Sullii the 72 GMC 1500

[lolife99]

Perfect!!!

[hewittca]

Originally Posted by lolife99

Perfect!!!

Thanks!

New page, new problems.

While the truck was on stands waiting on tires, I discovered two things that need immediate attention. First was a coolant leak that was coming from a crack in my block. I never noticed this spot while I was doing the swap, and I've never noticed any coolant on the ground. It appears the leak was slow enough that the coolant evaporated before it dripped. At first I was thinking the worst and that I would need to replace the block, but after reviewing old photos I realized the block has been cracked for quite a while.





I figured if I've been driving it like this the whole time I've had it then it was worth trying something to stop the leak. I decided to add some GM coolant tablets into the radiator and after several heat cycles my leak was gone! I'm not sure how permanent this solution is but I plan to run it and see if this issue ever resurfaces.



The second issue was my idler pulley. The outer lip of the pulley had cracked off and the grooves were starting to cut into my belt. Then I realized I made a bonehead mistake. I was supposed to use a smooth idler pulley for the backside of the belt. I'm not sure how I missed this, but at least I caught it before my belt snapped!



At first I tried a 5.3 truck pulley, but it required spacers and the diameter was too large. Next I tried a 5.7 Camaro pulley and this was the correct one.



One last aside is a correction to my bed alignment. I thought that my bed didn't look quite right, especially when viewed from the side.



After running a stringline I realized how far off it was.



I took some measurements and added the correct amount of spacers under each mounting point and was able to get things much closer.



Bed misalignment is one thing that always jumps out at me when I see a truck, so I'm glad to have this resolved.

[hewittca]

Now that I have those issues squared away, it's time to enjoy the truck a bit! I discovered that there is a truck show next weekend called C10 Resurrection that isn't too far from my house. They are doing what they call a photo poker run where you take photos of your truck at landmarks around town for a chance to win a prize at the show. I don't care too much about the prizes but I definitely wanted to take the opportunity to ride around in my truck. My kids tagged along for the ride. First we hit the carwash and then we were off to Lexington.



They have a list of locations that qualify for the drawing. Of course, since Lexington NC is known for barbeque you have to hit a BBQ restaurant.



There were a total of four locations in Lexington that we needed to hit.









There were also two locations a few towns over in Spencer NC.





We had time to hit 6 out of the 9 locations. It made for a fun morning driving the truck, hanging out with the kids, and taking some cool photos!

[hewittca]

It was such a beautiful day today and the lighting was perfect so I decided to pull the truck out into our field and get a few shots of it "in the weeds".





It was fun seeing the truck hiding in the grass, so I left it out until evening. When it was time to pull it inside I was rewarded with the setting sun casting the perfect glow on the truck. Photos like these are the ones I love revisiting after years gone by and I'm several builds later. Keeping that in mind, I'm trying to remember to enjoy this truck while I have it!

[hewittca]

I'm just catching up here with some photos from the last month. I've been driving the truck quite a bit and just trying to enjoy it. I even drove it to work every day one week. I want to put as many miles on it while the weather is still tolerable. I also made a successful trip to the C10 Resurrection. It was the first year for the show and they had 250 trucks show up. Not too bad for a small town show in Lexington NC. I only managed to get two photos of the truck. One before heading out to the show, and one arriving. My friend came with me and after about two hours we left and headed back to his place to work on his truck with some newfound motivation. Ultimately, we ended up bringing his chassis back to my house so he has room at his place to start body work. He helped me so much with my truck and now we are making some serious progress on his truck.







The only issue I've had with the truck lately is a dead starter. At first I thought it was the battery so I tried jumping it with my Tacoma, but still no luck. Then I tried rolling the truck down the driveway and dumping the clutch and it fired right up. At this point I was highly confident it was the starter. Easy enough to swap. It took longer to go get the starter than it did to swap it out. I'm thinking the old one died because it was worn out because I don't think my exhaust is too close. We'll see how long this new one lasts. The starter was indeed the issue. Back to cruisin!





Here's a few more random shots of the truck. All out and about near home and work. The kids hop into a photo every now and then. They are usually with me since they enjoy riding in the truck just about as much as I enjoy driving it.









I've also been trying to improve my photo taking skills, at least as much as I can given I'm still just using my phone! My biggest mistake is I've been using the native 26 mm focal length of the lens which allows you to get really close to the truck and still fit it in the frame. This gives it a distorted perspective that exaggerates the size of parts that are closer to the camera. It makes for an interesting photo sometimes, but it doesn't faithfully represent the dimensions of the truck.



A more natural focal length for automotive photography is around 35-40mm. Unfortunately you cannot change this on my phone. You can, however, mimic it by changing the zoom to 1.5x. This forces you to take several steps back to fit the whole truck in the shot. The tradeoff is you reduce photo quality slightly, but the truck looks much more proportionately correct.



My tentative plan for the truck this year is to drive it until the weather is unbearable. Then I will most likely park it until the weather cools off just in time for the next C10 Fall Revival. After that, I will probably be ready to start working on the interior. That's it for now.