Good news, bad news

[sjarrett71]

Ok, I've had my 84 2wd shortbed for a while now and have been trying to get it to run as I get money for parts. As you can assume, it's going slow. Well it's my birthday tomorrow so I decided to treat myself to a few miscellaneous parts. Well I got home and got most of them put on. One of the parts I bought was a battery. Well I hook the battery up and turn the key and the thing kicks over! I was so excited. I just bumped the starter since I don't have coolant in it and the spark plug wires aren't even on it yet. But still it kicked over!! That's the good news.

The bad news is when I changed the oil, coolant gushed out first. Then the oil came out. I originally bought the truck without an intake or carb, they were stolen from the previous owner. I guess when the thieves took them, they let coolant get in the engine.

Does anyone know, besides the obvious, what kind of problems if any I should expect? I know the engine isn't locked up because it kicked over when I hit the key. I plan on changing the plugs and I will spray some oil in the cylinders when I do.

Also, I have wires coming out of everywhere. Some are terminated at weather tight connections and some are just cut off and dangling there. I am sure I can figure it out but what wires do I actually need? I have a 305 with an Edelbrock carb, A/C, and a 700R4 tranny. I know I can't put the truck back to original without a quadrajet carb and factory intake but I would like to clean it up a bit and get rid of the wires I don't need. I'm thinking I just need power to the coil, the alternator wires, A/C wires, temp sensor, and the wires to the tranny. Any pictures of what wires I can eliminate would be great.

P.S. Sorry for the LOOOOOOOOONG post.

[old Rusty C10]

If im not mistaken Haynes has the wiring diagrams in their books so you can trace them otherwise im sure one of the guys here has some they can post for ya

[79gmcsierragrande]

Did coolant come out or water? Coolant has a rust inhibitor so it would not rust out the inside to bad. I would drop the oil pan and make sure every drop of water was out. Then take off the valve covers and check for rust, if there’s only surface rust your ok just poor some motor oil over it and hit it with a brass wire brush. Not a bad idea to check compression either, the rings could rust out and cause a loss of compression. Also when my wife rolled my Toyota I took all the plugs out and cranked the engine a few times to push any water and/or oil out of the cylinders, don’t worry about coolant when you do this as long as you’re not cranking for a long time. I would put oil in though, if you haven’t already.



I don’t know anything about wiring on these trucks yet so I can’t help you there.

[sjarrett71]

Thanks for the replies. The reason I ask about the wiring is because the PO or someone before him cut it up pretty bad and in some places used wire nuts to put it back together.