Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

then we Geeked out and replaced the weights and springs in our dizzy to really dial it in

and let me tell you she runs cold with only holy water in the rad now

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

bruh, this is boring, don't you have some other bright ideas?

Me: "hold my beer!"

got the cargo light working

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

also got the dome light working, sometimes ladies and gentlemen you gotstoo take the small victories, am I right or am I right?

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

energized by my electrical prowls I decided to take it up a notch

[yes this is from my "In love with cheap digital gauges - era!"] (no idea why I'm quoting myself?)

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

Warning: if you think my gauge bazel cluster thingie has seen better days you should have seen it wrapped in upholstery and full of glue before i cleaned it up

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

yes one of the bottom four holes is crooked and no I did not cut it out like that, the PO must have done it, I would never hole saw a crooked hole (ha ha)

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

OMG, this gauge cluster is Fugly, how do we tell him?

hold on there Sparky it's about to get a whole lot worse

it was a temporary solution so that we could take Dusty camping later on and not overheat or under charge the battery or God forbid go 97 in a 35 MPH zone type a thing

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

What's your addy? I will send you a better bezel. Man turn that beaver loose out of your garage. :lol:

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

that's friggen hilarious, no doubt huh, I soooo appreciate the offer, but hold off for the separate follow up Dusty Build Thread II (aka the sequel - coming soon) you may not like the direction we are going, ha ha

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

Enjoying the build, and glad to get in on the ground floor at the beginning of a build thread of yours!

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

I'm glad, and welcome, you won't be disappointed things are about to get exciting

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

I'm in. Just don't say you're 2JZ swapping it. :lol:

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

Bwhaaa haa ha (that's the most underrated comment on here)

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

so what is he going to do, the [ahem] suspense is killing me

did somebody say suspension?

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

Now that doesn’t look too crazy not like it’s a set of switches to make Dusty jump

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

Is the C notch and dropped spindles coming this afternoon? :lol:

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

ha ha there will be no C notching on this thread, I swear any time I see yet another C notch welded in a part of me cries like a baby nobody wants their truck in the weeds (and there goes half the readers)

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

now before we did anything first we had the truck laser scanned for precise and exact measurements and rendered this to scale drawing

Note: if your truck does not match these specs exactly, check your truck, there must be something wrong with your truck

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

so if I recall correctly (mind you we did this 3 years ago) but lost the pics and only recently found some of them, we done did the rear coils first, by the way I love the trailing arm rear suspension on these trucks, so unique

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

alright, mandatory stare and compare

folks, does the stock rear coil spring look normal to you or does it look like it's been heated up and collapsed some? I ask because I don't know what they are supposed to look like, so any feedback is greatly appreciated

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

the front was next, only rule: Don't Get Dead!

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

I recon by now some of you may have spied our KY Jelly shockulators, not sure if these numbers mean something, but this is what they are

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

and I think this was the other side, I am 99.7% certain the front coil springs were cut in order to shade tree mechanic lower the front

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

and result, whacha all think? of the stance that is, we all know Dusty still looks like Death

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

so moving on, not sure if all trucks of this era/generation got trans tunnel covers with a hole for the shifter whether they were manual or automatic, I thought I heard that somewhere, but most likely I am wrong

anyway mine is a column shift automatic so I just made a delete plate for the shifter hole in the tunnel cover, didn't wanna just weld it up in case you know Crazy Happens later

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

ah yes the good ol' "PLS" GM RPO Code!

say what?

PLS = Pavement Lubrication System

RPO = Regular Production Option

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

well we're gonna fixt that...

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

I also recall playing with the speedo drive gearing and what a pain in the [ahem] tail that was, ha ha

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

and I think I wrote this up in a separate thread but here goes the gist of it

one of the problems we had with this TH350 transmission was that it would shift from 2nd to 3rd gear too soon and too smoothly you could hardly feel it, so we decided to fix that

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

and you do that by replacing the springs and weights in something called the Governor, it looks like this, and it lives on the side of your Turbo 350 transmission, you don't have to drop or take the trans apart, you just snap back the retaining clip with a flat screw driver and this thing lives behind a large round lid that eventually slides out whilst running trans fluid down your sleeve

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

so lets blow this thing up to smitherines and Geek out a little

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

ok let's Science the Snot out of it

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

so the first thing we did was weigh all the weights including our own so that we knew where we were on the spectrum, hope you follow that, then we could decide which direction we wanted to go, I believe in my case I wanted to move to the right ie Later Shifts so lighter weights in other words we wanted to stay in 2nd gear longer allowing the engine to bring up the revs again and then we wanted to feel the shift into 3rd

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

so that did the trick we went from a Grandma's grocery getter Buick/Cadillac like shifts to hard slammin' push you back in your seat (a tiny bit) gear bangers just the way we like it, and now we rev up, then shift into 2nd, then watch the revs fall back down, and then we rev up again, and shift properly into 3rd - Job Done!

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

That rear coil, I think that is normal for the 3 middle coils to be close together. I've had a few that looked similar to that. I could also be way off base too. :lol: Nice to hear you got the trans working how you like it and I think the stance is great.

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

thank you Ryan I really appreciate the feedback, and wow look at the material difference in those coil springs, can you see me haulin' a truck load of dirt now, ha ha, I love these trucks so much, they were truly built so darn well

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

I almost forgot, on your high hump question. Generally the 2wd trucks had low hump (non removable) unless you had a TH400, 4 speed, or big block. The 4 speed would explain the hole as it's forward and in the center. Either someone added the hump to that cab, or it was a manual trans truck originally? It looks like your high hump was added imo. Since you have green floors and the cover is white.

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

Ah, great detective work, ha ha. It's coming back to me now, I just wish I had the old pics to confirm, I think this truck came with no trans cover, so you are right the green floors do not match the cover as I went out and bought it.

So since the cover comes off, it must have been a manual truck, now I don't recall seeing a third pedal, but that may have been replaced. And now that I think about it, I did remove a do dad off the driver side frame by the transmission where I think a Z bar mounted to shift the manual trans, I will try and find that thing and post it on here for further confirmation. Which leads me to believe the steering column must have also been replaced as it now has an auto shifter lever on it... great!

Once again I really appreciate you droppin' all that 411, it really helps, I am still learning this Gen and it is by far my favorite Gen of trucks. (Sorry Rusty and Busty)

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

Not a problem at all. I know every little compared to some of the fellows on here. But I try to help out where I can.

Re: My Dusty 71 GMC a Mother & Son Project
 

folks I don't know if this is common with our trucks or if Dusty just acted up and took one in the nose, but just like with the bed panel I could not get behind this thing with a 3 lbs sledge to knock it out, nor would I be able to pull this dent out on the account of it having that center crease which adds some significant rigidity and strength to the hood (brilliant I tell ya)