68 C50 Looongbed pickup build

[rkn463]

Originally Posted by Deer_hunter_088

Have you done alot of real progress lol, i havent been on here in FOREVER

Not much progress to report. Trans is out, flywheel resurfaced, new clutch and pressure plate purchased and trans in the shop getting reworked.

I hope I can figure out where all the bolts go when I start to put it back together.

--Richard

[Deer_hunter_088]

Originally Posted by rkn463

Not much progress to report. Trans is out, flywheel resurfaced, new clutch and pressure plate purchased and trans in the shop getting reworked.

I hope I can figure out where all the bolts go when I start to put it back together.

--Richard

I'm in the middle of putting the CORRECT column in mine.

[rkn463]

Trans back from the shop, now I just need to put it back together

-Richard

[rkn463]

Originally Posted by rkn463

Trans back from the shop, now I just need to put it back together

-Richard

Just over four months and I finally put it back together over the last few days. So very much has happened in those four months - I'll talk about that in another post.

Amazingly I remembered how it went together. Only lost one piece... a part of the clutch linkage, but I ordered a replacement from LMC, It should be here by mid-week. I have some pictures but I need to resize them and write it all up. Look for updates this week.

Oh, I haven't started it yet. I plan to fire it tomorrow after church.

-Richard

[rkn463]

A whole lot has happened since I posted this:

Originally Posted by rkn463

Trans back from the shop, now I just need to put it back together

The biggest change is I lost my job. I worked for a large software company for 19 years but was laid off when a chip manufacturer bought us out. The news of the buyout was early July and from the beginning they stated that they run a very lean management team. From the beginning I expected that I get whacked and I was right. I was notified the first week of November that my position had been deleted (along with 90% of our management staff!) The severance package was good but the reality of becoming unemployed at my age was tough to swallow. I spent the time from July until November in waiting mode and since the layoff I’ve been laying low and basically just licking my wounds.
Anyway, there is only so long that you can spend feeling sorry for yourself so I finally started working on the truck again.

Here is a bit to start catching up: By July I had the clutch out and was rounding up a replacement. The stock clutch in the 89 was unlike any I had ever seen before:



August 14th, transmission heading for the rebuilder. The bed was/is still in good condition in my Colorado so I went to great lengths to make sure that the trans was secured:



By early September I had the clutch reinstalled on the freshly resurfaced flywheel. The clutch disk is the traditional type, the guy at my local parts store had never seen a clutch disk like the stock one either and the kit he had was a traditional disk. While I expect the factory type was superior technology I doubt if this truck will see many crazy heavy loads and traditional disks have worked well for years so I figured it would be sufficient.



As you can see, by the time I started early in January the flywheel had started to rust:



While the trans was out of the way I took the opportunity to address an oil leak that I had created. The cab came off of a small block truck and the drive train is big block. The small block oil pressure port is directly behind the distributor, on the big block it is low down by the oil filter. The oil pressure line was too short to reach so I plumbed it up near the original location with brass pipe fittings. Several of my connections leaked… I disassembled the lines and sealed them up (I hope). You can see the pipes here:



More to come

-Richard