Li'l Red Rides Again

[Critter]

As many a build thread has been started before, so shall this one...

"I figure it was time to put some of this down into a build thread."

Now that that's out of the way I will give a little background. I bought this truck (back) last spring with plans of putting an LS engine in it and making it a reliable shop truck/cruiser. I won't get into too much detail on the purchase, you can read all that here.

Also, one thing to note is you will probably notice I say "I bought it back" and "now that I have it back" over and over when in reality it used to be my brothers truck and not mine. However I feel like it was mine. I helped with a lot of if back in the day, I drove it a lot, it was a part of the family.

As I said before it was bought as a shop truck/cruiser, meaning it will never be perfect, but I do plan on it being functional and a head turner in it's own right. I want to put my company logo on the back glass, cruise to the local shows on the weekend, take it down the drag strip sometimes for the heck of it, show off some of my work every now and then, etc. This thread will look like it belongs in the "LSx swap" forum at first because that's what most of my work has been up to this point, but body work and a garage paint job will soon follow so please bear with me. So lets begin.

Here we are at the shop the day before I started pulling the tired 305



And of course I had to dyno the 305 just for the heck of it.



Not gonna lie, I was surprised at these numbers. With an old worn out automatic without the converter locking up we are probably talking about 210 or 215 crank hp...I was surprised it broke triple digits!



Before...



and after...



waiting on the transplanted 6.0 to go in

[Critter]

So I decided to use some LS adapter mounts that I had never used before on this one. They are considered and "exact fit", in other words they keep the transmission in the exact same place and let you bolt an LS engine right up where the small block once was.

My only complaint is they put the original SBC 3 bolt mount in a place that interferes with a threaded boss on the side of the LS block. This hole is used for A/C compressor mounting so it goes without saying the original compressor and brackets can't be used. I notched the new stock style mount and everything fell into place.

[Critter]

Goin in with the 6.0



She fits like a glove



But as expected the factory LQ4 exhaust manifolds want to occupy the same space as the 72 frame. They flair out away from the block to much. So I ordered a set of LS2 manifolds to solve the problem.



This shows the slightly more block hugging design of the LS2 manifolds



Now we are good to go...




Except the Buick/Olds/Pontiac/Chevy bell housing on my 200-4r hits the inner side of the drivers manifold. I put a quick notch in it and we are back in business. I don't think a regular chevy only bellhousing would have this extra material.



A little of this...


And now we have this.

[Critter]

I picked up some electric fans from the local Pic-n-pull. Can't beat $25 for a good set of fans that are almost the exact right size for the 4 core radiator.



Started working on some mounting brackets







Ended up with this

[Critter]

Also I think I forgot to mention I wanted to approach this build from a do it right but do it cheap approach. If something can be reused from either the original drivetrain or from the 06 donor motor I will reuse it. However, I am not doing it so cheap that I won't replace worn out parts. For example the LQ4 only has 29,000 miles on it and the upper radiator hose looked like new, so I trimmed it an ran with it. On the other hand things like the motor mounts and other hard to get to wear items were obviously replaced. Basically I wanted to use as many parts from the shop that I have laying around as possible without risking the truck being unreliable.

More to come...

[Critter]

I love how new and old chevy parts mix so easily! It's like the engineers meant for it to be this way. On top you see the original 72 throttle cable, on the bottom is a new replacement for what a 99-03 drive by cable truck would have. I had to put a small notch in the cab because the new cable had a small alignment "bump" but otherwise it went in no problem, the pedal end goes right together like they are made for each other. I forgot to mention that this 6.0 is a 2006 model which would be drive by wire, but I converted it to drive by cable due mainly to me wanting to run the 200-4r that was already in the truck.

[Low Elco]

Good stuff!

[Critter]

Now, about that T.V. cable for the 200-4r. I had been both excited and dreading adapting it to my throttle body for a while. I wanted the linkage to be as close to a factory quadrajet setup as possible. The problem is the quadrajet linkage moves approx 78 degrees as it swings through its open to closed position where as the LS throttle body travels right at 86 degrees. So I broke out the calculator and took off my shoes so I could use all my toes to count on. Here's what I came up with.





Now on to building the bracket to hold the T.V. cable itself



All tacked up, ready for finish welding



Finished



It's a crappy pic, but here it is on the engine, i'm very happy with how it turned out. Seems like it does the trick just fine.

[mcbassin]

Looks like another awesome build you have started. Love all the custom engineering you have done here.
Oh yeah, looks like you're pretty handy with the TIG torch
Subscribed.....

[Critter]

As much as I would like to take credit for that tig welding, it isn't mine. My business partner Tim is the one who deserves the credit. I am a respectable mig welder and I can operate a tig, but nowhere near what he can do. He custom builds turbo kits, exhaust, brackets, whatever is needed. So with a project like this usually I tach everything together with the mig then he finish welds everything with the tig. While we are on the subject of Tim, here is something he put a bit of time into. I needed a fuel tank/cell, and as I said before I am not going to throw money at this truck unless it just has to be done. I could have bought a sheet of aluminum but why do that when I already have 3 full sheet of 16ga steel laying here at the shop . Tim really didn't want to do it, he was worried it would look like total crap, and I'm not going to lie, it isn't a work of art, but it's function and does the job for now. I will later on build a nice aluminum tank, but like I said, I had the material already here.

So I took a piece of the sheet metal and cut out an area big enough for the front, bottom, and back, then bent it into a C shape using the brake. Then the sides and "baffling" were put it. The compartment on the left is for the sending unit so fuel doesn't slosh too bad.



Here's Tim doing what he does best. That's the filler neck going onto the top plate.



Here it is basically finished



I needed to line it with something of course. I have used some tank liners in the past and honestly I have been unhappy with all of them. After reading a bunch about this POR 15 liner I decided to give it a try. It worked like a champ! I love the coverage it provided and when dried was hard as a rock.



Then the whole thing was cleaned, primed, and painted with semi gloss rattle can paint. The tank is probably the most ghetto thing that I have done to this truck but in the end it is functional and not overly ugly so it will work for now. By the way, the rattle can tiger stripes aren't that bad in real life, the camera picked them up for some reason.



And here is a crappy pic of it under the truck. It doesn't hang down too low in my opinion. Once I get a chrome sport bumper on the truck I think it will be fine. It ended up being just under 15 gallons and I didn't remove any of the factory crossmembers under the bed.

[68redc10]

Looks great looking forward to updates

[mcbassin]

Very nice work on the custom tank.

[Critter]

Thanks guys!

Here I am tackling the LS swap wiring harness. This was an OEM harness from a 2000 model LQ4 that I modified.







And here it is ready to go under the hood.


Running the harness. Don't worry, I recently got a new phone that takes much better pics. Some of these are terrible!


Here is the speed sensors I like to use for older transmissions. It lets the cable pass through so you can still run the original speedometer but also give the ecm an electronic signal to work with. In the pic I have already soldered on the gm harness end so it will plug into my harness.

[Critter]

Today I made the single largest purchase for this truck since I bought the motor. Of the 3 vehicles over the years that have NOT pulled off my chassis dyno under their own power, 2 of them were due to a driveshaft disintegrating. In addition I have busted two myself over the years on the street so I am a little leery of driveshafts to say the least. The shaft that was under this truck was a mess. I think it was from the same car that the trans came from. It has ujoints from a passenger car at least that's what the guys told me. They are the type that has inner clips as opposed to clips on the outside of the caps. Most importantly this driveshaft was too short. The trans yoke was only engaging the trans shaft about 1.25 inches...it should be in about 4 inches! I have no idea how this thing has stayed together as long as it has. I'm pretty sure it has been this way for year, even back to when my brother owned the truck in the early 90s!!! So I pulled out the wallet and bit the bullet. Got a beautiful new driveshaft with a new trans yoke with all 1310 ujoints all the way around. Also it is bigger, this one is 3.5" diameter and the "original" one was 3" in the center.

The new shaft is approx 2" longer than the old one, it looks even longer than that in this pic. Optical illusion I guess.


This thing is so beautiful!!!


The next problem was the bracket running across the top of the crossmember that the driveshaft goes through. I guess they all had carrier bearings here originally??? The other shaft had contacted this bracket at least once in the past, now that the new one is larger in diameter I didn't want a catastrophe.


So I ground off the rivets


And got it out of the way


So now with the larger diameter shaft with the rear axle at full droop I am very close to touching the crossmember. I don't think it would ever touch unless I start jumping the truck Evel Knievel style...but just to be safe I might grind down the crossmember a 1/4 inch.


Makes the rest of the chassis look like total poop! I need to clean up down there some.

[Jtrux]

Looks pretty good to me! Guess I have some catching up to do.

[Critter]

Yes you do, get on it!

[68GMCCustom]

not sure how I missed this one........subscribed!

[Critter]

I forgot to talk about the cold air intake tube and filter. It was done right after the trans T.V. cable stuff but I forgot to post pics. I hate buying parts when building them can easily be accomplished. So I got a 45* bend 4" tube and cut it to in the middle of the bend, we made a mounting bracket and Tim tig welded the two together. A little sanding and some more VHT paint to match the manifolds and she was good to go.



I ordered a 90 degree silicon coupler to connect the throttle body and 4 inch tube with a 4" to 3.5" reducer bell. The engine side of the truck style MAF is 3.5" so the reducer bell connect the MAF to the 4" tube perfectly. I had the air filter laying around from the miscellaneous engine dyno stuff, it was basically brand new so I ran it.







Spectre isn't exactly known for being the highest of quality components but they did the trick for now. Phase II of this truck will require the intake to be pressurized so these parts don't need to have that long of a life span. They will be changed out soon enough.

[Critter]

Playing around with the ol black and white effects, I've found it's the best way to digitally polish a turd.

[mcbassin]

On top you see the original 72 throttle cable, on the bottom is a new replacement for what a 99-03 drive by cable truck would have. I had to put a small notch in the cab because the new cable had a small alignment "bump" but otherwise it went in no problem, the pedal end goes right together like they are made for each other. I forgot to mention that this 6.0 is a 2006 model which would be drive by wire, but I converted it to drive by cable due mainly to me wanting to run the 200-4r that was already in the truck.

Hey, you didn't happen to write down the part number for that cable?
Very nice progress on the truck!

[Critter]

Sure did

gm# 15040848

[Critter]

It's been a while since I updated. Holidays and work slowed me down I guess. My biggest accomplishment has been the fuel door. Obvioulsy others have done it before but it was the first time I had taken on the task.

First, off with the fender.



Laid everything out so I could look at what I was dealing with.



Then cut drill out the spot welds that hold the marker light cup in place.



This fuel door started life on an S10, I whittled away at it till I had this.



But I didn't like how it fit so I ended up removing everything that wasn't part of the hinge.



Used a piece of 16 gauge sheet to make a new back plate. Lots of trimming and fitting and tacking get us here.





The backside



Some primer to keep the rust at bay...



BOOM! One fuel filler door completed!

[Critter]

Then I moved on to the actual filler neck. There was a lot of head scratching and counting on my toes but eventually we came up with this. Thanks to my buddy Tim's superb TIG skills we turned out a top notch...er...box thing...





The actual tube was constructed of the original s10 outer tube, then a section of 2" mild steel 90, then necked down to a section of a 1.25' ubend. I had to go that small to get between the bed and the frame.







Black paint



And there you have it



Had an old cap laying around for test fitting, a new one will be bought soon.



Just realized I didn't take any pics of the filler tube installed, I'll get some of that tomorrow.

[mcbassin]

Very nice work on the filler!

[Critter]

I'm back on track! Guinness just left, they confirmed I set a record for the longest transmission rebuild process in history! It is well documented here but I warn you its a painful read...

http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=580569



It was nice to get it back together and on the road. There is still a laundry list of small things that need to be done, the trans cooler lines leak a little and I might adjust the springs in the valve body eventually. For now though its driveable. My next item of business is to get the V belt Vintage air setup swapped out to multigroove so I can run it on the LSx 6.0. Custom built compressor brackets for the Sanden are in order. Hot weather is just around the corner, even if it is 31 degrees outside as I type this.