1970 C10 2wd SWB budget daily driver

[Xeen]

You are making good progress and I am enjoying the metal work, can't wait to see more.

[Farm Shop]

I can't go back and edit my previous post with broken image links:

Originally Posted by Farm Shop

I wrapped up the front end over the weekend. Drop springs, shocks, and 6 lug conversion rotors are on and look nice, and we also got the cab dropped in place. Seeing it finally come together a little is giving me the motivation I need.






A fork truck and some help made the job really easy.









Next I'll roll my '99 Z28 parts car in to steal the fuel tank and rear sway bar to use in the C10.

[Farm Shop]

Slowly checking things off the list.

Cleaned and painted a 1-1/4" front sway bar and brackets I pulled off an '80s 1 ton, and the rear sway bar off a '99 Z28. I went with a metallic gray to add some contrast to the chassis.





Mounted the front with new hardware and Energy Suspension poly mounts.



I'm still trying to figure out the best mounting/location for the rear bar, but here it is sitting in place.



I'm using 1/4" Cu-Ni bulk line for all new brake lines. So far only the rear is routed, but this stuff is much nicer to work with than the coated steel brake line.





I also pulled the fuel tank out of the same '99 Z28 I took the rear sway bar out of. I've seen a few guys use this tank with good luck and it was fairly easy... the fairly easy part was not my experience.



First step was drilling out the 4 rivets for the rear cross member since it needs to be moved back about an inch.



Then trim some off the bottoms of the rear frame rails. I actually ended up taking a little more off than this line shows.



I had my supervisor watching me that day.





Added some square tubing cross members. I wanted this tank to be mounted as close to OE (for the Camaro) as possible.



I made tank straps/hangers out of strap aluminum from Lowes. Again, wanted as close to OE as possible.





Painted up the new members and bolted the tank in. I really like how it turned out.







The Z28 tank is internally regulated, but since I plan to run the stock 454 rail-mounted FPR, the Z28 FPR was gutted.



Probably my biggest accomplishment was finding the heater core retainers/screws in my 2 yr old pile of parts, so I installed the new Spectra core!

[Advanced Design]

Very nice work. The tank install came out well. Nice looking farm place you guys have there too!

[Farm Shop]

Thanks AD! Its nice to see some assembly and things coming together, finally.

I spent most of last night on the fuel system. Since the Camaro tank has been sitting since 2013, it needed a lot of attention. The inside of the tank looked like it had sugar dumped in it, and needed a lot of cleaning, but its ready to go now.

The original fuel pump wasn't an option either, so I installed the Walbro 255lph f-body pump kit. That went fine except for the kit didn't include a new Venturi tube, and the original was too old to reuse. I'll grab some new hose after work and button up the tank sender tonight.

I also got a start on the fuel lines. To fit the "budget w/o giving up quality" approach of this project, I am building the entire fuel system out of Dorman nylon fuel line. At $1.28/ft for 3/8" line, and fittings costing less than 1/2 the price of AN, all while retaining OE quality, fit, and finish, it was an obvious choice. Plus, if I ever add some positive pressure to the intake manifold, this nylon line will support E85 with no concerns. And one of the best parts is that my fingers don't look like hamburger after installing a couple hose fittings!

This is the line I'm using. I'm running a feed/return all the way up to the frame rail, so I got two of the 25' rolls and have a bunch left over for future projects, like my brother's EFI 396 '72 Super Cheyenne that's next on the to-do list.



So far only the return line is routed, but I really like working with this nylon hose. I'm using stainless rubber lined 3/8" metal clips in the original holes for the tail light harness clips on the driver side frame rail. The feed will get an in-line filter (like OE for EFI vehicles) on the frame rail and the fuel line clips will be stacked on the return line mounting points.





Also got some shiney parts in the mail. I know it doesn't add any horsepower or get it running any sooner, but I'm pretty excited about this new steering wheel. lol

[Graham57a]

Great looking project, I am on board. I have similar plans for my 68 gmc, hopefully keep the patina, fix the rust, and do an affordable restoration to freshen everything up. What are your plans for the interior?

[Dustmaker65]

Nice job! Think I better follow...good chance I may see this one on the road

[drfloyd]

Really like the wheel. What is it?

[Farm Shop]

Originally Posted by Graham57a

Great looking project, I am on board. I have similar plans for my 68 gmc, hopefully keep the patina, fix the rust, and do an affordable restoration to freshen everything up. What are your plans for the interior?

Sounds like a good plan to me! Interior is going to be pretty basic. The original plan was to give it a 100% restoration to be fresh and new with a recovered stock bench, but I'm digging the wear spot on the doors from where your arm sits, and the original dash pad is in nice shape. As of now I plan to give everything a thorough scrubbing, change the gauges to be a black/chrome 7 pod cluster, and run the front bench seat out of the parts burb. I might recondition some molded '71 door panels instead of using the steel panels. I'm still trying to decide on what color I should go with for carpet. The burb seat is a very light tan, but the door panels and dash pad are black. I'm leaning towards a dark tan/saddle color carpet... thoughts? I'm open to input here. I'm waiting to order carpet until I'm sure the 80e trans will work with the low hump trans tunnel.

Originally Posted by Dustmaker65

Nice job! Think I better follow...good chance I may see this one on the road

Small world! I'm really pushing to have it running by the end of the summer this year.

Originally Posted by drfloyd

Really like the wheel. What is it?

Thank you, I'm stoked about it myself. The brand is Forever Sharp and I got it from an ebay vendor. It is the mahogany wood half wrap with brass rivets. With the adapter to bolt to my truck, and no emblem on the horn button, I paid $166 shipped, and I'm very happy with the quality for that price.

[Farm Shop]

I got to the point where working on the C10 any more didn't make sense without having the engine/trans sitting in place, so I rolled it to the cold side of the shop and pulled the '99 Suburban in. The 454 looks good in stock trim, but I have some plans to help it look even better:



I had decided to convert the 454 to the LS1B style 0411 ECM to help with tuning and added capabilities over what the black box ECM could offer. I will already be extensively modifying/gutting the stock engine harness for the swap, adding a mild cam, and using a pieced-together fuel system... adding the potential headaches of the ECM swap had me nervous. So, since I was working with a running/driving donor, I decided to do the ECM swap in the burb. That way if I messed up in the pinning process, bricked the ECM, had a terrible start-up tune, etc., I could iron those issues out before stacking more potential problems on top, without knowing where the root issue came from

First step: harvest the blue and red connectors from a spare 5.3 harness I had laying around.




Next was to repin the 4 black box plugs into the two 0411 plugs. I couldn't have done this without the awesome pinout information from user name Lextech on another forum. Although a very intimidating project, I took my time and it was straight forward and went very well.



Only one joint require any soldering, and it got sealed up with marine heat shrink.



I found a tune that another user had created and shared for a very similar application, modified a few things for my application, performed a ful-cal flash, and she fired right up! The startup is plenty rich, and occasionally it would hunt for an idle, but it ran/drove nice enough to really "test" it out:



Once I proved out the ECM swap was a success, i tore into the Suburban. There's a 454 in there somewhere!



There it is:



I should have it sitting on the floor tonight or tomorrow. First step: a VERY thorough degreasing.

[fatbass]

Very niceice work so far. Subbed.

[Advanced Design]

That was good logic to do the ecm swap and verification before disassembly of the burb. Looks like a success!

[Farm Shop]

Thanks guys. The C10's new motorvation is finally out of the donor and ready to get some attention.

[Alinosa]

Amazing so far, really excited to see how this progresses.
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[Farm Shop]

Well, this whole Photobucket ordeal kinda killed my build thread. I think it'll be easier to just start a new thread instead of go back and try to update all the links... I'll look into both options.

[Farm Shop]

I uploaded all my pics to albums here on the forum. Lets see how this looks:

[flashed]

I like it .

[Farm Shop]

I decided it wasn't worth going back to update all the links in this thread. For anyone that's interested, I rebuilt the thread up to current date, and I'll be posting progress over there.

http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=742212