1989 GMC V30 Project

[Mr. 250r]

Welllllll............ it seems i did it again. I was just minding my own business on craigslist and searching under dana 60 and saw a posting for one 30 minutes from me for a good price so i just couldn't resist i went and looked at it 2 days later then told the guy i would pick it up tomorrow. The rest is history.

Here it is a 1989 GMC V30 conversion.
Dana 60/14B FF 4.10s G80
Th400/205 with tag and brace
TBI 454 with everything still intact
LWB-SRW-CC
Dual tanks
Roof rack
Full power interior/Custom Wood setup

Until now I've never heard of this conversion its a truck of texas or something, it says that on the tail gate then has texas etched in the door panel trim and limited edition on the dash piece and an overhead console with a working police scanner and.... cowboy hat holder.

After looking it over a little more when i got it home i noticed the rockers are perfect.... but the cab corners have a small hole in them. The bed is a little beat up but there's a neat flip up 5th wheel so its all good it also has a 10" drop bumper that ill be removing eventually. The power locks button doesn't work but surprisingly the power windows are quite fast except the passenger front, it also has bucket front and then some sort of custom interior and came with a free beer.

Currently the only picture ill post more later but this also means i will be getting rid of the white one and swapping the crossover to this.

[bojak]

The wire thingy up top is a cowboy hat holder. Let me know if you ever want to get rid of it. Cool truck. What's your plan? Gonna clean it and drive it or build it up? Did it throw any codes?
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[Mr. 250r]

Not selling the hat holder its too awesome now i gotta buy the hat lol as far as what im doing im not sure its pretty nice and i dont want to tear it up i might throw a lift on it and cruise it maybe off road it a little... but we all know how that goes. It throws a soft code every once and again which he told me about but i cant see what it is unless the scanner is on it when it throws it because it clears itself within 5 seconds but runs a little rough for those 5 seconds and i also believe since he put headers on it since the manifolds cracked the exhaust makers put the exhaust too close to the front driveshaft so when it hits a bump the driveshaft hits.

Also forgot to mention is has an electric fan like my other one along with hydroboost brakes, engine oil cooler and tranny cooler which im not sure was standard on autos i feel it was but maybe not. Also has the magnificent underhood light.
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[Truck Guy99]

What happened? Did you do anything to it?

[Mr. 250r]

I ended up having to do that brakes on the front end and basically that's it so far haven't decided what i want to do as anything i start i never finish so i drive it on occasion that's about it still thinking about a lift for it

[Mr. 250r]

Only recent stuff was buying a house and putting everything in it including what my name is taken from the almighty 250r quad

[y5mgisi]

Subscribed.

[Mr. 250r]

I've decided to sell my dodge due to ongoing problems i have no desire to attempt to throw money at to fix. I'll start by rebuilding the throttle body and new fuel pumps along with an open air filter most likely. Granted it definitely won't pull like the dodge this is what everybody used before all the fancy diesels were around i really only wish it had overdrive I'm tossing the idea around for a standalone 4l80 but for now its untouched and running decent it will stay that way.

Also a mild lift, wheels and tires are a must.

[Mr. 250r]

Sold the cummins and bought a zf6 duramax. Obviously still have the 89 but it's been sitting more often than not and some issues have come up.

As of right now I'm redoing the front brakes again switching to NWF big brake kit running 2011+ ram 3500 hardware. A few issues mostly being if you dont have 17s you'll have to buy new wheels and tires like I did. I've basically finished one side so one left and go from there.

[v30crewcab]

nice, I need to do that brake upgrade on mine.

[Mr. 250r]

Finally got the brakes done i ended up having more issues than I intended to go through some of them.

1. Driver side spindle threads were messed up, ended up getting a knife edge file to fix it.
2. Multiple wrong orders of studs, finally got the correct number I'll include either later or in a separate write up, this caused multiple other issues as well.
3. Took so long to put together I forgot how the brakes actually went together, YouTube and google searches fixed this.
4. Brakes dont clear the spindle, minor grinding in a non significant area on spindle required.
5. New brake lines from ORD require the nut to hold on and not the clip, me and my dad figured that out.
6. Broke the driver side brake line at the end, ordered stainless set from inline tube. I'm only doing that one right now and the pre bent seems to be right but putting them in with a full assembled truck doesnt go that well, but it's in.
7. New tires are measured out at 32.7ish or 285/70/17 dont quite clear the fenders they rub if you do a slow turn if you turn fast it's very minor, will be addressed later.

The biggest issue is getting the wheel studs right which took a good amount of time and some calls back and forth with northwest fab.

Last thing was as I was going out for the first test drive I heard a crazy crunching noise ended up being the tires hitting the running boards I was planning on removing them but this just accelerated that project. Even with removed there is slight rubbing on a no lift 1 ton.

[Mr. 250r]

Some before and afters

[57taskforce]

Awesome truck! I’ve always dreamed of building a late 80’s-early 90’s crew long with an Lb7 Duramax, Allison, 6-8 inches of lift, 37’s or 38’s. Nice progress I bet those brakes were worth all the headache.

[Mr. 250r]

Got the right rear rebuilt and so far my braking issues have gone away but since I bought a full kit I will be doing the other side. This brought up multiple issues along the way the wheel cylinder bolts were stripped, I've never worked on drums and i hate them, had to swap out the rear line among other things.

I'll be doing some emailing tomorrow about the big brake kit for the rear same setup as the front it will turn my rear into a 2012+ ram setup like my front but its gonna cost a good amount plus some fab work so I'm gonna get some more info but I'm perfectly fine running the drums for now that's a want not a need.

Crawling around under the truck I hoped my main line running back was still good but theres some spots where its ehhh with rust naturally you start one project and find several others along the way but its gonna stay for now. But I got some info on a future spring upgrade while I was there so that'll be in time but my biggest issue is the pinion seal leaking pretty good so that's the next step.

Here's some pics, if you've never done drums first you'll need some special tools I went with harbor freight they worked fine but the main thing is get riveted shoes I made that mistake and the tool doesn't quite work with that but I managed with the help of some youtube videos, also take multiple pictures AFTER you clean it up to see what goes where i made the mistake of some pics before i cleaned anything then took it apart.



I can ALMOST daily so far I've been driving around but this will be my new lake of the ozarks vehicle which is about 2.5hrs one way so theres just a couple more little things and I'll feel good about long drives.

[Mr. 250r]

Back at it again with some updates but not much on pics.. and I can't fix the previous pics being rotated wrong either.

So this weekend me and my dad replaced the hydroboost, master cylinder, rear pinion seal and almost all stainless brake lines now which also included deleting the load sensing valve but I still need to do the prop valve to rear union and then its all stainless. Also fixed the shift kit.

Future short term fixes
Try to get the brakes from pulling to the right which will include rechecking the font and re adjusting the rear
Finish welding the seats so they stop rocking
Clean out the blower motor as mice clearly got inside
Put the new front speakers in
Dash back in
Gas gauge
Replace various vacuum lines
New engine wiring loom

Future long term
4" lift
New wheels
Rear wiring
See how the current brakes tow then look into rear disc's, might make my own adapter to run newer duramax rears
Some sort of manual overdrive either an nv45 or zf6 or even a t56

[Mr. 250r]

Got most if not all of my vacuum lines fixed then I had some engine shut off issues even though I had a new distributor. So I changed out my ignition control module with my old one and it seems to be doing fine now but we'll see. I also have another I can use as a test as well if need be. Later today I'll be re looming the engine harness and probably get the mouse out of the blower.

Only thing I got done today was I cut the exhaust down little bit because it ended exactly where the cab and bed met and flared up so anytime it rained my exhaust would spit out water and the exhaust runs downhill towards the header merge so I didn't want to rust the pipe out down there so I cut it shorter and on a down flange and put on a tip and pointed it down and away from the truck.

[Mr. 250r]

I've been dailying my truck as much as possible and trying to work out the last few bugs and so far its..

New rear driver side wheel cylinder is leaking
Front brakes still pulling to the right
Truck gets hot idling on a hot day or running 75+
Seat welds still broke
Still looking for the where the fuel gauge wire goes to
Trailer wiring is a mess

So I got my new springs from my friend they are 64s, so I'll be converting down to 16g tanks. Yes I'm going to run 16g plus a 40g suburban later which will plumb to the driver side but be option to also fill the passenger. I wanna see how these 5 leaf 64" springs work on dailying plus towing then go from there as compared to my 9 leaf which rides rough as hell obviously but they aren't 30yr old springs they were made about 10yrs ago I believe. I'm gonna try and make a side by side video with the same speeds on the same roads/bumps in a loaded and unloaded setup.

Also got my rear speaker mounts coming in so I can get some decent music, the original fronts are about done. Found my donor truck, I'm gonna buy it off my dad its a 99 I believe 7.4/nv4500 but its all the way over in California so for now it will sit.

Should be some more frequent updates in the next few weeks/months or so.

[Dieselwrencher]

Nice upgrades on the truck. I've been curious on the 64s too. My square crew project is all but dead. I have 56s on the rear of it and I saw that 64s were the new thing. There wouldn't be much room for anything left on a crew cab short bed outer frame rail with those long springs IMO. But if they work they might be worth the head ache to upgrade?

[Mr. 250r]

Originally Posted by Dieselwrencher

Nice upgrades on the truck. I've been curious on the 64s too. My square crew project is all but dead. I have 56s on the rear of it and I saw that 64s were the new thing. There wouldn't be much room for anything left on a crew cab short bed outer frame rail with those long springs IMO. But if they work they might be worth the head ache to upgrade?

Honestly I don't know much on a short bed conversion setup, I've been piecing together multiple forums and posts just to get all the info for mine since no one really seemed to have everything in one post.

You can't make the tanks forward anyway without modding the body mount or tank or both and there's roughly only 6" of room available with 16g tanks and 64" springs just going off the #s but some people seemed to claim less so ill find out i guess. I would think that would definitely limit you with a short bed, the most common answer would be a suburban tank swap obviously or you can try inboarding the springs thats a semi common thing on offroad trucks ppl are doing on these but im not 100% sure why.. I do know people do it though.