‘87 Chevy V20 - “Heavy Duty Stock” My Daily Build

[FoxCustom]

Did a ton of scraping and solvent washing on the exterior to get it ready for paint. Then reassembled with fresh gaskets and retorqued everything to spec

[FoxCustom]

After the main pieces had been gone through, rebuilt and prettied up, the rest of the components needed to be addressed:

Flywheel resurfaced
Bellhousing blasted and painted chevy orange
Clutch linkage and pedal assembly blasted and coated with DP90
Yokes cleaned up and painted with DP90

[FoxCustom]

Just before painting those small parts, I did have to do a repair on the Z-bar for the clutch linkage. Knowing how this piece operates and the angles it pushes at, it’s not hard to understand how it ended up getting as mangled as it was. Also, I’m sure improper adjustment and not being lubed properly added to it.

So, the fix was to clamp it up in the vice and then heat up and straighten out the arms using the torch. Once straightened out, I cut out some 1/8” reinforcement plates to cover/double the cracked areas and then added some gussets to prevent/avoid any future bends and failures.

[FoxCustom]

At this point, all the small parts were prepped and ready, the paint was hardened on the trans, and the big moment was set. 4th of July weekend, I had a week off of work so the timing worked out perfectly. (Although HOT in the shop!)

Everyone’s advice of getting the pedal assembly swap taken care of first couldn’t have been more helpful. No getting around it, that step was a PAIN!!! Even with the seat out and column dropped, there’s not a lot of room for twisting and fanagling!

First step was to gut remove the seat, then clean out the floor (in preparation for cutting the shifter hole and some POR 15 application), then drop the column to make room for the pedal assembly to come down, THEN install the 3 pedals! The big helper spring under the dash was next to impossible to handle by myself, but luckily my Dad and I figured out a way of him lining up the spring eye onto the post and myself, seated back against the cab and foot on a crowbar, to stretch the spring onto its pegs on the clutch pedal.

And of course, Rudy the shop dog lent his extra paws to knock this task out successfully!

[FoxCustom]

And here is a close up of that monster clutch pedal helper spring. This basically helps the pedal return upwards towards your leg to get you off the clutch after a shift and at a certain point in the swing, takes over a bit to assist in pushing the pedal to fully depress the clutch.

[FoxCustom]

Once the hardest part was done, it was time to head under the truck to remove the TH400 / 208 combo along with the driveshafts, flexplate, brace rods to the trans, crossmember.

Funny thing, I found the cause of this nasty sound I’d hear under hard acceleration... turns out, the bolts of the torque converter were scraping the inside of the trans inspection cover. This was because the trans to block bolts were finger tight allowing the trans and engine to flex against each other.... no more of that!

[Daubs]

Cool build! I purchased my Dad's '87 K-20 in 1998...manual transmission, rubber floor mats, manual crank windows...loved it! Sold it in 1999 and got a new Silverado extended cab (just had our first daughter...tough to get the car seat between me and the wife in a regular cab).

Wish I still had that K-20! Following...

[MTCK]

Sweet truck. I really like the tire wheel combo and in-bed spare.

[Corts60]

Great work! I really dig the look of those bias ply tires. I didn't even know you could still buy those!