68 English truck project

[Cadaver]

Here's my current project, a 1968 GMC long bed, stepside truck which was imported to England in the 80's by the US Armed Forces, I don't know which department or why, but it's a cool bit of (vague!) history for it to have!

Everything for US import vehicles is expensive and hard to get hold of in England, so it's a bit of a slow project of love where I've been buying what I can when I can. Used parts are almost impossible to buy, so new is the best way to go. I've also had to improvise on a few bits, sorry if this offends anyone I've tried to change all the British terms to the American equivalent, again, sorry if I've missed anything.

I bought it back last August on a whim from Glasgow in Scotland and drove it 600 miles home without a sniff of an issue. Three weeks later the auto transmission decided to change to 1st at 60mph and has done a bit (LOTS!!) of damage. The bodywork on the truck is a mess, both front fenders were terminal, they were full of paper mache with body filler over them and a few random bits of metal in the filler so when I used a magnet to see if they were full of bondo or not nothing seemed suspicious.

The other main issue is that there's a fair amount of rust in the cab. The floor has been fixed but not brilliantly, and the sills were "replaced" but not very well either. The rusty bits which needed fixing most aren't visible, as they're covered by the scuttle panel and the fenders but I'll know they're there and it will irritate me. The plan is to repair them for now and then buy a better cab and new doors and ship them over in a year or two.

It looks like the previous owner was aware of an engine and transmission issue as the coolant tank had bits of copper in the bottom when I drained it, suggesting that k-seal (The English version of this I think: http://barsleaks.com/product/head-gasket-fix/) was put in to prevent the head gasket from going and/or to fix a coolant problem. The torque converter also looked like it has been bodged too as there was some sealant which was very wet around it.

I bought a 1983 Chevrolet Camaro as a donor vehicle and will be converting the truck's 4.1 straight 6 and 3 on the tree auto transmission out for a relatively well set up small block chevy with a T56 6 speed manual gearbox.

The engine has been worked on a fair bit and is now running a around 450bhp on 100ron fuel; I'll be dialling the timing back a bit though as I want to run 98ron Shell fuel as personally I prefer it over anything else. It's been bored out to 6.2 litres, has a Chevy 406 cam, aluminium heads, edelbrock intake and a holley carb. The power figure will drop a bit and the exhaust will change from the Camaro magnaflow one too which might adjust the figure slightly too.

The rear end is a Jaguar IRS from an XJS with disc brakes and a limited slip diff in it. Jag stuff is super cheap here, so it was a good option for the project and a suspension drop of around 3 inches all round will lower the altitude and improve the handling too I hope.

When I got it home:



Taking the engine out:



Moved it to my indoor unit


Teardown/rust finding begins:






Rust removal from the "small" hole in the bulkhead...


And for those wondering, the camaro which donated some of it's bits




Unfortunately the GMC grill was bent and rusty so needed to be replaced, I was quoted around $1,000 for a replacement landed into the UK as they are so large. I found the Chevy grill about 2 hours from my house with all the bits except a core support for roughly $128 (£90). My core support needed to be replaced anyway, and the Chevy one was the same price from LMC, so I bit the bullet and bought that in.

I've had a custom driveshaft made so that the T56 and the Jag rear end work together and I'm just about to start to re wiring the whole truck as what was there before was complete junk. Someone had used small nails instead of fuses, had added circuits in all the wrong places and it was literally a fire hazard.

The truck currently stands as below:



I'm hoping to have it back on the road for the end of May, so that I can finally enjoy it!

I've probably (definitely!) missed some bits out, so if there's any questions, please do ask