ClusterTruck; because that’s what it is

[clay68c10]

Originally Posted by hewittca

I like how you have yours mounted on the top of the framerails. Mine goes straight across the bottom rails which forced me to run the exhaust very close to the floorboard. Will you have enough clearance with this design to still keep the exhaust above the bottom of the framerails?

It should clear. The header collectors are even with the bottom of the frame, and the exhaust will have to kick up a bit to go thru the trailing arm crossmember.

[clay68c10]

On the subject of heat shields, I decided to take a page from new car design and add some.
I started out just doing the driver side to protect my fuel line. I had a piece of heat shield left over from my dealer days that I figured would be adequate.
The more I looked at it, the more sense it made to add a second one to the passenger side. The wood is for mockup, I didn’t take a pic of the final piece. I’ll use some slip rolled thin sheet with the DEI stick on shield and go from the transmission x-member all the way to the trailing arm one.

[clay68c10]

Time for some plumbing.
I’ll attach the filter supply/return lines to the bed underside with some P clamps.
Running plastic from the frame to the engine.
I may hook up the purge line to a charcoal can, or I may not. Just giving the option. If I do, it'll be plastic line back to the can.

[clay68c10]

Pulled the engine/trans and made up brake lines.
NiCopp for the win

[clay68c10]

I played around with flipping the trailing arm mounts. (Not in chronological order)
In the flipped position I get 10deg up on the pinion and not much room to run exhaust.
In the stock position I get 5 deg up and more room for exhaust.
I elected to leave them in the stock orientation.
I'll be going 4-5 max drop in the rear so this should work.
The crossmember exhaust cutouts are just rough cut. I finished them off later.

[clay68c10]

Time to remove all the pieces, flip the frame, and make tank straps

[clay68c10]

With fall coming, it was time to do the last big dirty job. Strip and POR15 the frame. I need warm temps for it to cure in a reasonable time.
I didn’t take pics of the wire wheel session, it was loud and dirty. BTDT
The first pic is using trash bags to keep the etch damp for 10 minutes minimum.
Next is post etch and rinse.
Last is my high tech way to move the frame. Yeah, it’s hokey but it worked great. My son and I were able to roll it up the driveway and back in the garage.

[clay68c10]

Now for the exciting part. Painting the frame, which is the first step toward reassembling this thing.

[SCOTI]

Looks good from here.

[clay68c10]

Originally Posted by SCOTI

Looks good from here.

Thanks, I'm happy how it turned out considering I brushed it on and my overnight temps made it cure pretty slowly.

I meant to add some detail for anyone that wants to use POR to do theirs. You'll need a whole day to do 3 coats. I broke mine up into 2 days. I had to wait to start till about 10am for the temp to come up.
Day 1 was the top and side surfaces. Day 2 was the bottom surfaces.
Tack time between the coats was 2.5 to 3ish hours.
Two coats almost covered it. I used the painter trick of shining a flashlight at it with the lights out to find the thin coverage areas and just did those for round 3. It worked well.
My ambient temp was about 80, humidity was <20%
My night temps dropped to 60ish in the garage.
It took about 1 week to really cure.
The sheen is "variable". This is the semigloss version and the gloss has some variance. It's definitely not Ridler award winning, but very acceptable for a nice driver.
It has been durable so far. I've been reassembling and it hasn't scratched yet.

[clay68c10]

Yeah! Finally putting bolts back in to assemble clean parts is a nice motivator.
Capt. Underpants got the honor of putting in the first bolts. Then he got cold

I spent a few more hours happily putting parts back on.

[SCOTI]

Capt.Underpants

[loudchevy]

Great build with a lot of good tips/advice. Awesome that you got the younger kids involved with the truck.

Looking forward to following the rest of this build. It's gotta feel good to be bolting clean/new parts back together.

[clay68c10]

Originally Posted by SCOTI

Capt.Underpants

He loves those books, they're pretty funny.

Originally Posted by loudchevy

Great build with a lot of good tips/advice. Awesome that you got the younger kids involved with the truck.

Looking forward to following the rest of this build. It's gotta feel good to be bolting clean/new parts back together.

Yes, it's really nice. Long time coming

[clay68c10]

Now for the update on the oily exhaust.
My leak down is 30-40% on all the cylinders. No surprise there.
Happily all the wear surfaces inside look great. The crank is in great shape and the bores are clean with no scratches.
Standard size parts will be going back in: bearings, LQ9 style flat tops, and rings.
As a bonus, Rock Auto got the LQ9 Enginetech rebuild kit back in stock today after being out for 6 months.

[clay68c10]

It’s been a bit, but I’m chipping away at things.
Engine-wise I had hoped to get away with a quick valve lapping with new seals and springs to match my cam choice.
The valve guides felt a little loose, but I don’t do a ton of engine work so I got out the dial indicator and actually did a quickie valve guide clearance check. I came up with .010 on some of the exhaust valves so I stopped there. The max is somewhere less than .005 as I recall.
Time to call the machine shops. It’s around $800 to start with and goes up from there depending on what parts you may need.
I started looking at other options just to see.
There’s a lot of reman heads out there for under $800, but I don’t like going that fleaBay route for this kind of stuff.
I lucked out and found a set of ported 317s thru LS1 tech. New in the boxes for the same money as getting mine redone.
https://frankensteined.net/product/f...rting-service/
Done!

[clay68c10]

Are they overkill?
Maybe.
Are they too much for what my build is?
Probably not.
These heads flow the same as the stock rectangle ports on the gen4 motors. That will work for me. I may want to upgrade my throttle body at some point. Or not, we shall see how it runs.
I’ll probably need bigger injectors, but the was a possibility as soon as I went with more cam.
These heads came with some mongo .700 lift springs (second pic) that were actually overkill. I swapped them out for my Summit springs. That gave me a chance to check out the guide clearances. Night and day. Mission accomplished.

[SCOTI]

Nice score.

The benefit of Frankenstein ported 317's is better lower lift flow vs the OE rectangular ports. More power through-out the curve vs just a similar top end number. They should work well w/the LQ9 flat-tops.

What cam?

[clay68c10]

Originally Posted by SCOTI

Nice score.

The benefit of Frankenstein ported 317's is better lower lift flow vs the OE rectangular ports. More power through-out the curve vs just a similar top end number. They should work well w/the LQ9 flat-tops.

What cam?

Yes, I was very happy to find a deal on these heads.
The flow numbers are impressive, very comparable with LS3's. They should be a solid performer all the way up to .600 lift.
I'll be running the Summit 8728R1. I like torque and don't want to have to rev it to the sky.

[SCOTI]

I wanting that same torque w/some popcorn-popping exhaust music LoL (FED rebuilt/ported 243's on a 6.0/4l80e combo).

[clay68c10]

Cool. The work on their heads is really top notch. All the edges are deburred and the surfaces are true.
What cam are you running?

[SCOTI]

Originally Posted by clay68c10

Cool. The work on their heads is really top notch. All the edges are deburred and the surfaces are true.
What cam are you running?

Still sorting through things on the cam although leaning toward the TruckNorris grind (or a grind close to it) after seeing several dyno tests. It beats out stock-smaller cams on the low end & nearly matches bigger/rowdier cams (that underperform the smaller stuff on the low end) on the top.

[clay68c10]

The Summit cam I picked has about the same spec as the TN. Holdener tested 3-4 cams with those specs and they all performed very similarly. It's leaps and bounds beyond the old SBC flat tappets.
I'm excited to see how it runs (and tunes).

[SCOTI]

Originally Posted by clay68c10

The Summit cam I picked has about the same spec as the TN. Holdener tested 3-4 cams with those specs and they all performed very similarly. It's leaps and bounds beyond the old SBC flat tappets.
I'm excited to see how it runs (and tunes).

Yeppers. Watched a few of the tests 😉👍
It will ultimately come down to what's in stock w/the range of specs desired.

[LT7A]

Thanks for all of the detail you've put into your thread. Especially your rust repair and approach to that were helpful. Here in the PNW, we don't always have to deal with that, but I have a truck that will eventually probably need it. It's cool that you got Angus Young to help you out, I was surprised to see that