome progress!
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[sduckworth13]

Looks good Nick, somehow I miss your lastest progress. Are you going to go back to the wood bed?
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[Mustard72]

Thanks, guys.

I'm planning on eventually redoing the wood bed. I've had a stainless steel strip kit for it for several years. I'm not sure I'll get around to it prior to May, so I may have to do some quick repairs to hold it together, throw the plywood back in over the rotten boards, and put it back on the frame. I will get the frame, suspension, axle, etc. all up to snuff, though, and install a new class three hitch and possibly a gooseneck hitch (depending on which was we go with the horse trailer) before May. All that stuff will be easier to get done without the bed on there.

[sduckworth13]

Cool, I found a guy with a complete oak wood flooring for 125.00 not sure if it was for a long or shortbed. He hasn't emailed me back yet.
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[Mustard72]

Thanks for looking, Scott, but I think I'm set for whenever I get to the bed floor. I've got some oak and I've seen on a website the pattern that the boards need to be milled to. Can't remember the site off the top of my head, but I'm sure I can find it again. It's nothing too complicated and I can get it done pretty easily in the wood shop. At least I could if the wood shop weren't full of truck parts

[Mustard72]

Got an inner fender from a friend of the family here in town today that's much better than the one's I've got, which was really cool. He's got more stuff to provide once the snow melts a bit more. I gave him the Pertronix distributor points eliminator kit I errantly bought that was discussed a few pages back (for a Mallory distributor, not OEM).

Also started putting the new upper arm shafts in place. Got one of them installed, centered (I think), and got the new bushings torqued to 90 ft-# per the Moog instructions. Problem is, one of the bushings is flush with the arm and one of the bushings isn't (see pics below). Does anybody know if that's normal? I posted a question over on the suspension section, too, so hopefully somebody in one of the areas can help.

Feels good to be putting things back together. Yanking the bed off the other day was fun, but with only a month and a half left before May, it didn't seem quite right to be opening up another can of worms. But, it's a can of worms that needs opening!

[Mustard72]

Dang it, I forgot to attach the pics again. I do the same thing with email attachments. Oughta be a way to prevent that, but maybe I should just get in the habit of inserting the attachments and then righting the text....

Anyway, here's the arm pics.

[Mustard72]

Curse the snow!!! Curse the road salt!!! Curse the passing of time!!!

Well. I got the rear end removed, ran out of acetylene in the process, too, so that tells you a little bit about how the trailing arm to axle u-bolt nuts came off. I had a whole list of things to get done this weekend, none of which involved a needle scaler. But, I kept looking at the rust in the frame above the rear axle and I just couldn't help myself. Out came the needle scaler and sure enough, she punched right through in a few spots. I think I was fooling myself into thinking the frame wasn't as bad as it looked under the bed. Wrong!!! It's drastically worse through the area where GM plated the inside of the frame through the rear axle hump area to apparently beef it up. Started corroding between the plate and the c-channel. Corrosion jacking can be pretty impressive, but never in a good way,unfortunately.

So, now I'm in the market for another chassis. Might even be considering a rolling chassis so maybe I can get away from the 4.57 gears in back (and maybe even get a posi??? dare to dream). Good news is that the chassis is bare now anyways, so it's not like I'd have to take a bunch of stuff off of it to change it out. Bad news is that part of what I wanted to get done this weekend was get the front suspension back on the front of the chassis. Oh well.

[sduckworth13]

Well that sucks, hopefully someone near you will have one cheap. You cant give a long bed frame away here in Kansas City. Looked at my short bed frame last week after I sold to bed off it and I have the same problem with the rust under the bracket on the drivers side. It has several crusted layers on the bottom frame rail between the bracket and frame, I think I should be able to cut the bad section out and weld on a new piece.