TPI Swap Progess

[Russell]

Hey guys!

Just posting a bit of a progress report of what I've gotten done on my truck in preparation for the swap over to TPI

Picture 1 -- Blazer tank install, I've got the tank bolted in, but I've still gotta install the fuel door at the back, and do some more plumbing (put some braided fuel line from a 88+ pickup from the frame to the tank for the return line, and from the tank to the fuel pump, the rest will be hardline except for the front where I will be installing more braided line from the 88+ trucks

Picture 2 -- Electric Fans install, I've got both fans bolted in, but I need to replace the motors for both fans, and wire them up.

I've also got my battery relocated to the driver's side of my truck, that swap went better than I could have hoped, only tough part was playing contorsionist through the marker light to hold the bolt on the inside of the fender,

While I was working on the electric fans, I dropped my drill, and punctured one of the radiator cores, so I ended up taking the rad out and doing some soldering, it's an ugly job, but worked real well. I did a pressure test on it by filling it with water, then getting my brother to help me plug off all the holes but the one by the rad cap, then put my air compressor to 20 PSI and compressed it, no water came squirting out anywhere, and I didn't hear any hissing, so I can only assume that my soldering job did the trick, we'll see when I fire it up later on this week. Picture three is a picture of my soldering.

Still to come:

Comp Cams XE262, dual exhaust with an 02 sensor bung in one of the manifolds, Serpentine belt setup from a 89 Chev Half-Ton (need an alternator first) and starting the install of all of the electrical components of the TPI. When everything has gotten here, it should simply be a matter of dropping the intake on, hooking everything up, and firing her right up

[pissonNOS]

when ur done come down south and do this to my truck haha

[SanitysBane]

on the alt, the 88+ alt is a 2 wire job, the lead going to the bat/starter, and another going somewere else, the one going somewere else needs a 10ohm resistor inline for the guague to work properly, i belive painless makes an adapter, but i just saved my self the money and did it myself, looks good, i don't remeber which wire i had to cut and splice into, if your interested ill try to find it, and its always so good to see someone doing something to their truck, i promise, tomo ill go to wall-mart and by a stupid camera so i can take pics of the truck and the gague cluster u gave me, or maybe once i get done wit my center console project that has been on going sence the start of school over 6 weeks ago, arg, i need to get unlazy! looks like your going to have a fun truck when it all gets said and done

[Russell]

Sanity, I'd love to see how you wired the 88+ alternator in, I knew there was some extra work that had to be done, but I wasn't sure what...

[SanitysBane]

its not really any at all, we put in a light with 10 ohm resistance, it works, ill look at the truck tomo and see how we did it, no matter if u do get the painless adapter, u will still need the resistor in their somewere.

[1972C10]

My 89 W/T Only has one wire going to the alt other than the charge. And its just IGN 12 volts. Sucker puts out a steady 14.5v At whatever an 89 idles at.

[cochran63]

I put a serpentine setup on my 85 and I also only had 1 wire on the plug. I just ran it to the fuse box.

[76cheyenne]

Looks good love the patch job on the radiator.lol It works. How was the dual fan install pretty easy or what? I've been thinking about doing this to my 76.

[Russell]

Actually, the electric fan install has been the easiest thing I've done so far Just used a peice of angle iron thats wide enough to go past the lips on either side of the hole in the rad support, cut one of the edges off so it fit inside of the hole, made some small spacers from some pipe, bolted it in (I had mounted the fans to the angle iron beforehand), the tough part is the bottom leg, I could find no way to make it work but to drill two holes behind the leg, and a second hole in the leg, and use one of those plastic locking strap thingers. It held the fans from flopping around, and since the two arms are bolted to the angle iron, the whole setup is pretty stiff. Just don't drop the drill!!

Tonight I got my check engine light and speed sensor installed. Man, that was a pain in the butt :p First off, I couldn't get the new speedo to sit in quite right, but since I can't see behind the face plate, I couldn't see that the problem wasn't the speed sensor (my original hole was plenty big) but rather that the new speedo housing was wider and was getting stuck on a ledge on the other side of the speedo. Dremeled it down, and the speedo slid in just like it was suppost to. As far as the check engine light goes, I took the fasten belts lense from my 76, which had only a single idiot light below the speedo, carefully cleared the lettering off it to make a clear lense, and made a check engine light out of my dash's two unused idiot lights under the speedo. Unfortunately, GM decided that they would use positive as the common pole, and run ground cables out of the dash all over the place instead of hot wires Now, thats all fine and good, I couldn't just cut the power to the whole dash until the ECM decided to set a code, and turn on the 12v line to turn the check engine light on... So what I ended up doing was wiring a relay backwards so instead of it controlling a hot wire, it controlled the ground wire, works like a charm, and adds a bit of a sound to the flashing of the light as the ECM sets a code

I've pretty much done all I can on the truck until I borrow a carb, replace my intake gaskets, and replace the ignition module in my HEI. After I get the motor running tip top, I'll pull the exhaust off, install my cam, and serpentine belt setup, break my cam in (my neighbours will love me! )After that, I'll toss my new exhaust on, and start on the long and tedious process of installing my TPI wiring harness, and other electronics. Probally take me a week or two to do that. Hopefully most of the rest of my TPI stuff will be in by then, and it should be a matter of installing the intake, running my vac lines and dizzy, then firing it up...

[SanitysBane]

hey russell don't know if u need this or not but here goes, on my 83 to use an 88 alt all i had to do was use the 1wire plug out of the 88 alt and run it to a ignition wire with a 10 ohm resistor in it, thought it was more but it wasn't

[Russell]

Which is the plug that needs the power sent to it? I know that the wire is used to excite the alternator so it doesn't have to be revved up to start generating, but I dunno which pole it is. I also need to know which alternator part numbers pertain to the 105 amp ones...

[SanitysBane]

mine just has 1 plug and the normal bolt, i don't know anything about a 105 amp one, though i would be very interested to get for my truck xpt i've got the big block in it so the #'s probally won't match up