Project Larry - 1964 Chevy

[Captainfab]

You'll have to move all the plug wires one terminal clockwise after you turn the distributor 1/8th turn counterclockwise......just like raycow said.

Originally Posted by panelrodder81

THANK YOU!!! Excellent idea! When I put my vacuum tester on the motor and it read that that timing was off I played with the position of the distributor and when I realized that I needed to turn it further than the intake would allow I got pretty p.o.'d.

So to to confirm, if I just turn the distributor back toward the firewall approx. an 1/8th of a turn, relative to the entire distributor, then set the timing I should be able to solve the problem.

Sweet!

[Jakes-66-K10]

You might try a local Chevy dealer, years ago I needed a new governor for my 700r4 and I got one from Gene Harvey in American Fork. Was cheap too, less than $40 if I remember correctly.

Hows that new shifter working out for ya?
-Jake

[62much]

Nice Truck! I'm looking at pulling the 235 (which is hooked up to a Powerglide) out of my '62 and putting in a SB Chevy with a TH350 or 700R4. The question I have is, what did you have to do to mount the tranny? Did you have to move the existing mount, or use a aftermarket mount, if so which one, and how hard was it to mount.

P.S. Would love to have that Grill, hard to find. I had to put on a aftermarket '64.
Clay

[Captainfab]

The frames for the '60-'62's are a bit different than the '63 and newer trucks, so what panelrodder81 did, may not work on your truck. Does your truck have a transmission mount at the rear of the transmission?

Originally Posted by 62much

Nice Truck! I'm looking at pulling the 235 (which is hooked up to a Powerglide) out of my '62 and putting in a SB Chevy with a TH350 or 700R4. The question I have is, what did you have to do to mount the tranny? Did you have to move the existing mount, or use a aftermarket mount, if so which one, and how hard was it to mount.

P.S. Would love to have that Grill, hard to find. I had to put on a aftermarket '64.
Clay

[markeb01]

Originally Posted by 62much

Nice Truck! I'm looking at pulling the 235 (which is hooked up to a Powerglide) out of my '62 and putting in a SB Chevy with a TH350 or 700R4. The question I have is, what did you have to do to mount the tranny? Did you have to move the existing mount, or use a aftermarket mount, if so which one, and how hard was it to mount.

Clay

The following thread will give you an idea of what needs to be obtained or fabricated for the rear trans crossmember.

http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=369663

[panelrodder81]

Originally Posted by 62much

Nice Truck! I'm looking at pulling the 235 (which is hooked up to a Powerglide) out of my '62 and putting in a SB Chevy with a TH350 or 700R4. The question I have is, what did you have to do to mount the tranny? Did you have to move the existing mount, or use a aftermarket mount, if so which one, and how hard was it to mount.

P.S. Would love to have that Grill, hard to find. I had to put on a aftermarket '64.
Clay

Clay,

My truck was a manual/standard transmission and that xmember doesn't work for an auto, without modification. So I found a local guy on Craigslist and bought his automatic xmember for 20 bucks. Stuck the motor and tranny in place, bolted the tranny to the xmember, marked and drilled new holes, then bolted everything up. Funny enough it wasn't until I had to do this newest work that I found out I put the xmember in backwards which makes dropping the tranny pan VERY difficult. The last two rear pan bolts are extremely difficult to get to! I could be wrong but I would suspect that you could do something similar to your truck but as was mentioned the 60-63 trucks are a little different in just enough places to call in to question whether or not it will actually fit!

Thanks for the compliments on the truck though. I've been quite please with the thing, as I mentioned, and the look is quite nice. Photos, as you know, do cover up some stuff and this is no exception. I hope to be able to nail down all the remaining items, maybe do the front end and rear end swap to a 6 lug setup from the 89-98 trucks, then maybe I will need to start the body work to make it a REALLY nice truck! But then again, my 53 has been completely dead for over a year and I should prolly get back on that since that is were my heart really is!

[panelrodder81]

Originally Posted by vortexofpain

You might try a local Chevy dealer, years ago I needed a new governor for my 700r4 and I got one from Gene Harvey in American Fork. Was cheap too, less than $40 if I remember correctly.

Hows that new shifter working out for ya?
-Jake

Shifter will be great when I get some time actually install it! It prolly won't go in the 64 though. I really want to transfer the Lokar from the 64 to the 53 and put your B&M in the 64 but I just don't want to have to pull my seat out and the carpet up and the tunnel off and etc to get the Lokar out! Oh well, the BM will look just fine in the 53 anyway.

We'll see though, I might get ambitious and do all that work anyway!

[panelrodder81]

Ok, so the day before my governor went out on Larry my transmission started clicking, when I was pulling into my housing development. After the repair to the governor it went away so I was pretty happy. But then about a week/week and a half ago I was going to pickup a 700r4 for my panel truck and while driving up a hill the truck started to jerk forward and backward until I down shifted, manually, and then back into 3rd. It did this two more times over the next week. Then about three days later I started to get the same clicking noise from the truck again. Weird thing is the clicking doesn't happen at first. I pull out to start my commute and it doesn't start until I'm between 10 and 20 min into my drive. Then when I pull off the freeway and stop at the first light it slows down and then stops and doesn't happen again until about 10 to 20 minutes into my drive home at the end of the day. The transmission seems to be shifting fine and if I stomp on the pedal the truck will accelerate fine, though the noise continues. Its almost like the trans is being starved of fluid at cruising speeds but I check my fluid levels and they appear to be fine. Kinda hard to check the fluids when its happening cuz I'm going 55mph down the freeway!

Thoughts?

[Captainfab]

When was the last time the trans was serviced......fluid and filter change? Could be a plugged filter.

[panelrodder81]

Originally Posted by Captainfab

When was the last time the trans was serviced......fluid and filter change? Could be a plugged filter.

When I replaced the governor just a few weeks back I put in a new filter, pan gasket, and brand new fluid. And I put in a bottle of Lucas trans additive.

[panelrodder81]

Ok, so I decided to to a test. Today when I drove into work I wanted to see what it would take to keep the transmission from making any noise... which I did but I went pretty slow the enitre way in. My speedo isn't hooked up so I'm not completely sure but just using all the cars that passed me I would estimate that I was doing about 50mph the majority of the way. I can't say for sure that speed was a factor but I can tell you that I got NO clicking the entire ride in using this technique. Is it possible that I've been pushing the truck to hard/fast?

[panelrodder81]

Things with Larry went south pretty badly. The trans ended up being rebuilt and after that I had to have a custom converter built, some crap about the flex plate being from a PG so a standard th350 converter wouldn't work. Fortunately since the shop that did the rebuild didn't catch it before giving me the truck back they did if for free minus the cost of having the thing towed to their shop.

After that though the clicking came back, sporadically, and I developed a heat problem. Since I'd blow so much money on the thing already my wife called it quits for me. She demanded that it disappear and when she demands, I have to listen. Plus she said that I could have a bigger budget for the 53 panel truck if I conceded. So, we sold the truck to my dad.

He put in a custom built 383 Stroker with a Bow Tie Overdrives 700R4. Swapped the front end to a 73 C20 front end and the rear end from the same 73. This let him keep the 8lug wheels but get disk brakes up front and a 3.73 rear end. After making some other modifications like adding some new gauges, an aluminum radiator, and a lockup switch he is driving the truck daily/regularly. He seems to enjoy it and can hit 75mph only turning 2k on the tach.

Sorry that it is gone but its better that way cuz the wife is happy and I got the panel truck almost ready to drive daily.

I will try and get my dad to post some pics on here of the truck and any he took of the build up. And maybe he can take over this thread.

[MikeN]

Cool truck...keep us posted.

[panelrodder81]

Originally Posted by MikeN

Cool truck...keep us posted.

Well, I've sent my dad the link for this thread and he has expressed an interest in picking up and updating it so watch for that!

-Panelrodder

[ronin57]

Alright, Panelrodder (aka my son) has already outlined the changes I made to the truck. Lots of kudo's go to the contributors to this forum as I wouldn't have jumped into this like I did without the information I was able to gather here and the fact that I picked up the donor '73 truck for free. I just had to go drag it out of a barn.

To set the stage, my goal with the truck was (and is) to create a reliable driver that would be fun to drive, comfortable to drive and be a tow vehicle for a 25ft car hauler trailer and a 20 ft flatbed snowmobile trailer. With the exception of the towing, this truck is replacing '55 Ford F100 as my daily driver. I've got over 80K on that truck since rebuilding it (with Panelrodder's help) and it's in need of refurbishing. My wife and I recently traded our tow vehicle, a 2010 Dodge Diesel Crew Cab 3/4 ton, for a more economical gas-powered car (she ended up driving the truck all the time and is much happier with the car on less expensive fuel. Man, I was sad to see that truck go though).

I live 125 miles from my place of work, but only have to be at my place of work one to two days per week. So my commute is ~2.5 to 3 hours of about half country highways (65mph) and half freeway (75mph). Also, my employer pays for my fuel so fuel economy wasn't an overriding concern, although I wanted/expected to be in the high teens in mpg.

That's the introduction to the project, I'll follow up with the pics and all in a bit.

[ronin57]

Here's the first set of pics. Removing the front end.

From my research I expected to be able to just replace the upper/lower control arms rather than the whole cross-member. Unfortunately, the lower control arms attach to the cross-member differently between the '65 3/4 ton and the '73 3/4 ton. It was a small bit of additional work to replace the cross-member as well...not a big deal.

Removing the front end was relatively easy - relatively easy compared with the rear end. My air impact wrench that I'd had for over 20 years gave up the ghost somewhere during this process. I picked up another and have decided that impact wrench technology has greatly improved, my new one is lighter and more powerful.

The assembly went without a hitch. There is the issue of drilling out one bolt hole on each side where the cross-member mounts to the frame. All-in-all it's a sweet bolt-in installation.

The truck had a bit of a rake to it before the swap that I wanted to keep, so I used the springs that came with the truck rather than the '73 springs. I did use the thicker sway bar from the '73 and I'm glad I did. The truck dives into corners with minimal leaning and using the '64 springs kept the rake that I wanted without being too soft.

[ronin57]

Of course, I rebuilt the front-end with new bushings, ball-joints, and tie-rod ends. I rebuilt the calipers, turned the rotors and put in new brake shoes.

I used the '73 idler-arm and anchored it on the frame rail as discussed in other threads.

I coated a lot of the parts with POR15.

I used the master cylinder and brake booster out of an '89 Chev 3/4 ton truck using CaptainFab's Power Brake Booster Adapter Plate. BTW - that's nice quality work at a good price. Thanks CaptainFab! I'll have to take some pics of the engine compartment. I'll post them later.

I ran new brake lines throughout the truck for the most part, there was just one section along the frame rail that I re-used. I think I wore out my flaring tool in this truck...I think I'm going to get one of those air units as a replacement.

The rear end was a real trial. After trying all the tricks to loosen the rusty U-bolts in a futile attempt to be able to re-use them I ended up cutting them off with a torch. I should have just taken the 5 minutes it took to cut them off and save myself the 6-8 hours over a couple of days I wasted...hind-sight.

[ronin57]

I used the 10.5 inch 14-bolt GM rear end out of the '73 3/4 ton. The research I did on the 14-bolt all said it's a nearly indestructible. I pulled the rear on the diff and was pleasantly surprised to see a pristine set of gears with no visual wear or galling, no broken/chips teeth. It's a full floating rear end. The only downside I see to it is that you have to pull the axles to service the brakes. Not a big deal for me.

Also, I didn't mention it, but I don't know the history of the '73 donor truck. I looked at both rear brakes to find brake shoes with very little wear. With that and the excellent shape of the gears, I'm confident there's a lot of life left in it.

I've got about 100 hours on the truck now and I've noticed a small leak in the front pinion seal. Nothing to worry about yet.

The rear end ratio is 3.73, which replaces the 4.56 that was in the truck. Along with the overdrive in the 700R4 trany I'm turning 2K rpm at 70mph, 2250 at 80mph. I'll post more about the engine/trany stuff later.

I thought I had taken more pics that I have, but that's it for now.

[mr andrerson]

Panelrodder...cool truck. sux the way it turned out. whats powering that century in the garage?


ronin57... thats looking awsome!

[mr andrerson]

just out of curiosity... what does a brake job require when you pull the axles on a 14 bolt... is it any better/worse?

[ronin57]

Originally Posted by mr andrerson

just out of curiosity... what does a brake job require when you pull the axles on a 14 bolt... is it any better/worse?

It's no better no worse, it's the same standard brake linkage.

[ronin57]

No pictures this time, but a little more background to update you to the latest. I had the motor rebuilt by a local machine shop that I'd used to rebuild the 389cu that is in my Pontiac. The 350 block I supplied them turned out to have some cracks between cylinders (overheating) so we used another 350 block they had "laying around".

I bought a level 2 (~500hp/500torque) 700R4 trany from from BowTie Overdrive. My research on this indicated a good trany, but you have to jump through hoops to get it warrantied. I was OK with the warranty process so I went ahead with it.

The motor, again, is a 383 stroker. I wanted > 400hp and >400torque so the builder suggested using iron heads from RHS and an Isky 270 cam. I'm using the Weiland Action+ dual plane intake with the Edlbrock 4bbl carb (#1406, 600cfm). The carb is kind of the the minimal cfm entry point for a 383. I'm also using rams head exhaust manifolds with the ideal that I'll upgrade to headers down the road.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure if I'm getting 400hp/400torque or not. If I am I'm it's a bit disappointed, I expected more acceleration. However, it's still a very fun truck to drive and seat-of-the-pants feel is just that...seat-of-the-pants. I haven't towed anything with it yet either. At some point I'll get the truck on a dyno and find out for sure what the output is.

I originally wanted to go with a T5-6 manual trany for the fun factor, but the conversion cost was too high. It was a full grand+ higher than using the automatic. I went with a B&M stick shifter that is good quality although it rattles at rpms higher than ~ 2.5k.

My first issue with the motor was overheating. I'm embarrassed to admit here that this was due to me putting the intake manifold gasket in backwards. I'm careful about everything I do in my shop, but I had a guest in there while I was assembling the intake and somehow managed to screw this up.

So, after replacing the intake manifold gasket the motor kept its cool and ran very well until I started getting white smoke out of the driver side exhaust. I run dual exhaust pipes that exit out the side just before the rear wheels. It's very easy to compare the exhaust from each side of the motor by standing behind the vehicle. I continued to put some miles on the truck hoping the smoke would just go away, but this was not to be the case.

At this point, I knew I had 'exhausted' my engine mechanical skills, so I took the truck into a local mechanic. They quickly determined it was a head gasket leak into cylinder #1. When they took the head off we saw that there was a leak between the #4 and #6 cylinders as well. Based on this we decided to take the passenger-side head off and saw that it too was leaking between the two inside cylinders. Apparently the builder didn't properly torque the heads. The deck measured out flat as did the heads, so that is the most probable cause.

So, ~$1000 later I get the truck back and am having a lot of fun with it. Several trips to my work place and back. Although, I haven't abused it in any way. That is no burnouts, no racing, in fact the motor hasn't gotten above 4K rpm as I've driven it. My only issue with it at this point is that it leaks oil like a sieve. It marks everywhere it's been, mostly leaking out of the passenger side. It's still very cold and nasty where I live and there's another project in my nice warm shop, so even though I've been under the truck several times trying to narrow down the source of the leak(s) I'm waiting for warmer weather to get real serious about it. As I said in a post last night, I've got almost 100 hours on it.

The bad news is that it's back at the local mechanic's shop as I write this. I'm waiting to here the cause for the motor to start missing and a lot of top-end noise to start. The early diagnosis is that it's a broken rocker or push rod. So much for the dependable part of the equation. At this point I'm wondering if I shouldn't have just gone with a standard 350cu build.

I still owe this thread more pics and I'll continue with the saga as things progress.

[panelrodder81]

Originally Posted by mr andrerson

Panelrodder...cool truck. sux the way it turned out. whats powering that century in the garage?


ronin57... thats looking awsome!

Mr Andrerson - I'm assuming that you are talking about the boat? I don't have any idea! The garage belongs to my uncle and so does the boat. I was living in a condo at the time and didn't have anywhere to do that kind of work and he was kind enough to let me occupy his shop for a week to do the work at nights. I sure wish I had that kinda space, never mind the boat!

-Panelrodder

[Mechanic77]

Just something to look at for the oil leak...check and make sure there is a short bolt in the front of the block on the passenger side right where the fuel pump pushrod goes through the block. There is two bolt holes right above each other right above the oil pan on the passenger side, it will be the top one. That bolt hole goes all the way through and if there is no bolt plugging it, it will pour oil out (I speak from experience). Hopefully I explained it well enough

Oh, and if there isn't a bolt in it, make sure to put a very short (1/2" or less) bolt in it or it will hit the fuel pump pushrod and cause more problems

[ronin57]

Sure enough, a rocker was broken right at the pivot and a rod bent on the #8 cylinder. We're trying to locate a new rocker without having to buy a set. There doesn't appear to be any other damage...we'll see.

I've never seen or heard of this happening. The mechanics at the shop tell me it just happens sometimes, a weakness in the metal or a manufacturing flaw I guess. Let's hope lightening doesn't strike twice.