1965 C10 LWB Project Build Thread

[JohnIL]

Ever since I brought the truck home, I've been meaning to decode the engine casting and stamping numbers to find out exactly what I have. I finally got around to it the other day. Now, I have another grudge to hold against the previous owner.

When I bought the truck, I was told that it had a 327 and Saginaw 4 speed from a 1968 Camaro. I didn't expect anything special, like a 275HP 4 barrel 327. They didn't put very many of those in 1968 Camaros. What I expected was a run-of-the-mill 210HP 2 barrel 327. They put a boatload of those in 1968 Camaros. Oh, and I expected the truth. I got none of those.

The numbers say that I have a smogged out, detuned 175HP piece of garbage 350 from a 1979 1/2 ton truck. This engine may have come from a 1968 Camaro, but it DEFINITELY wasn't original to the car. At this point, I'm finding it difficult to believe anything the previous owner told me. I'd like to believe that someone lied to him and he really did think this was a 327 from a 1968 Camaro. That would be a whole lot better than thinking that he purposely lied to me. The sad part is that I don't even really care. I didn't buy the truck for the engine. If he had told me the truth, I would have bought the truck anyway. I was just happy that I found a truck that was drivable while I work on fixing it up. Knowing that it had the most common and crappiest (second only to the 305 from the same era) small block Chevy ever made would have just made the future drive train decisions easier. I just don't like the fact that I was lied to about it.

Now then, moving forward. Onto happier topics.

[JohnIL]

Steering Wheel & Turn Signal Repair
The steering wheel choice is another grudge I plan to hold against the previous owner (along with that stupid square body bench seat!). The previous owner was a big dude. Big in the sense that the original steering wheel probably interfered with his belly. In response, he installed a Grant 14" GT wheel. That's all fine and good, but the smaller steering wheel was WAY too modern for a '65 pickup interior, it made the manual steering even tougher to turn, it blocked the view of the speedometer, and it was down right ugly. So, I installed a new Grant 967 wheel in it's place. It's only one inch larger (15" diameter), but the grip is slimmer and the extra leverage makes a big difference in the feel of the manual steering. Plus, it looks a whole lot better in a classic pickup.

http://www.grantproducts.com/products/view/109/

Now, I have a clear view of the speedometer and the rest of the gauge cluster. Wait a minute. Why is the speedometer so far off? How can it possibly be off by 25%? Well crap, one more thing to fix.

Speedometer Cable, Sending Unit, and Driven Gear
So, the speedometer was reading WAY slow. When my GPS said I was going 60 MPH, the speedometer said I was going 45 MPH. That's not the kind of mistake you want to make in front of a police officer with a noisy old pickup truck. Back when the engine swap was done, two owners ago, they didn't bother to address the fact that the rear end ratio of the donor vehicle didn't match the ratio of the truck. So, the speedometer was inaccurate by 25%. Even worse than that, the speedometer sending unit is located a few inches further back on the 4 speed transmission than it was on the original 3 speed transmission. So, they cross threaded the speedometer cable onto the sending unit in an effort to stretch the cable longer. Then, they tried to tighten the cable with a pair of pliers and mashed the threads on the sending unit. Grrrrr! I ordered a new speedometer cable, sending unit, and a set of speedometer gears. It was all pretty easy to install, but choosing the right speedometer gear required some trial and error. Four trials and three errors, to be exact. In the end, I went from a 22 tooth gear all the way down to a 17 tooth gear, with trial runs at 20, 19, and 18 along the way. Now, the speedometer is 100% accurate. OK, maybe only 99.9% accurate, but it's pretty darn close.

Headlight Wiring Harness and Bulb Upgrades
If you hadn't noticed, old vehicle headlights are dim. Compared to our modern daily drivers, these old trucks are light driving flashlight! Luckily, there are solutions available. My long term intention is to upgrade to LED headlights. But, those things are crazy expensive. Hopefully, the price will come down as the newness of the technology wears off. In the meantime, LMC sells a heavy duty headlight wiring harness that uses a pair of relays to send power directly from the battery to the bulbs. This allows the use of a pair of high output halogen bulbs. The harness was a pain to route through the front of the truck, but the rest of the installation was a piece of cake. And, the new bulbs are vast improvement in terms of nighttime drivability.

Front "Marker" Lights
From the factory, these trucks have no front "marker" lights. They have front "parking" lights. But, when you turn the headlights on, the "parking" lights go out. Compared to a modern vehicle, these trucks look pretty strange coming down the road with no amber marker lights on the front. Luckily, this is an easy situation to remedy. All you have to do is tie the purple wire from the front parking light harness to the brown wire in the tail light harness. Voila! Marker lights! Now, whenever the light switch is in either of the "on" positions, the front parking/marker lights come on. This mod has no impact at all on the turn signals. That's a separate circuit.

[JohnIL]

Get ready for a saga... Not really, but it did turn out to be a lot more work than it should have been. When we brought the truck home, the door windows leaked and the rattled around inside the doors. The seals were shot. Luckily, the wing vents seals are still pretty good. The idea of disassembling those buggers and replacing all those rivets turns my stomach. I'm sure I'll have to tackle it someday, but I'll avoid it for as long as I can. For now, I just needed new window channel seals and window wipes (anti-rattle felts). I ordered a complete window seal kit from LMC. It came with the rubber window channel seals and the anti-rattle felt strips. The old channel seals where dried out and cracked. They literally came out in pieces. And, the old anti-rattle felt strips had no felt left at all. The disassembly was easy and the window channel seal replacement went quickly. It only took 20ish minutes per door. The saga started with the anti-rattle felt strips. I spent the whole rest of the day (seriously, five hours) trying to get those damned felt strips installed. The felt strips that came with the seal kit from LMC did not have the same types of clips as the originals. They will snap into place, but only with an enormous amount of pressure. After a couple of hours of fighting, I finally got the driver side felt strips snapped into place. At one point, one of the strips was bent into a W shape. Eventually, I got it straightened back out and snapped in, by squeezing it into place with a pair of channel locks. The new felt strips work, but they're bent enough to look shoddy. The passenger side felt strips were even less cooperative. After three more hours of fighting, the passenger side felt strips were so bent and mangled that they would never fit. They simply refused to snap into place.

After a bit of research I found that Brothers (Holley) sells a set of reproduction felt strips that have the same type of clips as the originals. I don't know if they will work any better, but they're definitely worth a try. I've grown to hate those silly little felt strips. And, the worst part is that they don't actually seal against the windows. They just wipe the water off and stop the glass from rattling. If you're caught in a hard rain, the felts will saturate and let water run down inside the doors. What a lousy design. I really wish that someone made a rubber seal to replace the outer strips to help keep the inside of the doors dry.

Update on Door Window Seals
About a week later, the Brothers seals arrived and they are indeed identical to the originals. I installed with the passenger side outer strip and it snapped right into place. SO much better. Since the inner strip really doesn't do anything except fill the little crack between the door and the glass, I didn't bother to install it. I didn't want to push my luck. So, I have three of the four Brothers felt strips in reserve if any of the ones on the truck get damaged. Someday, when I do the body work on the doors, I'll rip out the LMC felts from the driver's door and replace them with the remaining Brothers felts. I can't recommend the Brothers window felts enough. And, I can't unrecommend the LMC window felts enough. If you need to tackle your window seals, the channel seals from LMC seem to work OK, but do yourself a favor and order the anti-rattle felts from Brothers instead.

[JohnIL]

One day, my son and I took the truck out for a drive in the country. My excuse for the drive was to give my son some practice driving a manual transmission. The C10 has been his first opportunity to learn, he needs more practice with the third pedal. As you would expect it was a slow drive with lots of stopping and starting. We only went about 15 miles. But, when when we pulled back into the driveway, I could smell the brakes. Not good. All four drum brakes were locked up solid. If it were a single brake, I would suspect a bad wheel cylinder or a stuck brake shoe. But, with all four brakes locked, it almost had to be a problem with the master cylinder. After letting the truck sit for about an hour, the brakes had released and the truck would roll freely again. This supported my master cylinder theory. The brakes either released as the truck cooled down, or the fluid pressure leaked back toward the master cylinder. So, I ordered up a replacement for the single-reservoir master cylinder. I hated to pay for a new master cylinder that will get replaced when I do the power disc conversation, but I don't plan to dig into that until next Spring. So, money was spent on a temporary master cylinder to get me by until the big conversion takes place. On the plus side, this was the easiest master cylinder I've ever replaced. There's only one brake line to remove and reinstall. And, the fitting on that line even cooperated. The fitting itself is a little bit rounded over, but once it broke loose, if threaded right out of the old master cylinder and back into the new one. The truly amazing part of the replacement is that no (or at least very little) air got into the system. I bench bled the master cylinder before I installed it. Once it was on the truck, I got one burp of air from the bleeder on the top of the master cylinder and the brakes seem to work very well. The pedal feel is MUCH better than the original master cylinder and the brakes will lock up on dry pavement. If there is any air in the lines, I'm sure it will show up with enough drive time. We'll have to take it out for another stop and go test drive to make sure the brake lockup problem is fixed.

Update on Brake Master Cylinder
So, I took the truck for another test drive. I went of five miles. When I pulled back in the garage, the truck came to an abrupt halt. That's right, the brakes were locked again. And, the brake pedal was a hard a rock. What the heck is going on? I have a brand new master cylinder and the blasted thing locks up, just like the old one. Then, I had a stroke of brilliance. I stuck my head under the dash to lay eyes on the brake pedal, push rod, and the back of the master cylinder. You'll never guess what I found. The jamb nut on the push rod adjuster was lose. So, each time I pushed the brake pedal, the push rod turned a tiny fraction, which made it get longer with each stroke of the pedal. This put constant pressure on the master cylinder, especially when everything under the hood (including the master cylinder) was hot. I backed the push rod off a couple of turns, creating about 1/4" of slack in the brake pedal and tightened up the lock nut. Then, I went for another drive. All good now. The brake pedal feel is different now that there is some "take up" travel before the master cylinder engages, but the brakes are nice and strong. And, best of all, they don't lock up when they get warm!

I question whether or not there was ever anything wrong with the original master cylinder, but at 57 years old, it was time for it to go anyway.

[JohnIL]

The previous owner installed a set of dark red lap-only belts with plastic latches. They looked awful and were only partially safe. I ordered up a set of dark brown retractable 3 point shoulder belts from Seat Belts Plus. The installation was pretty straight forward. I cheated and watched a video from Brothers Trucks that showed how to install their seat belt kit, which is almost identical to the Seat Belts Plus kit. So, I already knew what I was getting into. The new belts aren't as slick as the belts in our modern daily drivers, but they are almost identical (only much newer) to the 1983 belts in my son's El Camino. They're much safer that lap-only belts and the dark brown color will look a lot better with the new shades-of-brown interior that I'm slowly piecing together.

[JohnIL]

I put Tune-up in quotes because it was more like troubleshooting than a actual tune-up. Lots of things were out of whack. When I first got the truck home, it ran rough. I pretty much ignored the way it ran because of the obnoxiously loud exhaust. I just concentrated on other things. After a few weeks, I thought maybe it might be nice to actually drive the truck, so I had to address the lousy idle and the horrible throttle response. What I found was a whole new list of sins by the previous owner.

I don't know exactly what led up to this problem, but the truck was only running on six cylinders. The back two cylinders (one on each side) were completely dead. There was zero spark on those cylinders. Obviously, the previous owner didn't know that. In order to make it somewhat drivable, he jacked with the timing and the carburetor. It was running WAY too rich and timing was advanced to the point that it would run for 5-10 seconds after the ignition was turned off. I traced the spark issue to plug wires. There was definitely spark at the distributor cap (I forgot just bad it hurts to get shocked by an HEI ignition). Anyway, a new set of plugs and wires got it running on all eight cylinders again. But, that made the run-on worse and it was running so rich that exhaust burned my eyes.

I attacked the timing next. The previous owner had the vacuum advance connected to ported vacuum. This added a ton of timing at idle. This explains why the engine refused to die when the ignition was turned off. So, I switched to manifold vacuum and set the timing back to factory spec. That improved things dramatically. Now, the engine would idle and turn off on demand. But, it was idling high (over 1200 RPM) and it was still incredibly rich.

The carburetor was next. I lowered the idle as low as possible without killing the engine. That was just below 1000 RPM. Then, I backed the idle mixture screws all the way in to verify that the power valve wasn't leaking. The engine died, right on cue. Good, I can check the power valve off the trouble shooting list. Next, I returned the idle mixture screws back to factory spec (1 1/2 turns out). Immediately, the idle got better. It smoothed out and the idle rose to about 1100 RPM. I was definitely on the right track. So, I connected a vacuum gauge and adjusted the idle mixture screws until I got to peak vacuum (almost 16 inches of vacuum). The idle rose another 100 RPM, back up to 1200 RPM. I attempted to lower the idle down to something in the 600-650 RPM range, but it refused to idle down below 1000 RPM. The engine was running smoothly, but the idle speed just wouldn't come down. That's when I noticed that the previous owner's homemade throttle linkage was binding up on the carb's throttle lever. Ugh, he really made a mess of this carburetor. The throttle linkage was nothing more than a long piece of all-thread and he had cut it just long enough that it was hanging up on the 90 degree bend of the carb's throttle lever. It was an easy fix. I lopped off about 3/8" from the end of the linkage rod. There's still plenty of material left to adjust the linkage, but now it clears the throttle lever. The engine settled right down to 650 RPM. All good? Not quite.

Now that the engine was idling smoothly and exhaust wasn't killing all the bugs in the neighborhood, I had a different problem. The carb now had a severe dead spot at partial throttle. Each time I shifted gears, the engine fell flat. Past experience told me that it was probably a bad (or misadjusted) accelerator pump. That theory was reinforced by the color of the accelerator pump cam. The factory installed green cam had been replaced by a red cam. More evidence that someone had had their way with this carburetor. I could see fuel squirting in the carb when the throttle was opened and there was no fuel leaking from the accelerator pump. That verified that the pump diaphragm was good. Next, I adjusted the accelerator pump linkage. It was adjusted so tight that the diaphragm was preloaded. That didn't hurt anything, but it effectively reduced the capacity of the pump. That definitely won't help a partial throttle dead spot. With the linkage adjusted correctly, the dead spot was better, but still there. The weird part was that it got worse as the engine warmed up. I incorrectly thought that it needed a stronger shot of fuel, so I moved to a more aggressive pump cam. The dead spot got worse. I went the other direction with a less aggressive cam. The dead spot got WAY worse. Hmm, that makes no sense. So, I put the red cam back in and parked the truck for the night. The next night, I talked it over with a friend of mine who has been working with Holley carbs longer than I've been alive. He said, "It's a Holley. The power valve is blown, of course." The observant reader will notice that I already verified that the power valve was not blown. So, I was skeptical. But, I hadn't actually laid eyes on the power valve, so it was worth a try. The next night, I pulled the front fuel bowl and metering block. The power valve passed visual inspection and I couldn't blow air through it. OK, it's not the power valve. But, since I was in that far, I thought I might as well replace it with a new valve, just to make sure. When I backed the power valve out of the metering block, I found the problem immediately. The previous owner (I'm really starting to dislike that guy) had attempted to increase the capacity of the power valve by stacking three fiber washers between the valve and the metering block. Wow, just wow. The middle of the three washers had split and was intermittently leaking air/fuel. I think the valve was OK, but the effect was the same, a dead spot at partial idle. I replaced the power valve and installed it with a fresh fiber washer (only one this time).

That seems to have fixed the problem. Now, the engine pulls hard through the gear shifts. It almost makes me want to keep the small block instead of installing an LS... Almost. Now that the carb is behaving itself, and the weather is turning cooler, I needed to turn my attention to the electric choke. The previous owner (are you starting to see a pattern here?) disabled the choke by backing the spring all the way off. He said that he couldn't get it to idle when the engine was cold. I wonder why? The choke turned out to be MUCH easier to fix than I expected. When I went out to the garage the following morning, it was about 45 degrees outside, so the engine was plenty cold. I loosened the choke housing and rotated it until the choke just snapped closed. Voila! It worked! No further adjustment needed. Now, with the engine cold, the choke closes and the high idle comes up to about 1300 RPM until the engine gets warm. Finally, something that the previous owner didn't mess up. Not too badly, at least.

[JohnIL]

When I bought the truck, it was obnoxiously loud. The previous owner was an old hot rodder with bad hearing. He installed headers, 3" FlowMaster 40's, and pipes that dump just behind the cab. No judgements, I get the whole loud pipes thing. There once was a time when my daily driver had a small block with headers and sonic turbos. But, that's not my style anymore. I'm more into subtlety now. Quiet exhaust is sneaky exhaust.

I fully intended to take the truck to the same exhaust shop that built the pipes on my son's El Camino. But, there was a wrinkle. I want to replace the rusty headers with ram-horn style manifolds. I already have a pair of chrome plated ram-horn manifolds sitting on the shelf. The problem is, the exhaust shop doesn't do manifold swaps. They only work from the flanges back. I was annoyed, but I can understand why they don't do manifolds. Imagine all the broken bolts they would have to fight. That would definitely cut into their productivity. I could install the new manifolds myself, but that means that I can't drive the truck the to the exhaust shop in the middle of the city 20 miles from home. I would have to find time to load the truck up on the trailer, haul it into the shop, then come back the next day and haul it home. I just can't arrange the logistics right now. So, instead, I threw together a quick and dirty temporary exhaust at home in the garage.

I hacked the 3" pipes off about 18" past the header collectors (the pipes are welded directly to the collectors). Then, I reduced down to 2 1/4", directly into a pair of 2 1/4" Walker Quiet-Flow SS mufflers. Then, I added short turn-downs to the exit side of the mufflers. The Walker Quiet-Flows are A LOT quieter than the old Flowmasters. The turn downs exit about halfway between the rear of the cab and the rear axle. That puts the sound well behind the passenger compartment. Eventually, I will take the truck to the exhaust shop for a custom bent system with an X pipe and tailpipes over the rear axle and out to the rear bumper. But, in the meantime, this "temporary" exhaust makes the truck drivable without the excessive volume and drone of the 3" Flowmasters. A better (and more complete) exhaust system can wait until next spring when I have time to install the ram-horn manifolds and schedule a visit to the exhaust shop.