Far North 67

[coldrider]

Figured I’d put together a build thread on my 67 SB.

But first, a little backstory and mine is probably like a lot of other guys on here. My first car was a POS, but I scrimped and saved and eventually bought what I really wanted, a 67 SWB GMC. I loved that truck and put a lot of time and effort into it, lowered, 383 stroker, shaved tailgate, roll pans, 15” turbine wheels, 295/50s all the way around... everything this teen from the early 90s wanted in a street truck!

And then life started to happen. I took up an interest in motorcycles, snowmachines, guns, and my future wife. There simply wasn’t enough money to go around, so I sold the truck. That was all fine and good at the time, but I never stopped hinting to my wife that I always wanted another 67 and on my 40th birthday she handed me a stack of cash (enough to get a project started anyways) and told me to start looking.

That was in 2015! It took me until 2019 to finally pull the trigger. I’m in Alaska so pickings are slim or rusted beyond what I wanted to start with.

So I’m scrolling eBay one day and came across a clean 67 at a pretty fair starting price but the auction ended without any bids. I contacted the seller to say I was interested but I wasn’t willing to pay the starting bid because I was in Alaska, the truck was in New York and shipping was going to be expensive. I made my offer, he declined, and that was that.

A week or so later (IIRC) he emailed back asking if I was still interested because he had a few things he needed to take care of. We made a deal and the rest is history. It arrived here in fall of 2019 and almost immediately I had to put it into storage due to snow being right around the corner (I need a bigger garage!)

[coldrider]

PO build pics... early days

[coldrider]

PO build pics: coming back together..

[coldrider]

previous owner is all done at this point. a couple of years and ~600 miles later life happens and he needs to sell.

Quick summary of what he did / what I'm starting out with.. paint/body done, 350/350 combo, new electrical, Scotts IFS, ~4/6 drop, wheels, tires, etc. Nothing over the top, just a nice driver with a lot of the stuff done that would've taken me forever. That being said, the truck isn’t perfect, there are a few flaws, some were pointed out to me by the PO, some were not, but overall I'm really happy with what I got.

From here on out, the thread will cover what I'm doing to make it my own

[coldrider]

Enter 2020.

Over the course of the summer, I knew there were things I wanted to do, but I mostly just enjoyed the truck because I’d just gotten it and didn’t really want to start anything that was going to take it off the road for a long time. As it is, the roads are really only “nice” from about May to October up here (all other months you can count on snow or gravel), so I only tackled a couple small things.

While I like the Rocket Booster wheels that were on it, the 17s were a bit too small, so I swapped them out for 20” Riddler 650s and Nitto 555s (245/40 front, 295/40 rear). Love the look of split 5 spoke / 10 spoke wheels on these trucks.

The interior also has a few things that need taken care of, so first up, gauges. Half of the stock stuff didn’t work (one of the things I wasn’t told about) and I really liked what I saw in the Dakota Digital HDX setup.

And since I pulled the steering wheel, I may as well swap it, too. With modern gauges out in front of it, the big classic wheel was going to be out of place. Con2r has a cool build-your-own steering wheel tool on their website. I thought the white/brown combo struck the right balance of new and classic.

[D.B]

Nice looking start on making it yours. Good job!!

[coldrider]

Thanks guys

[coldrider]

Alrighty, its 2021 and time for some power steering.

Wanting this to go as smoothly as possible and not have any fitment issues with their IFS, I called Scotts and ordered the rack directly from them. Pretty sure they use 80’s thunderbird variety. After getting that ordered, Summit took care of the low pressure PS pump and brackets I needed to get it done.

With parts in hand one Saturday morning, it was time to get started. How hard could it be?

Well, it didn’t take long to answer that question. Right out the box - the input shaft of the new rack lines up perfectly with the long-tube headers. Time for some different headers.

[coldrider]

Luckily, I found some headers on FB that cleared the steering.. never mind the extra work of tying these into the exhaust system or having to notch the frame a little more

[coldrider]

With everything bolted together, the steering joints were binding. Ugh, time to try to “stretch” the space between the column and rack as much as possible, while also adding another u-joint.

To shorten up the column side, I cut two u-joints down as much as possible while still leaving enough room to throw a slug of double-d rod in for alignment. I tig welded them up and probably gained 3/4s of an inch or so vs. stacking them back to back (this was temporary and eventually replaced with a proper double u-joint)

On the rack side, I added a few washers between it and the cross member in order to push it forward by another 3/8”. Someday, I’ll spin a proper spacer or redo the mounts altogether.

[coldrider]

The extra u-joint and inch or so of extra room was just enough to get things spinning without binding. But with 3 joints, time to add a support to keep things from oscillating. As much as I wanted to pick up the mid point, inside the frame offered the best location.

[coldrider]

Success! All in, this little “weekend” project cost me four of them, mostly waiting on parts. I never imagined such a small thing would snowball like it did. If I had to do it over again, I’d modify how the rack mounts to the crossmember, buy a shorter column, or both.

Maybe this is why the PO went with manual steering in the first place?!

[coldrider]

While in between rounds of fighting with the power steering, I figured I do a quick upgrade to the rear suspension because a 6” drop wasn’t kind to ride quality. The rear shocks were practically horizontal, at the end of their travel, and the truck was just about riding on the bump stops.

I went with No Limit Engineering’s shock relocation kit because Rob knows his stuff and has shared a lot on here (read the ‘Make it Handle’ thread).

Installation was super simple and made a big difference

[coldrider]

That was enough for the summer of 2021. I’d already lost a month of decent driving weather, so I stopped with the projects, although by the end of the summer I had already started collecting things for an LS swap.

Not that there was anything wrong with the stock 350, I was just itching to add some power.

[coldrider]

Fall/Winter 2021.

While the truck was spending time in storage, I was spending money. A couple trips to FB marketplace landed me a freshened up LS2 and a rebuilt 4L80E.

But before I even had the engine/trans, I had been kicking around the idea of an eventual LSA supercharger build. And then I happened onto Richard Holdener’s video about the Eaton M122 Cadillac STS-V blowers right after LS adapters had been created for them by a company called MackDaddyParts. I thought it looked like a neat alternative to an LSA, so I grabbed one before prices skyrocketed.

[coldrider]

When I first picked up the LS2 I thought things were going to just fine with low boost and 11:1 compression with the right tune. But after sleeping on it for a bit, I felt better about upgrading parts, taking a little compression out, adding ring gap, etc, so I ordered a set of 9.5:1 Pro LS pistons and rods from Summit.

[72c20customcamper]

Very nice truck . Steering Wheel looks very familiar steering wheel in one of my Avanti's

[coldrider]

Originally Posted by 72c20customcamper

Very nice truck . Steering Wheel looks very familiar steering wheel in one of my Avanti's

Thank you sir. And that's quite the collection you've got!

[coldrider]

Time to port the supercharger and throttle body. I wasn’t targeting big hp gains since the blower was only going to be good for about 8psi on a 6L, but figured I might be able to make the system as a whole breathe a little easier.

This was an interesting project because the blower uses Laminova cores for the intercooler instead of a standard brick.

[coldrider]

Opening up supercharger to intake runners to match the LS adapters

[coldrider]

A not-so-great picture of the adapters. Each side requires 2 pieces to make the transition from supercharger to cylinder head. The guys at MDP did an excellent job on their kit

[coldrider]

Last but not least, intercooler water inlet / outlets. The kit came with 8AN fittings on the adapter, which were far smaller than the openings on the supercharger so I opened up the adapter and welded in 12AN fittings.

[coldrider]

Mocked up

[coldrider]

Spring 2022. May 1st to be exact. I have until Halloween to get this done, otherwise she gets towed back to storage because snow sticks around after Halloween up here and my better half insists on having the garage free of the "toys" for winter parking.

Out with the (not so) old..

[coldrider]

And in with the new... well, at least for mock up. Y'all know how this goes, she'll be installed several times before all is said and done, but super stoked at this point