Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

Thank you

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

I suppose drivetrain is next. I knew from the beginning I wanted an old school small block in it because I wanted the vintage look, and I had a 400 block that I've been dragging around for close to 20 years waiting for a project to put in. But unfortunately I found out the hard way that the hood on these trucks is not waterproof. And by that I mean the center strip it covers the seam between the left and the right halves just has tabs to go through holes in the hood and are twisted to hold it in place. There's no actual weather strip, and when you get steady rain it follows those tabs down and it drips right on top of the intake manifold. Now if you have a complete sealed engine it's not a super big deal other than you get water spots and it's kind of pain. But, if you have an engine block, heads intake and valve covers bolded together for mock up with no gaskets, it will drip on the intake enough to eventually run down the intake ports and into the cylinders. I found that out the hard way when I got the engine down to the machine shop and we started tearing it apart. There is several cylinders that had really deep pits from water sitting in them. So rather than go through all the work of cleaning the block and everything like normal, we just put it right on the boring machine and punched the two worst cylinders out to 30 with the intention of if they cleaned up we'd knock all them out to 30 and then backtrack and throw the block in the parts washer. But even at 30 there's still some really deep pits that I don't think 40 would have cleaned up and 60 over on a street motor I just didn't really feel like dealing with it.

So to backtrack a little bit farther last Christmas my wife surprised the hell out of me and she got a hold of a friend of mine who runs machine shop that actually happens to be right next door to where I work now. She picked up the bill ahead of time for all the machine work on my engine. She been working a bunch of extra shifts at the hospital through the big covid rush last year and she wanted to help out and try and give my project a little boost. I think the labor Bill ended up being somewhere around $1,000 between going through the block, going through the heads, assembling and everything. I didn't have the heart to tell her right away that that was just labor and that parts were still additional on that but hey it was still a pretty cool gift.


Bottom end of the engine is a 4 bolt 400 .030 over, I got lucky and one of the guys I was working with at the time had a 72 Chevy pickup that had a 400 in it. So 200 bucks later I've got another block. That one cleaned up good over at the machine shop. Rotating assembly I priced all over, most of them for decent parts were a little over a thousand to 1200. And then from there it could go up to wherever you feel like spending money. The hard part for me is I keep thinking about what I put in my race motors back when running Street stocks, and it keep telling myself do I really need that in this? It's not turning 7000 RPM night after night. I highly doubt it'll ever see 6,000. Speedway motors in Lincoln had a pretty decent deal on the rotating assembly. The standard weight cast steel 400 crank, set a $350 H-beam rods that were probably Overkill but why not, and I believe it said Keith black dished pistons. Compression ratio with my heads should be about 9.5-9.7 to one with the standard head gasket. Cylinder heads are set of cast iron Dart iron eagles that I picked up for $450 assembled. 2.02,1,6 valves, the intake ports are only 180 cc's which if I was looking for all out power they would be choking it out on the top end in that 6,000 RPM range. But because I'm looking for low-end mid-range power the smaller ports will give me a little better velocity. I really wanted to send them out to brezinski's and have a set of camelbacks milled on the end of them for the overall look but they wanted another 400 bucks for that so I opted out. You'll see why in a little bit. For camshaft I don't know if I'm just getting old or what combined with the numerous posts I've seen in the engine forums about flat tappet lifters self destructing. But I just have no patience to break in a flat tappet cam and hope it survives considering the amount of work that I need to do to clean all the metal out if it fails. Ignoring protest from my wallet and maybe that one card that the wife doesn't watch that close when I make payments on I went with the Howard's retrofit roller cam. spent several days looking at different cams doing a lot of reading trying to decide on what I wanted. There's more to it than just left and duration. The big choppy idle sounds nice but they don't always perform that well at lower rpm. And then when you're listening to video clips on YouTube of people that are nice and poster cam specs you got to take into account a smaller engine will respond more to a cam than a bigger one. I'm pretty happy with the cam I picked out. It's got a very solid lope at idle that in gear or out of gear you can't mistake. But in the 50 or so Miles I put on it it's very drivable it doesn't struggle at low RPM that much. And it runs really well through mid-range and top end. Instead of Comp cams push rods and some 15 roller rockers around everything out. I don't remember the length right off hand but the stock length pushrods for a 96 to 2000 vortec 350 are the correct length for anybody else wanting to run one of the retrofit roller cams.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

I wanted the scripted valve cover no breather look for the engine. I had one of the old 327 cast iron intakes with the factory breather pipe and the four-barrel Holley flange. That would have functioned, but I felt like it needed to breathe a little better than that. Edelbrock still makes a performer RPM intake it comes with the oil pipe and it's machine from the factory. They're only 260 bucks on eBay but I still didn't want to spend that much. One of the extra intake manifolds they had from my racing days was Edelbrock 2101 just a standard aluminum performer. It was not drilled for the oil pipe but it had the area cast for it. Years back there used to be a lot of intake companies that did that. Now there's only one or two. So I built a jig at work from some leftover bits that held the intake up at an angle so that that filler pipe was straight up and down. Once the intake was mounted right angle I put it in the mill and with the help of my friend that runs the machine shop we bored the home in the front of the intake for the oil pipe. The next question is how to run the pcv. I could have just run a breather on that pipe but the downside of that is all your engine vapors are going to come out of there continuously as designed and be cleaning oil residue off the motor. And where I got a mile and a half of gravel between my house and the highway it would just end up being a constant mass. GM went away from a PCV valve and just went to a fixed orifice system probably a little over 15 years ago on most of their V8 engines. Did some reading on it and it's actually pretty simple to do. Basically you just got your intake vacuum port with the hose runs to the valve cover and somewhere in that passageway there's a restrictor with a small hole. Somewhere around 2:00 to 2 1/2 mm depending on the engine. That way you've got steady vacuum to the crankcase to pull out fuel fumes which also helps prevent minor leaks and compensate for blow by at idle. Pretty much the way you check it on mine it was easiest I took my vacuum gauge and I hooked it to the dipstick tube and I took my hand and I pulled it the end of the pipe on the intake. You should have somewhere around 3 inches of vacuum at idle. If you got more than that you need a smaller restrictor, if you got less than that you need a larger restrictor.
The restrictor was made from just a piece of aluminum bar stock on the lathe. Center drilled it through the middle and then cut the outside down small enough that it would be a fairly tight fit and the PCV hose. Which in this case is just a piece of 3/8 fuel line.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

The restrictor itself is the easy part. The fitting on the intake not so much. From the top side it seems simple enough, I picked a spot in front of the distributor, drilled and tapped it for quarter inch pipe thread and I've got an elbow fitting with a hose barb on it. That would work, but there's a lot better chance of it picking up extra oil that gets slung around the lifter valley. What I did for that was well the baffle on the bottom side of the intake. Being aluminum helped versus cast. The piece that I welded in is fit really tight all the way around except for the back edge there's a quarter inch Gap along the top and then behind that there's another piece that goes from the top down and overlaps around so there is no direct path at where anything can spray up to the fitting. My TIG welds as I've said are not Instagram quality, and cast aluminum especially one that has been run on an engine for extended time is not always well to cleanest but at least I know they're solid and ain't going to come off. I also took a small belt sander to the Edelbrock logo just behind the thermostat housing. Very carefully ground off the letters and then took it upstairs and put it in the more aggressive of our two sandblasting cabinets and hit that area really really hard just to put a little texture back in it. After it's painted if you know where to look and you get the light just right you can see the difference in texture but at a regular glance you don't see that area was modified. Just another thing to try and camouflage the upgrades.

The intake was upside down when I photographed it. I have no idea why the picture of the hose is upside down.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

The next hurdle is where to hook the hose up to the engine. The vacuum port on the number 8 cylinder would technically work except for all your oil vapors from the crankcase go into that one cylinder. The carb I'm running for now has no 3/8 vacuum ports. My end goal is eventually to go with a throttle body fuel injection weather fitec or another brand. So for now the simplest solution was carb spacer with a vacuum port. You can buy those pre-made for about 30 bucks or a little more. Or, if your cheap like I am and have a bad case of fabricator syndrome you order a $10 carb spacer from Amazon drill and tap it and put the fitting in myself. This way workef. Then I had to come up with a short s-shaped hose that tucks in real nice and neat that isn't kinked. I cheated and took a piece of 5/16 brake line inside 3/8 hose it looks like a molded hose.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

Nice work...Jim

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

I also modified a set of oil pan reinforcement plates for a '96 to 2000 small block with a one piece main to use on my 400. I had a couple sets of them that I held on to years back. GM went the easy route when they did their oil pan rails. When they switched to a driver side dipstick they just reverse the two and tweaked the back a little. Flip them side to side and they match up for 85% of the pan. The back needed a little bit of reworking but it really wasn't that hard to do. I had maybe 45 minutes in the whole thing. I know if you get a good pan and make sure everything's flat you tight it up properly they generally don't leak, but I feel a lot better with these in there.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

From there came painting and detailing before I put the motor in. I have painted a lot of motors in my life, while I'm partial to the orange and black classic Chevy pattern depending on the build, orange is normally the hardest color to cover. They make engine paint in primer and normally I'm too cheap for this stuff but this time around I figured why not. Couple good heavy coats of Gray to get the color All uniform, let that dry over the weekend and then one and a half cans of VHT brand Chevy orange. The primer made a big difference in coverage with the orange. The pulleys, brackets and anything that's black was done in DupliColor semi-gloss black. The oil filler pipe was just a $10 Chrome one from speedway. But the Chrome wouldn't look right so I sandblasted it that way it had some texture because if anybody's ever tried painting Chrome before you know it usually flakes off sooner or later.
Probably the best thing that I didn't want to spend money on but I'm glad I did was the stencils for the valve covers. I got those off of eBay, I think they were around 15 bucks. There's basically three ways you could do the lettering on that. You can freehand it which I absolutely do not have the skills for. You can paint the valve cover black and then put a coat of orange paint over top of it and then very lightly sand through the orange on top of the letters just enough to get into the black but that's really sketchy if you're not experienced. Or you just order stickers. But, those stickers are not fun to put on. The ones I got did not come with transfer paper on them that is absolutely a must for something like this so they stay lined up. It's easy to put them on, but kinda hard to get them lined up straight on the raised letters. Some transparent low tack transfer paper is required. The end result was well worth it though.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

For exhaust manifolds I was originally going to use one of the original GM ones on the driver's side that has the alternator mount cast into the end of it. I had picked up a 2.5" one a couple years ago and was waiting to see what I needed for the passenger side for my AC compressor mount. Then it became a problem trying to find a passenger side only without any extra mounts car in it. The cheaper and easier way was to just order a set of the smoothie rams from speedway. I think it was $150 for the pair with hardware. I had used a set on a customers build and was really happy with them. Now I just need to eBay the original GM manifold I have.
The outside is then look really nice. The insides though were about what you could expect from today's casting standards. Think I spent about an hour and a half porting the insides until I was happy. After that it was several costs of VHT cast iron manifold paint.

A standard HEI took care of the ignition and I used a set of black Taylor cut to fit wires. I though for sure I got as picture of it on the stand before I put it in but evidently I didn't. The motor with the red wires is one I did on a customers build but it's the exact same way I ran them on mine.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

You can't have a vintage small block without a fuel pump. It just wouldn't look right. And because I planned on running an in tank electric pump regardless I needed something to hold the fuel line. Here's a something I used on a previous build that turned out really slick.
Take the cheapest small block fuel pump you can find that has a nice finish on it whether it's the aluminum and the gold or aluminum and silver or whatever look you want. Take the underside of it and cut the nipple off where the rubber hose goes, drill a 3/8 hole through the fitting directly in line with where the steel line would have originally went. I keep forgetting to get a picture of that part. and then carefully notch straight down on the 3/8 fitting area so the fuel line will go up in the same place but you can still thread the nut in. The idea is that the metal line will come in the front side of the pump where you can see it and then curl around the back side and become the inlet while the standard 3/8 fuel line nut holds it to the pump. I did the inlet fitting different on this one because, well to be honest I forgot to go look at my pictures of how I did the first one and tried going off of memory. Ended up being more work and kind of a pain in the butt. I would recommend version one, it's just a - 6 male and fitting on one side and a 5/8 thread female, 3/8 inverted fitting on the other. You take the inverted flare nut from the top end of the line at the car when you just turn it around and put it on the line and that's what screws into the pump. And from there I'm not going to say how long it took me because when it comes to fuel lines I have OCD and I spend way longer than I should to make sure they're what I feel is perfect. I think the line we used we got from Napa cuz it does not come zinc plated or have that green plastic crap they put on a lot of them. Went over the whole thing when I was done with a rag and some brake cleaner and just went lengthwise like you would with a Scotch-Brite pad and it polished it up to where it had a nice steel look and then I hit that with some clear coat.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

Also where the fuel pump bolts up it's not that hard to cut the Cross pin and pull the lever off the back of the pump so there's nothing protruding and then use a fuel pump block off plate. And then the only gasket they can possibly leak is between the plate and the block which generally does not happen. And then you can do like I did and put a gasket between the pump and the plate just for aesthetics.

The line for the vacuum advance is just a piece of zinc plated 3/16 brake line.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

Cool idea, you could sell those likely.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

took me a second to see just how much you ported out of the manifolds, good win. and the cosmetic pump is awesome, well played!

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

They didn't photograph very well unfortunately. It was needed though.

Thanks

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

love the bed floor!

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

Thanks. I do too. Really blends in with the rest of the truck. Now I just got to figure out something different for tail lights. Those were just temporary to make it legal for cruise nights.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

if you dont mind a suggestion, my all time fav is 36 truck housings with 36 car LED lenses. I did it once and if it wasnt so expensive I would do it every time, its a great look! next time I think I will try to get chrome originals though.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

Those aren't bad at all.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

somehow i posted twice. so i will edit this post to just say again how innovative some of your mods are.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

Just stumbled on your build...you've done some REAL creative things there! Keep us posted on the progress, Lorne

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

I saw that lol. Thanks. I'm not done yet.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

Thanks.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

Currently serving was the weak link in the drivetrain is the 700r4 that was originally behind the 4.3 that came with this chassis. The intention was that if I drive it like a responsible adult it will hold up long enough to decide what I want to run permanently for a transmission.
Spoilers- I'm 46 and not a responsible adult.

Behind the 4.3 it shifted good and would actually get second gear tire chirps if I got after it. Surprisingly there was no signs of clutch material in the pan when I checked it out. It got a thorough cleaning with the power washer, new filter and pan gasket a couple coats of semi gloss black. Reasons for the black, everybody does silver. Silver looks good but also shows any imperfections. Black hides a lot while at the same time making the orange on the transmission pop even more. Plus it gives it a mean look underneath.

The S10 dipstick tube fit almost perfectly with just a little tweaking to clear the firewall.

Behind that is a GM driveshaft that I have no idea what it came from but it just happened to be the perfect length for this application. Gotta get lucky once in as while I guess.

Little tip for those running a nine inch and a GM driveshaft. The yoke I'm running on this one is 1 1/8"x 3 5/8". It's very close to the GM metric joint, 534g I believe. They make a combination joint to match up between the two. Easier solution is to clearance the ears on the yoke for the joint. Then from there forward it's just a standard s10 joint.
A set of digital calipers, a note pad, and a Dremel with a cut off wheel. Measure the distance inside the ears on the yoke. Write that down. Take a small amount off one side, measure the difference then take that same amount off the other side. Keep doing it evenly until the joint fits snug like it's supposed to.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

Out back is a 77 Lincoln nine inch that I picked up a while back. Currently it's 65" flange to flange. With 8 inch wheels they stick out past the fenders by just a little bit. The wheels that are on there now are 7 inches wide with 3 1/2" back spacing if I remember right. With these wheels and the 65 inch width have 275/50/15s on the back with just enough clearance to work. Not sure what I'm going to do long term but if I do decide to narrow it I can. It also had the 5 on 5 pattern to match the fronts.
It came with 3.00 gears and a 28 spline trac-loc. On the bench right now I have a 3.50 gear set and a rebuild kit for the posi. I also have a new pair of axles from summit waiting to go in. I'm not sure what the history of this rear end was but both shafts are bent pretty bad. I'm in the process of making an alignment bar and the pucks for it and when that's done I'll pull the rear end out and go through it. I'm pretty confident that the housing is going to need tweaked as bad as the shafts are.
The sway bar mounts are just standard rear S10 mounts welded to the housing. The lower spring pads were cut out of a piece of 2 1/2x 5" tubing. I'll gusset and cap them when it comes out. I don't remember how far forward I offset the pads but it seemed like a lot. After it was together I added a 1.25" lowering block to fine tune the height. I actually took one block, cut it in half and added it to the other two to make up for the long spring pads.
The torque arm was made from a kit I got from one of the 4wd places. It came with everything except the round tubing. I used 1.25x.125 wall tubing for that. I deviated from the design slightly by putting the heim on the bottom in back. The idea there was it would not pivot under normal suspension movement. I hate heim joints on Street vehicles because they always get dry and noisy. Also with it on the bottom in back I can use that to fine tune pinion angle. The bottom mount is on both sides. The top one will be when I pull it out and go through it. The front end has the shackle mounted to the middle cross member that will eventually also hold the driveshaft loop.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

Evidently I didn't get many decent pictures of the torque arm but this one shows it pretty good.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

Nice descriptions and pics to show how you dealt with issues. That yoke trick is clever (I can't say for sure from the pics, but it looks like you didn't have to remove very much material at all to get a perfect fit).

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

Thanks It's not much at all that's why I said go slow and measure. It's easy to take to much and then you have to throw a tack on it and regring. Been there did that. Sometimes depending on the yoke and joint it will fit without cutting anything. If it's too tight though it will squeeze the bearing caps to tight.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

this is proper engineered hacking and i love it! i never thought about doing that and always just bought that stupid conversion joint.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

Engineered hacking. I like that lol

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

i'm a huge personal fan of this style of torque arm for leaf's, i run the same basic thing on my YJ off road and it's been doing great work while being BEAT on for years. only difference in mine is that the bushing welded to the crossmember on the jeep is a JohnyJoint style spherical ball to allow more articulation. but that's obviously not a problem for your truck.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

I think the kit initially planned on the heim being on the front end of the arm for just that reason. Ya, articulation isn't really a concern. It does it's job though. It surprisingly hooks up really well. I want to get it on scales at some point just to see how I did but regardless of how hard I wail on it there is no sign of wheel hop. It just launches straight and goes.
Also, the transmission isn't happy about that fact lol

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

:lol:

:metal:

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

As I mentioned in my previous post, Im real impressed with some of the ways you worked around & made things work (Frame spread, Rack, gas & brake linkage, ect. ect.) Love it!

As has been mentioned, there is in many cases: "No such thing as overbuilt" so Id like to bring up a couple items that would greatly improve your rack installation.
First, The tabs you have made that the rack is mounted to. There is a great deal of opposite force (with a fair amount of leverage) going on every time you turn the wheel...working on those bolts 6" or so back. A single plate made (even out of 1/4") that profiled the shape, straight out, then around the inboard area of the bushing say at a 30* angle with a big inboard radius back to the crossmember, out at 30* to the other bushing & then straight back...making like a reinforced "C" would eliminate the Two independent "sticks" working hard on the back bolts. If one of those back bolts gets tired of the force & snaps, things could get NOT good in a hurry. This couldnt happen with a single plate. Same mounting system, same bolts but a MUCH better outcome. With a bit of creativity (which you sure have), you could add a couple more bolts/nuts in the center up through the crossmember as well. Maybe now cut a smaller plate (even out of 3/16") to "fill in" the area Im talking about between your existing brackets?

Likewise, the rack mounted in single shear on the bolts looks like it could be improved on rather easily. If you profiled a 3 sided "gusset" & welded those to the frame sticking out (I realize the Left side looks to be a bit of a challenge with the tubes there) with a hole in it would keep the saw motion from happening vertically in the bolts. Again, rather light material, say 1/8" (think about all thicker the original Ranger/Explorer tabs/ears were) would make a huge difference & wouldnt get in the way of your needed "down & out" on the rack to remove/install. The bolts could even be dropped down through then for even more added safety. Just thought Id bring up a couple things rolling around in my head. Do with it as you see fit. Take Care & Keep us posted on the progress, Lorne

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

Just a couple pictures showing what I have for tire clearance out back with the 275s and 7-in wheels. plus a wide angle of vehicles waiting to go through the shop. The GTO is ready to go home.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

Thanks for the response, and I welcome any input throughout the build. In regards to the rack mounts, there's a lot that hasn't been shown yet. The four bolts you see in the bottom picture holding the bottom straps up are for mockup purposes. Once I got it in the shop here this past summer those got fully well the to the bottom of the cross member all the way around. And there's also two short angled braces welded in behind the rack going up to the crossmember to give it some support. I'm kicking myself because I didn't take more pictures at the time. The plans are that once I finalize my AC compressor mount there's going to be another ear that welds in above the rack so the bolts are in double shear, and then the big chunky front edges that are hanging off the front are going to get rounded and be mounting ears for the back edge of a skid plate/brace that runs forward somewhere up by the sway bar mount. I'm not totally sure on that yet. The skid plate is needed for my gravel roads. This style of rack as opposed to the mustang 2 rack mounts pretty much in line with the lower control arm bolts, and the county likes to windrow gravel when they maintain our road. If I do hit an unexpected spot I really don't want to go and plow gravel with the rack. The double shear mounts on the bolts realistically is enough to hold it in place cuz that's how Ford did it with the rangers originally. Having the front edge mounted to some braces with a skid plate on it should just help make it more or less bulletproof.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

ahh there is something about wide BFG 15s, just says hot rod.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

It is currently licensed and I have probably put probably 5 0 mi on it just around Town driving cruise nights and whatnot. Both rear axles are bent bad enough I don't trust them at highway speed so till I get the rear end out and gone through it it's not going to be seeing any extended driving. Right now it's pretty much in Mobile mock-up mode. It's roadworthy enough I can test things out and make sure it's going to work before I fully finish everything in.

I could write a chapter book on everything I've done to that front crossmember. Some of it was worth it some of it I'd maybe do different in the future. The biggest and hardest modification was making a tunnel through it for the steering shaft. I roughed in my original hole enough to get the rack mounted and steering shaft run a while back but then it came time to close up the excess holes and make it to where I trusted it. What I ended up doing after looking at it for half an afternoon trying to figure out how to piece it together was just cut most of it out, and make a big scary hole and then fill it back in. The front edge / radius of the crossmember is a piece of 3/4 in solid round bar that runs all the way from the outer frame rail to the bottom center of the crossmember just inside of the control arm bolt. I took a piece of ready bolt at home bent it to the pattern I needed and then brought it into work and used the torch to heat the round bar and then bend it right where I needed. Once the front edge was where I liked it all the missing sections were cut out of 3/16 plate and weld it in. There are several pieces inside boxing the crossmember, basically making a channel. It's not just the top in the front piece that you see. There's enough material there welded in that I'm pretty sure it will never fail. It is also a metric crap load of work that I don't know if I would do that part exactly the same again just because the amount of work involved.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

And one more.

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

Agreed, that was a metric crap load of work, but the end result is quite slick! But if you were faced with a similar problem in the future, you could repeat what you did in a fraction of the time, as you have already figured out how to do it (and you showed it to the rest of us so that we can do something similar). I also will spend the better part of a day staring at a problem before attacking it and sometimes I wonder if I actually spend more time staring than working, but then when I have to do it again I fly through it.

Keep posting those great pics and descriptions of how you overcome problems!

Re: It's my turn, 47 S10 build
 

Figuring out what you need to do and then plan how to get it done is a daily thing for me. Most of the time I enjoy the challenge but it still frustrates me at how long that stage takes.

This is on a customers build at work that I'm doing. That was at least 3 days of planning and fabbing. Probably closer to 4. I definitely felt like I spent more time planning than I did actually building. 65 mustang, Ford Coyote motor, Schwartz chassis, fully loaded. I definitely enjoy my work.