Project Old Blue, 1965 C10, Rebuild Version 2010

[aggie91]

While we were at the shop, they helped my change out my Coolant Tank on my Duramax, and help sweep when we moved in the mill.

While they were doing that I finished up welding the cap on the engine mount stands. Ground them smooth and painted them. Plan is to finish the mock up this week, and then put the actual engine and trans into the truck this next weekend.

I only got this one pic of my welding before I ground it smooth and painted them. Its amazing how much better my welds look when I can see what I am doing

[aggie91]

Made more progress on the truck over the weekend. Not as much as I had hoped, but all in all, I am good with what got done.

Got the engine frame stands smoothed up and painted, bolted in and got the mock up engine out of the way. Pulled the front boot to make things easier and go get a few refinements made when putting them back on in hopes of making it to C10's in the Park in a couple weeks. Set up these fabricated mounts to allow me to use the stock truck oil pan and not hang below the front cross member. Looks like it is maybe about 1/8"-1/4" below the cross member. I can fix that with a spacer later, but for now, I am good with it. Also, the bottom of the trans pan for the 4L80e is level with the bottom of the frame rail. Pretty happy with that. I used a Ingenuity Fab and Speed transmission cross member, but still had to use a 1.5" spacer between the cross member pad and the Energy Suspension Trans mount. I cut out the floor thinking I would NEED the high hump, but the way I positioned everything, I might have gotten away with the factory low hump floor.

I got the 6.0 LQ4 and the 4L80e installed for the final time and put the Headman Headers that I had left over from the red truck. They fit great. Will work on the final version of the exhaust after C10's in the Park. Plan is to get it running and drivable in and out of the park for the weekend. I got lots to get accomplished by the 16th!

[The Rocknrod]

Wow that Mill is a killer, congratulations on that.

[aggie91]

Originally Posted by The Rocknrod

Wow that Mill is a killer, congratulations on that.

Thanks!, we are excited about it. Owen, my Navy MR, is super ready to come home to run it and show me what he has learned. I need to get some basic tooling, but that is an easy fix once we get past C10's in the Park.

[Low Elco]

Go Karl Go! Glad Owen gets to come home. I'm a Navy HM, what is a MR?

[The Rocknrod]

Originally Posted by Low Elco

Go Karl Go! Glad Owen gets to come home. I'm a Navy HM, what is a MR?

MR = https://cool.osd.mil/usn/enlisted/mr.htm
HM = https://www.cool.osd.mil/usn/enlisted/hm.htm

[aggie91]

Originally Posted by Low Elco

Go Karl Go! Glad Owen gets to come home. I'm a Navy HM, what is a MR?

Originally Posted by The Rocknrod

MR = https://cool.osd.mil/usn/enlisted/mr.htm
HM = https://www.cool.osd.mil/usn/enlisted/hm.htm

LowElco - Thanks for your service!

Rocknrod - Thanks for those links to explain what he does!

[aggie91]

Update - C10's in the Park starts with a Cruise on Friday, Sept 17th! That is 3 days away...

Got the engine fired up on Sunday, super excited since it is a huge step. My harness works and all is good there, just need to make it more acceptable in its appearance. We ran the engine for about 30-40 seconds, because we saw a pretty good leak on the driver side. Turns out, I put the wrong gasket in for the oil cooler bypass block. Fixed that and went to re-fire the engine. No Bueno...Locked up tighter than Ft. Knox!

Came back last night, pulled the engine and trans and got it on the stand. Pulled the pan, found that #6 rod was bent! Pulled that rod/piston out and the crank and bearings look dang near new...Korbin had a set of gen4 LS rods, so we pulled one of those out, swapped the piston to the new rod, cleaned it all up and put that back in the block. Did not have the torque wrench at the shop, so did not get any further last night. All in all it was a good night, 2.5 hours to completely remove parts and get the engine out, split from the trans, converter removed, put on a stand, diagnosed the issue, and replaced the offending part. All that includes moving two other engines out of the way, pulling one off an engine stand and putting everything back in the shop to call it a night.

Plan is to go back to the shop tonight, finish putting it back together, put it back in the truck and see if we have time to try to start it again. We will see how it goes. Looks like I will be at the shop every night this week to get this ready to go to the show on Friday.

Pictures of the bent rod in the engine before we pulled it out, and a pic of it with a good rod. You can see in one pic the shiny spot on the crank counterweight where the piston rubbed the crank.

[SCOTI]

Uhmm.... My mind would still be stuck at "WTF & Why" w/no advancing w/o an answer.

[MT65]

Originally Posted by SCOTI

Uhmm.... My mind would still be stuck at "WTF & Why" w/no advancing w/o an answer.

My first thought would be it hydrauliced, (coolant in the bore)….

[SCOTI]

Originally Posted by MT65

My first thought would be it hydrauliced, (coolant in the bore)….

Ahh.... Truth. It ran for a short period initially so that's where my mind was. But, it actually running could mean fluids went somewhere they should not have gone once shutdown.

[aggie91]

Originally Posted by SCOTI

Uhmm.... My mind would still be stuck at "WTF & Why" w/no advancing w/o an answer.

Originally Posted by MT65

My first thought would be it hydrauliced, (coolant in the bore)….

Originally Posted by SCOTI

Ahh.... Truth. It ran for a short period initially so that's where my mind was. But, it actually running could mean fluids went somewhere they should not have gone once shutdown.

Before we pulled the engine, we checked all the possible causes that could be checked with it in the truck. No coolant in the cylinder, no coolant in the oil, no evidence of fuel in the cylinder, no bent push rods or loose rockers. When discussing it with others, we concluded that #6 injector hung open in one of the 4-stroke cycles and bent the rod. The engine ran only for about 20 seconds before we shut it down for the leak. Watching the video, we notice a couple of knocks in the last second, which leads me to believe that when we shut it down the loss of power from the other cylinders allowed to piston/rod to bind up at the bottom of the cylinder at the bottom of the stroke as it stopped.

[aggie91]

We replaced the rod, cleaned the cylinder, inspected it for scoring and cracks and found not other damage. Reassembled and installed a different injector that we cleaned and cycled a few times on the bench. We fired it up, good oil pressure, no noises, and come up to temp and stayed steady at 190-195.

We made it to C10's in the Park, truck drove from the hotel to the park and back without any issues other than being LOAD in the cab and hot in the cab since the floor is not insulated or finished out yet.

Had a great time! I will get some pictures loaded up here in the next fee days...

[SCOTI]

Originally Posted by aggie91

We replaced the rod, cleaned the cylinder, inspected it for scoring and cracks and found not other damage. Reassembled and installed a different injector that we cleaned and cycled a few times on the bench. We fired it up, good oil pressure, no noises, and come up to temp and stayed steady at 190-195.

We made it to C10's in the Park, truck drove from the hotel to the park and back without any issues other than being LOAD in the cab and hot in the cab since the floor is not insulated or finished out yet.

Had a great time! I will get some pictures loaded up here in the next fee days...

My buddy Matt (from our Waco 'Mini-Nats' days) went out there Sat morning. I didn't make it there but told him the only 2 trucks I was going to look for was yours & GringoLoco's.

Glad you persevered & made it there!

[aggie91]

Originally Posted by SCOTI

My buddy Matt (from our Waco 'Mini-Nats' days) went out there Sat morning. I didn't make it there but told him the only 2 trucks I was going to look for was yours & GringoLoco's.

Glad you persevered & made it there!

Thanks for the compliment. I got to check out GringoLoco's on Friday night and again at the park. What a killer job on that truck. Never got to talk to anyone about it as I never saw anyone around it when I was looking.

[aggie91]

Got this heap running and driving enough to take on a trailer to C10's in the Park. Drove it from the hotel to the park and then back to the hotel. Those few miles were priceless to me. Now the work begins to make it legally streetable...

Here are some pictures I took this past weekend. The one with the red glow around it was taken at midnight on Friday in the hotel parking lot after we got the MAF and Alternator wired in and the front bumper installed. The one in the parking lot was Sunday morning before we loaded up to head home.

[aggie91]

I was so focused on getting the truck put back together that I did not get many pictures of the things I have changed as I went though it this time. Here is a couple pics of the low mount alternator set up I used. Since I am doing manual steering, I wanted the alternator down low so that it is not in your face like a stock bracket. Super pleased with this ICT set up. The smooth pulley in the kit has to be replaced with a ribbed pulley when you are running with out the upper power steering set up. It all seemed to work well together and the truck ran in the 190-195 degree range with what I call minimum belt wrap on the water pump pulley.

[Low Elco]

Originally Posted by The Rocknrod

MR = https://cool.osd.mil/usn/enlisted/mr.htm
HM = https://www.cool.osd.mil/usn/enlisted/hm.htm

Irony: that's exactly what I turned out to be. Ha.

[Low Elco]

Congrats Karl! Happy for you guys you made it! Looked like a great party.

[SCOTI]

Looks like you got it done to me! Glad nothing more was hurt on the motor,

[aggie91]

Motivation has been lacking for a bit on this project. Owen had come home on leave for 15 days before his next deployment to Norfolk, VA. Glad to spend time with him. See his Henry thread for an update on something we did while he was here.

Well, the day after he left, I got my front turn signals put together as I have had the new lenses and gaskets for quite some time.

[aggie91]

Well, that mill I showed on post 345 finally got wired up, but had an issue right away. Something was mis-wired and it smoked a capacitor or so I thought. The black thing I am holding is NOT a capacitor, but a SINPAC switch used to reverse an AC motor when wired in single phase.

[aggie91]

After I smoked that switch, I reached out to the manufacture as the manual I have shows a different electric motor set up and wiring diagrams. They finally sent me he correct wiring diagram for my set up, but unfortunately, mine is so old (made in 2002), that they don't have replacement parts for it anymore. So off to search the internet for the part I need. Found the part, but it is discontinued from the manufacture with no direct replacement. Well, being that I am a bit persistant, I emailed the maker of the switch asking if there was a similar switch that would work, but built/packaged a different way. Sure enough, I get an email back with a alternate part number that will work, but in a different shape...

So, while waiting on the part to arrive, I worked on my truck. Installed the turn signal buckets and bulbs. The OE mounting points where shot, either had a rusted up bolt broken off in them that I could not get out, or they where stripped out. So, RivNuts to the rescue! Since the buckets are not side specific, I could just add in two nuts in cross corners after drilling some holes! Now I have park/turn lights mounted. I bought a kit with a manual setter from Amazon, worked like a champ.

[aggie91]

Moved on to the tail lights. Got them mounted up, had to drill new mounting holes in the stack pocket as I welled them closed many many years ago. I used the '55-'59 style lights as I like the stainless steel bezel on them vs the OE no bezel of the '60-'66 lights.

Wiring issue prevented me from making them work that day...

[aggie91]

Right before my Daughter left for college, she brought home a stay dog. We both decided to keep her after we tried hard to find her a good home. She is a pit mix of some type, we think she is about 10-11 months old at this time based on what the vet told us after we had her checked out in August. We named her Sweetie because of her loving nature around us.

BUT, she is still a puppy and very smart. I have crate trained her for while I am at work and she has been doing very well, goes in right away in the mornings, all I have to say is "Time for me to go to work" and she heads right in.

Well, this past Monday, I came home to the mess in the second picture...Looks like she got mad at me and figured out how to get her crate door unlatched and she tore up my couch a little and destroyed my blinds. Texted my daughter right away..."I hate your dog"

Lucky for her, I hate my couch anyway (my ex picked it out and she did not want it after the divorce). But, now I have to put a pad lock on her crate door when I leave...