1972 Chevy 4wd Longhorn Project: Never Ending Changes

[jce4isu]

Looks great Ryan Im hoping to get something done this weekend now that it's going to be above 0 but I also have a bad cold and it's kicked my ass
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[Dieselwrencher]

Originally Posted by jce4isu

Looks great Ryan Im hoping to get something done this weekend now that it's going to be above 0 but I also have a bad cold and it's kicked my ass
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I know the feeling. It sucks. I hope you get well soon Joe!

[onebadbowtie]

you can do my gauges next they look great!

[Dieselwrencher]

Originally Posted by onebadbowtie

you can do my gauges next they look great!

Send them up if you want. It will give my wife something to do. She's going to love that.

[jce4isu]

i will be doing this this weekend and had a few ??? for ya

what paint did u use and where did u get the paint

did u brush it on

thanks

Originally Posted by Dieselwrencher

No real great progress this week. I have been busy with the super cold weather, work, and I got a cold that has been slowing me down. But I did manage to go get some paint for my gauge cluster needles. I tore apart my cluster I got from Toomuchstuff. He included some nicer gauges than what some of the ones in the cluster were. I cleaned everything up, and man were the tins nasty due to a leaking oil pressure line. I had my wife paint the needles while I repaired my odometer. She even painted the red line areas because they were faded really bad. She did a great job! Then I polished the lens a little bit. I tried not to ruin the markings on it because I'm pretty sure no one has any of these in stock anywhere. It came out pretty good. i will install my new repop wood grain bezel when it gets here and then this cluster should be done until I get some LED bulbs for it.

Before


After

[woodwright]

Did I miss a post or thread where you talked about that tach? That's not a standard tach right? Does it run off a crank trigger, or the alternator signal? I'm putting a 6.5T in mine and am trying to figure out the tach situation. I don't want to scab some goofy looking bolt on tach in there. I like things to sort of look like they came that way
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[Dieselwrencher]

Originally Posted by woodwright

Did I miss a post or thread where you talked about that tach? That's not a standard tach right? Does it run off a crank trigger, or the alternator signal? I'm putting a 6.5T in mine and am trying to figure out the tach situation. I don't want to scab some goofy looking bolt on tach in there. I like things to sort of look like they came that way
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No, it isn't a standard tach. It is a cable operated tach ran off usually the injection pump on the older diesel engines. I have a tach drive that goes on my front cover and drives the cable for this tach. These things are pretty rare and hard to find. There are 2 different red lines on them as well. I feel the same way you do. I didn't want to scab some auto meter tach in there at all. Especially when I fund out about these factory diesel tachs. Here are some better pics of the front of it. This one is a 3200 red line. I believe the other style is a 2700 or 2600.

[woodwright]

What is the cable drive unit like? Is it a cummins thing, or could I adapt it to my 6.5?
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[Dieselwrencher]

Originally Posted by jce4isu

i will be doing this this weekend and had a few ??? for ya

what paint did u use and where did u get the paint

did u brush it on

thanks

Joe, I got orange model paint, testors brand I believe from Hobby Lobby. Yes, my wife used a brush of hers and brushed it on. She is way better at painting small things than I, so I let her have at it.

[coggonobrien]

yea if you could get some measurements that would be great. i'm using 73+ springs as well, just a swb instead of lwb. Thanks!

[1985-GMC]

What about 73+ stock 52" rear springs for the front?

[Dieselwrencher]

Originally Posted by 1985-GMC

What about 73+ stock 52" rear springs for the front?

You could use them, but I already had 4" factory length 73 up springs, and I didn't want to purchase new spring mounts I already had bolted on.

[1985-GMC]

Haha alright, well i guess coggonobrien could use them.

[BLAZERMAN]

Good score on the tach cluster..thats a hard one to come by! Your build is really starting to come together.

[Dieselwrencher]

No progress on this at all guys. I had to go out of town for work again so this truck has been placed back in the yard ornamet phase..............

[Dieselwrencher]

I wonder how many pesos that thing brings? I'm guessing not real cheap.

[copterav8r]

Originally Posted by dieselwrencher

i wonder how many pesos that thing brings? I'm guessing not real cheap.

$1600 as you said not cheap.

[Dieselwrencher]

Son of a beach! That is a cool look, but for $1600 I can do some cool stuff plus new gauges. Thanks for the idea though. I do like how close those gauges match up to factry units.

[copterav8r]

Originally Posted by Dieselwrencher

Son of a beach! That is a cool look, but for $1600 I can do some cool stuff plus new gauges. Thanks for the idea though. I do like how close those gauges match up to factry units.

Yeah, you are right on that $1600 is quite a bit of coin I would use an instrument cluster like your's if I could find one and dash mount gauges, what vehicle did that instrument cluster and tach come out of? Mosesburb makes another good point that instrument cluster that I posted a photo of mounts the most critical gauges on the bottom whereas on a dash mount they are in line of sight.

[Dieselwrencher]

No real progress, but plans have changed again. I decided in this economy we don't need to spend 4 grand on a pulling truck. One drag car will be enough to eat up the pesos. I told my brother to put his money in his dodge he is buying. So now it's back to a driver. After a couple other projects get done my friend and I are going to tag team the Longhorn so he can take it to Good Guy's in July. I have another core 47rh so now I just need to finish buying the parts to build my p-pumped 24v. I will try to get a pic of my new wood grain bezel on the diesel tach cluster as well.

[Dieselwrencher]

Guess what? Nope, it's not done. But I did get rear drums and most of the hardware for the D80. Hopefully the transmission will get assembled soon and we can get the truck up and start on it. I'm trying to figure out how I want to do the battery trays and have them appear close to original. That idea might just go away. Function over look will probably have to work. I thought I scored a nice steel 8' bed floor but it was holy crap bad. Some people and their idea of "rust free"!

[watahyahknow]

making some underfloor battery boxes behind the cab under the bad might look good too it gets a bit harder to get to them with jumpercables but other than that i dont see why i would want those bulky heavy bits in the front of the truck .
some of the newer vans here have the batteries under the drivers seat along with a lot of the electronics

[Dieselwrencher]

Originally Posted by watahyahknow

making some underfloor battery boxes behind the cab under the bad might look good too it gets a bit harder to get to them with jumpercables but other than that i dont see why i would want those bulky heavy bits in the front of the truck .
some of the newer vans here have the batteries under the drivers seat along with a lot of the electronics

That is a nice idea, but I work on semis and medium duty trucks with them hidden like that and I much rather have them under the hood where they are easily accessible. They stay cleaner and it's not as easy to forgetting about maintaining them that way. I could mount them under the bed and run jump posts for no start situations, but I doubt I'll do that.

[watahyahknow]

my first idea was making sunk in boxes intoo the bedfloor itself but then you drive around with two small swimmingpools after the first sight of rain and you need some sort of doors to cover them run the chance of those metal doors caving in and making a short across the poles etc etc just hanging them of the frame like in a truck would be eazier might even be able to use the covers and batteryrack from a small boxtruck

you know theres a lot of empty space between the cab abd the rearwheels you could build a door in the bottompart of the bedside on both sides and make a bagage-space under there ... its kindah like as the older vw pickups , they had those too only from one end to the other

[propanemudtruck]

Good to hear you'll be back on this saddle! Any way to mount one in stock location and the second behind the seat or under the bed?