George...

[69gmcc10]

I couldn’t resist waiting for the engine to get done so I took it for a drive with the old clunky engine in it (the engine runs ok, but at idle it still has a thunk, I figured I cant hurt it any worse), I cant wait for my new engine!

I should have not thrown away that old broke and worn out muffler. I took it off because the guts of it were blown out (literally), it was in the way when I was doing the trailing arm conversion and I didn’t think it could be louder. I was wrong, George sounds like a tractor with a 2 pack a day problem.

Initially I bedded in the breaks by slowly breaking from 40 mph down to10 mph several times and the larger breaks and braded steel lines have firmed up the rear breaks and now most of the stopping comes from the back. It is a different experience on hard breaking because the nose doesn’t pitch down when you hammer the slow pedal, but it will stop in a hurry. I don’t know how much of it is to any certain thing larger brakes, steel lines or just new breaks?

The posi and the flipped trailing arms works real well together to get traction to the ground, it hooks up better than any truck I have driven. The Monroe sens-a-trac shocks are super smooth and with the no limit panhard bar the rear feels very under control. On a side note, and I don’t know how it worked out, my wheels are only half an inch from being in the center of the fender.

The only thing I don’t like about the truck is the stance and wheels it currently has. It sits 1” higher in the front right now (32.5” in the front 31.5” rear), because I haven’t cut ½ a coil off like I plan, but that will happen when I swap in the 72 front end from my parts truck next spring. The wheels and tires are the only 5 on 5 wheels I have and they came from the parts truck, I added the hub caps to class it up.

Next up is to get the exhaust plumbed with the old engine in so when I get to installing the fresh engine I can properly break it in.