Sullii the 72 GMC 1500

[Graham57a]

Man that stance is awesome, gonna be even better with the 1" in the front. You're making quick work out of it! Hope the engine search is successful

[hewittca]

I've not been able to work on the truck much lately, but I did find a few minutes to finish off the rear suspension with some 2" drop blocks. This puts the rear as low as I can go without notching the rear frame. With the 4" springs, 4" stepped frame, 1" body drop, and 2" blocks that nets me an 11" static drop in the rear!

The truck has a slight reverse rake right now without a motor, and after the drivetrain is reinstalled the truck should be close to level. If I have to, I can mill the blocks down to get a slight rake which is what I want.

[hewittca]

I took a big step in the right direction towards getting the truck running again by finally securing a 5.3 for a swap! I had been patiently working with someone to get this motor and waiting on him to get a chance to pull it from the donor. Two months later and it was finally time to go pick up the motor.



I am glad I waited on this one because the person I was buying it from was genuinely nice and was trying to get it pulled as quickly as he could, he's just been busy with life! I can relate to that. The motor also appears to be in good condition given the 180k miles on the clock. With the help of a friend, we tore it down to the long block and inspected the internals under the valve covers and oil pan. The valvetrain had no buildup and was a nice golden color, and the bottom end was all intact. There was even still crosshatching on the cylinder walls. Satisfied with the condition of the motor, we replaced the oil galley plug and rear main seal for insurance and dropped on a Holley knockoff 302-1 oil pan to provide extra ground clearance. The motor also got a thorough degreasing.







After cleaning it was time for some paint. My friend suggested painting the block black and leaving the aluminum parts natural but I insisted on orange, ALL orange! There's just something about an orange small block in old Chevys that I love, so orange it had to be. I eventually plan on modifications to make it look more like an old SBC but for now I will be putting all the 5.3 parts back on in their stock configuration. My goal at this point is to just have a clean, functional, and complete engine swap as my baseline.





The next step is to source a transmission, bolt it up to the engine, and drop the assembly into the truck. From there we will work on reinstalling all the components that were removed from the engine. At the moment I am leaning towards an NV3500 manual transmission, but I have not secured one yet. For the time being, the truck sits patiently in the barn. I suppose this is how trucks eventually end up as a barn find, but I will persevere and not let that happen!

[hewittca]

The first thing I would like to accomplish before getting the engine installed in the truck is to sort out the stock harness. I briefly considered just throwing this swap together and getting it running first, but ultimately I knew I wouldn't be happy with the way it looked. I want to clean the harness up since there are quite a few components that will not be needed on my install. I also want to rearrange the wiring so I can get the pcm in the cab. Here is the stock harness before any modifications.



I used lt1swap.com to understand this harness and what could be removed. For the most part this site was invaluable, however, it did leave me with a few questions. After some searching on various forums I was able to answer all my questions and build enough confidence to tear it apart. Creating a "standalone" harness requires building a new fuse panel, pulling wires that need to go to external locations (like fuel pump relay, VSS, 12V power, etc), reworking the ground circuit, and weeding out any plugs that go to components that will not be used (like AC, EVAP, automatic trans, etc). Once the harness is stripped down you lose about half of the wires which makes it much easier to work with and reroute.



In order to reroute the wires, I started by plugging in the injector and coil plugs as my starting point. Then from here, I could reroute wires to exit where I wanted.





To get the main pcm plugs to route where I want them it would require shortening quite a few wires from the passenger side portion of the harness. Total length is limited by the drivers side section. I am hesistant do splice all these wires, so for now I am just going to tie them up within the harness at the rear of the intake. Since this is all an experiment and a first for me, I would like to not make too many wire splices and potentially introduce issues later on down the road.



I was also able to secure a transmission for the truck. I chose to go with a NV3500 from a 2001 Blazer Xtreme. I know, I know, this transmission is "weak" and I will blow it up. I've read many comments about the NV3500 and I am willing to give it a try given the price differential between this and a T56. I am not doing any power adding mods nor will I be driving this with any aggression, so it should be fine for cruising around. Down the road I may do some upgrades and will revisit my transmission choice at that time.



That's it for now. Hopefully on the next update I will be able to have the engine/trans joined and installed in the truck!