ClusterTruck; because that’s what it is

[clay68c10]

I think they'll be good. The seat adjustments are pretty broad. I'm going to change up the pedal alignment a bit to help since you have to lift your feet so high to get on the pads. I figure about 2" more distance away would be similar to my 93 and the Jeep. I can accomplish that without changing the pedal ratio. The pads on these trucks sit very horizontally compared to newer cars so I will make them more vertical and push them a bit farther away.

[clay68c10]

I kind of forgot that I did some gas tank fitting back in Sept.
I'm going to run the square body blazer tank. I heated up the solder and turned the fill neck.
It's big and I wanted to move it as far forward as I can.
I trimmed the lower flange on the crossmember to get some more room. I'll add this back on the front side later.

[clay68c10]

I made my upper straps, and for now it's held in with a ratchet strap. I'll make the removable lowers later also.
This just gets me to the point that I can get the bed floor trimmed for clearance.

[clay68c10]

I also had a chance to test my LS wiring and PCM. We have an old TechII at work and it successfully talked to the PCM!! That was a happy thing for me.
It has the 7603 operating system, which is convenient since it is the most common and supported P59 OS. More on that later.
I was also able to actuate the fuel pump and A/C relays.
And even with VATS still active I was able to crank it and make sure the starter circuit was working.
I will call that a win!

[clay68c10]

Now, I have a VIN. Carfax may not be the most detailed info out there, but it can give me a ballpark mileage.
My compression test results were pretty uneven and I was really curious if the mileage told to me was accurate or BS. I suspected BS...
That said, I was ok with the price I paid. $1600 for a 6.0 with wiring/PCM/intake/etc is a good deal around here even if it's just a rebuildable core.
My buddy that still works at the dealer ran the VIN for me and this is what showed up......

Yeah, I laughed.

[SCOTI]

It's not even @ 250k.... It's just getting broken in.

[clay68c10]

HA!!! Right, just starting to seat the rings at this point.

[clay68c10]

I figured out how I wanted to do the seat mounting.
Removed the front stock mounts and welded on a trimmed length of angle. This way I can utilize the front mount holes. I'll add another pair of mounts on the tunnel side.

[clay68c10]

The back was a little more involved. The mount points are wide at the outboard side, off the edge of the flat part of the floor. They're also not the same distance back from the front.
I cut the mount hole portion off, reversed it, and welded it back on the opposite seat and the same length as the inboard side.
The first 2 pics are the driver seat, the last is the passenger.

[clay68c10]

Now they're parallel, but the inboard side has to clear the bump in the floor. When you run it back, the track comes back and hits the ledge.
You could stack some washers or whatever to do this. I made some shims out of scrap.

[clay68c10]

Now it was time to address the pedals.
I started with the DBW gas pedal. I measured the pedal travel of several vehicles and most have 2" of gas pedal travel. I mocked it up to duplicate that and made it happen.
Meanwhile, my helper made some use of my scrap pieces.

[72 tigger]

Alert! Problem found!- car fax

Nice fab work! Pretty cool you have a good helper

[clay68c10]

Ya, he likes to make fun things with my scrap. He’s getting decent at welding thicker material. When he’s ready and interested I’ll let him do real work.

[clay68c10]

Now it’s time to take care of the brake and clutch pedals. I’ve never liked how high they sit relative to the gas pedal, and just the ergonomics of lifting my feet to get on them.
I measured my other vehicles and figured taking the pads around 2.25” closer to the floor would be about right.
I measured the 2.25” shown by the red lines and cut the pedal ends off. The pic was after, the pedal pad was still attached when I cut.
I made the cut at a pretty shallow angle. Most newer vehicles have the pedal pads close to vertical. My angle was driven by that.

[clay68c10]

Here’s the after shots. Overall I gained a lot of foot room and can pivot my right foot on my heel and reach the gas and brake without lifting my toes much.
The overall length of the pedal arm (from upper pivot to pedal pad center) was only shortened by 3/4”. That doesn’t change the pedal ratio much.

[clay68c10]

So, the 6.0....
All this time it was sitting with Kroil in the cylinders, hoping it might free up what I thought might be stuck rings causing my poor compression test results. This engine was so clean inside....
I really wanted to run it and see, but wasn't going to spend big $$ on HP tuners just to shut off VATS and some codes. I had been waiting on some of the free software alternatives to be tested, and now that they seemed to be working I jumped in.
I got an OBDx cable, downloaded PCM hammer, and got after it with TunerPro.
Shutting off VATS and extra codes was a couple of mouse clicks.
https://obdxpro.com/product/obdx-pro...cs-and-tuning/
https://github.com/LegacyNsfw/PcmHacks/releases
https://www.tunerpro.net/downloadApp.htm

[clay68c10]

I borrowed a pressure pot fuel flush tool from work, filled it up with some pump gas and pressurized it, and attempted to fire it up.
It cranked for a bit, fired up, ran rough and smoky for a minute, then smoothed out and idled just like it should.
That was such a huge motivation!!
Oil pressure was great at 45ish psi.
I've ran it several times since then, and it's a smooth runner. No misfire codes. I haven't done another compression test, but will eventually.
The oil pressure has been over 30psi every time it's been running and coolant temp has been up to 225 several times to test fan and other functions.
I'm gonna run it as-is for now, maybe under a real load the story will be different, but that will be a problem for future me.

[cornerstone]

Nice work!

[clay68c10]

Thanks! I'm stoked to have it running.
It has also allowed me to geek out and try these tuning tools.
So far I've been able to:
Shut off VATS and codes
Activate, test and adjust my e-fans
Segment swap in manual transmission settings. (Thanks to Universal Patcher)

[clay68c10]

There's a coolant temp sensor available that incorporates the PCM sensor and gauge sensor into one unit. It's for a 98 LS1 F-body.
I know a lot of folks drill and tap a new hole for the 67-72 sensor but I wanted to give this one a shot and it worked out well.
As an FYI, the stock fan settings have low speed coming on at 226. These motors definitely run hotter than the old ones. "Hot" is considered to be 260!! That's the last pic, I mocked up the correct sensor resistance of 55ohms for that one.
Here's some pics in this order: 190F, 212F, 228F (fans just came on), and the simulated 260F

[clay68c10]

I did play around with the resistor on the back of the gauge, but the stock 90ohm one gave the best overall result thru the usable range of the gauge.
I attached some diagrams. Pin C is the one you tie in to the green wire in your original harness. A&B are tied to the PCM wiring.

[hewittca]

Your thread and build are amazing! Excellent work and I really appreciate all the details you give on how you are doing your mods. I will definitely be taking some tips from here for my build. I especially like your pedal mods. I was just looking at my pedals the other day thinking they were awkwardly high compared to my throttle and wondering what I could do about it.

[clay68c10]

Thanks man.
The pedals have always looked/felt weird to me compared to newer cars. I finally decided to change it up since I was putting the gas pedal where I wanted it to be.

[clay68c10]

It’s been a while since I’ve updated here. I did get a couple of things done in the past few months.
I modified the Blazer tank fittings from the o-ring TBI style to push connects.
I cut the ends off to keep as much length as possible. Then I had to sand off some of the coating so my flare tool would fit. That took the longest, the coating is thick and I didn’t want the surface rough for sealing integrity.

[clay68c10]

I had to flex one of the lines to get the tool on, but it bent back fine.
I use the MasterCool hydraulic flare tool, it’s expensive but I’ve had it forever and it’s great. I initially bought it for the brake lines on my Texas big block CST truck back in 2003ish and it’s been used on plenty of projects since then.