72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

This is my project dubbed by my wife as "The Blue Burb of Happiness". I started with a pretty good piece. P.O. had done a frame off resto of the body with paint. Suspension was lowered 4" front and rear with new disc brakes front.

He decided he didn't like the 8 lug spindles on the 3/4 ton and changed the rear end to a 1969 with 6 lug. An issue with spacing since the 69 rear is narrower.

I plan to update the interior, change the wheels, rechrome the bumpers and clean-up the engine compartment. The AC needs attention as well. P.O. took out the rear air unit. I found a replacment on ebay and will match up with a vintage air kit for the front.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Great start and I love the blue!

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Progress on the interior. I have removed everything in the interior. I managed to find a wrecked 2012 Buick Enclave with 750 miles that had a gray leather interior. Here is a picture of the mock-up. Lots of work to integrate the heated and cooled seats as well as make custom mounts to get them to fit right but they are oh so comfortable.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Nice ride! Love the color. :metal:

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

The color is Ford blue flame metallic. Seems a little sacreligious but it does look good.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Weekend progress. I removed the Lokar floor shifter and installed a new tilt column with auto shifter. Replaced the semi-truck steering wheel as well.

I also got the new wheels installed. 20 x 8 1/2 American Racing Torq thrust ST with 20 x LT245-50 Goodyears. I ended up using wheel spacers to get the correct fitment. 1" in front brought the 19mm positive offset back to near neutral and also cleared the spindle interference. I used 2" spacers in the rear to correct for the offset plus the too narrow 69 rear end. All in all a good fit and I like the look for my blue/gray/black color scheme.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Nice Burb man. We need more pics of the seats man.
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Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Nice Burb!

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

This weeks progress on the blue burb:

I found some rust in the bottom of the radiator support and decided to order a new one. Once I removed the old one the "one thing leads to another" syndrome sat in. I now am ready to pull the motor and clean everything up. I'll put in a new Voodoo cam, intake and carb, lots of seals and gaskets and clean and repaint everything. Hopefully the engine compartment will look as good as the exterior.

The factory A/C will also be removed as the new vintage air installs in the dash. It comes with a blank plate for the firewall and looks much better.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

I made some progress this week. The motor and transmission are now out and being cleaned up. The motor looks good, 4-bolt main 350 with 487x heads. I am looking at putting in a roller cam, new intake and carb. It's just hard to do something decent and not let the $$$$ get away from you.

Once the motor gets cleaned up and painted, I'll let the paint cure while I remove all the old air conditioning system and install the new Vintage Air.

The tranny will get the TCI "kit" to allow the lock-up converter to activate on vacuum rather than a computer.

I'm estimating at least 3 weeks of work to get the motor/trans back in and start reassembly.

I have a self-imposed deadline of June to be ready for the Pueblo NSRA show.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Slowly making progress on the build. The 700R4 transmission has been rewired with a kit from TCI for use without a computer module, new seals front and rear, new filter, pan gasket and cleaned and painted

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

The Vintage Air system is going in. All the old components have been removed and the new evaporator is hung and the ducts run. the firewall has been cleaned up and the new lines and the heater valve are ready for connecting. The frame rails and crossmembers have been cleaned up and repainted and waiting for the engine to be finished.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Getting ready to pull the cam and replace with a roller cam. Then I can finish cleaning and painting the motor. I did finish the valve covers and set them on to get an idea of what it will look like finished.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Nice work and a beauty of a 'Burb!

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

The motor took a turn for the worse this weekend. Found the tip of one valve broken off under the rocker and removed the head. #2 piston had major damage. Looks like something got dropped into the motor at some point. I'm lucky to have made it to Nebraska from West Virginia when I bought it.

Oh well, I always wanted to build a stroker. I guess now is my chance. I finished tearing down the motor and it heads off to the machine shop this week. Probably 3 weeks to get it back and put the motor back together.

I'll switch back to finishing the seat mounts and installing the new Dakota gauges while I'm waiting on the motor to be machined.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

OK, the motor is back from the machine shop and nearly reassembled. It is now a 383 stroker with a comp RV roller cam. The heads were reworked with all new valves and the exhaust seats were replaced with hardened seats for unleaded gas.

More money than I wanted to spend but in the long term this should be a good investement and run fast for a long while.

A few accessory brackets to fit-up and then it will be time to stuff this back in.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

nice work !! looking good !!

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Excellent work!

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

looks great... What was the price for the 383 stroker build?

Love the valve covers!!!

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Thanks for the compliments. The machine work came to $950 and included .030 bore, line bore for the crank, resize the rod ends, press the pistons on, install the cam bearings, new exhaust seats, hone the valve guides, and new over size stem valves.

Parts were about $1500 and included Comp roller cam K-kit (cam, lifters, seals, valve spings, timing chain set) new stroker crank (Speedway Motors), new pistons, rings, and gaskets, new Edelbrock intake and carb. The valve covers are Procomp and were another $200.

Not bad for a four bolt stroker considering a crate stroker with the same options would be $4500 to $5000
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Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

When Im thread surfing and I see yours the title always makes me smile. Your wife must have a good sense of humor.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Obviously she has a sense of humor to put up with a gear head like me.:lol:

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Progress is continuing on the build. The motor and transmission are now back in and I spent the entire weekend on the wiring. The Dakota Digital VHX guages are in and up and running. A small payoff for the boring hours of tracing old wiring to be removed and replacing with new wiring. I still have the programming and configuration of all the gauges and vintage servos to do.

PO had converted to HEI distributor but the original wiring passed through the tach to the ignition terminal. Not sure if this was correct but the tach seemed to read high. It's all corrected now so i won't have to decifer that one.

Can you tell that wiring is not my favorite part of this build??

I will try to get some pictures up tonight showing the motor and the new gauge setup. I hope to be able to fire this thing up by next weekend.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Great looking build I glad you are not taking short cuts to save a few bucks$$. You will have a very nice BLUE BURB OF HAPPINESS for years to come.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Thanks Bud. It seems like shortcuts always bite me and I end up spending more than if I had done it right the first time.:dum:

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

OK, here are the latest pictures from last night. Sorry about the poor cell phone quality. I have temporary valve covers on so as not to scratch the good ones while finishing assembly.

The gauge package makes me want to drive this thing all night long.:metal:

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Very nice!!! Love the guages.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Weekend progress - I got most of the accessories mounted on the engine. I used plastic adhesion promoter and painted the distributor to match the valve covers. I had to remake the A/C mount somewhat to fit the new Sanden compressor but it looks fairly factory. The remaining stock brake booster and master cylinder kind of look like a big turd now. Maybe in next years budget?

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

The new radiator support is in and most of the braces installed. I now need the bottom radiator support brackets as I didn't realize these don't come with the support. I also made a mount to tuck the transmission cooler behind the front bumper instead on zip tied to the grill as the PO had it.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Just for fun, I thought I would throw up a picture of my home shop and my 48 Chevy coupe I finished last year. Enjoy!

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

I love your burb! But then you screwed up and show me your shop. Now I have to hate you. :devil: Dadnabit! My shop will never be that nice.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Eraser5 - Just so you feel better, the shop is pretty messy with all the burb parts laying around. Do you suppose I can talk my wife into cleaning it?:jest:

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Getting close to have the burb running again. We finished up the new Heartthrob exhaust. All the pipe and mufflers were ceramic coated at my work where we are developing new coatings. It looks pretty cool and hopefully will be durable as well. The radiator is back in and all the fluids have been topped off. My bud Garry had to work today or we would have had it running.

I should have another update with more pics and maybe a video of the first start.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Engine was test fired and sounds awesome. I did have a water pump gasket leak so had to drain it back down and replace it but all in all a success. I will try and get some pictures up later this week. The video needs some editing before I can post.

As Grandma said when she rocked over the cat's tail...it won't be long now.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

OK, the water pump leak is fixed and everything checks out motor wise. Next on the list to finish:

- install front grill
- finish smoothing bumpers and get to the plater
- run rear A/C hose and crimp all hoses
- wiring (cruise control, A/C, seats and speakers)
- sound deadening and insulation
- carpet
- seats

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

Next item checked off the list... the front grill is installed. I used a fusion flat back plastic paint to black out the original egg crate.

All the under-hood wiring is complete and the harnesses are tidied up. I can finally move to the interior and finish some wiring before sound deadening and insulation.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

I finished welding in the bolts and smoothing off the back bumper. Once this was done it just looked like the exhaust should exit the license cut-out so I mocked this up and liked it. All this will now go to the plater for polish and chrome.

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

That's sweet!!
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Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

That really does look sharpe!

:but: Though I'm sure you have the answer figured out, where now will your license plate go??

Re: 72 "The Blue Burb of Happiness" Project
 

I was waiting for the license plate question. I have a 1972 vintage plate and Nebraska requires only one of those either front or rear.