Halfbreed - GMC Z71 + IH Extd Cab

[Pop's C-10]

Originally Posted by sparkydog

The threaded rod connects to the end of my slide hammer using one of those longer coupling nuts.

ok..thanks..

[sparkydog]

I had come up with several strategies for doing the Nose Job but finally settled on this:

1) remove the hood, fenders, front grille and the GM radiator assy
2) shorten the hood
3) float the hood in air on the truck and then position the grille wherever the hood ends up.
4) mount/adapt the GM gear as necessary to fit inside the IH metal
5) extensive mods to the IH fenders to blend with wherever the hood and grille end up.

I chose this way because I knew the fenders were going to get the most changes anyway so I might as well make the hood and grille look like I want.

So to put the plan in motion I....

[sparkydog]

Marked up the hood for the cutting, drilled out a bunch of spot welds and got the braces out of the way.

[Dieselwrencher]

Boy you work fast! Great job on the hood!

[sparkydog]

Originally Posted by Dieselwrencher

Boy you work fast! Great job on the hood!

Thanks DW!

[Frizzle Fry]

Nice! How much did you take out?
Posted via Mobile Device

[77chris03]

i just went thru almost ur entire thread...awesome. i wish i had the time and energy u do...and im only 25!!!lol this is an awesome truck. never seen one like it. im building my 68 and working on three yrs and i dont even have the bed done...i feel like such a lazy ass....lol btw, subscribed!!!

[FrankieD]

This is defiantly thinking out of the box I am subscribing.

[sparkydog]

Worst case here's what I have to play with - about 3" before the radiator would hit the fan. But there are plenty of things to try before I get to the point of needing to worry about this.

So first up I removed the GM grille subframe and the various brackets, harnesses and other junk in the way. I was pleasantly surprised to realize that I might not have to disconnect the radiator. For now I am leaving it on.

I needed a way to support the IH grille while I study things. I had these brackets left over from my towing days and they came in handy for providing a ledge to work from.

[sparkydog]

The next thing up was to design and fabricate my new, patented "hood floating in air" support system.

[sparkydog]

Now that I have my basic tools setup for mockup I have to decide what I am going to do. One choice I have is to start hacking up the IH grille so that I can try to tuck all of the GM stuff inside. If I go this route I will have to enlarge the opening in the IH metal to about what you see here. This way I may have enough room to fit the GM AC heat exchanger and the GM radiator without much change in their fore/aft location.

The other choice is to try to continue to have both the IH grille metal and the GM radiator support as a sandwich. This is the way I have run for the past year but now I would have to move the GM assy aft and get into shorter hoses and altered airflow issues.

As of right now I am leaning toward chopping up the IH metal to clear the GM radiator and AC heat exchanger.

[sparkydog]

Originally Posted by Frizzle Fry

Nice! How much did you take out?
Posted via Mobile Device

2.5"

Originally Posted by 77chris03

i just went thru almost ur entire thread...awesome. i wish i had the time and energy u do...and im only 25!!!lol this is an awesome truck. never seen one like it. im building my 68 and working on three yrs and i dont even have the bed done...i feel like such a lazy ass....lol btw, subscribed!!!

Originally Posted by FrankieD

This is defiantly thinking out of the box I am subscribing.

Thanks very much for joining my build!

[Palf70Step]

Great work on the hood. Can't wait to see how you get it all to merge together. I truly love your approach to solving all these issues with this build.

[71Sleeper]

All I can say is wow! I have just spent 4 hrs reading through the entire thread. I could not even think about taking on a build this creative. Unique builds like this is what fuels the imaginations of others to venture outside the box. I knew nothing of your build until I seen it referenced by others on their threads. Keep up the hard work, can't wait to see what you come up with the fenders. Subscribed!

[sparkydog]

Originally Posted by Palf70Step

Great work on the hood. Can't wait to see how you get it all to merge together. I truly love your approach to solving all these issues with this build.

Originally Posted by 71Sleeper

All I can say is wow! I have just spent 4 hrs reading through the entire thread. I could not even think about taking on a build this creative. Unique builds like this is what fuels the imaginations of others to venture outside the box. I knew nothing of your build until I seen it referenced by others on their threads. Keep up the hard work, can't wait to see what you come up with the fenders. Subscribed!

Thanks for the encouragement!

[sparkydog]

My GM truck is equipped with trans cooling lines. They run into two coolers one inside the end of the radiator and the other piggybacked in front of the AC radiator.

It would help if I could take out the unit that hangs in front and just use the portion that is inside the cap of the radiator. I doubt if I will ever use the truck to tow anything. Does anyone know if I will be OK doing this?

[Jonboy]

You can take the auxillary cooler out, but it really helps keep trans temps down. Heat is the enemy of any auto transmission, so if it isn't in the way, I would keep it.

[ERASER5]

If you remove the fron aux trans cooler, you could add a aux cooler on the frame closer to the trans.

http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...=195643&page=5

Page 5, Post 120

[gearheads78]

Great build!!

[Dieselwrencher]

I'd do like Eraser5 mentioned. I'd ditch both of those coolers up front and put one under the bed that has it's own electric fan blowing air through it.

[sparkydog]

Wow all this stuff I am posting took about a day and a half and doesn't look like much. But... good things happened! And I must have gone through 4 or 5 cut disks to get this done.

After an appropriate amount of staring and studying and tradeoffs of this and that - I figured out what I was going to do and proceeded with the execution.

I decided that the base of the GM grille assy was going to stay and form the core of my nose job mods. I had to cut it free from the rest of the frame and then do a bunch of stuff. Shaving off unwanted crap, repairing torn spot welds, moving the mount hole locations to get about 3/8" of radiator relo just with the holes. Then I sectioned and slid the portion of the base that holds the radiator another 7/8" so all told I slid the radiator about 1.25" rearward on the vehicle.

[sparkydog]

I also came to realize that there were some issues going on within my IH grille structure and that I needed to open it up. This is what started tipping my thoughts toward spending so much time on the GM base - getting it ready to take the place of a very complex but rigid tube section within the IH grille because it had to come off and get the dirt and rust and s*** out.

[sparkydog]

Every vehicle has its own particular spots for rust and problems and the IH trucks certainly have their short list. The bottom section of the grille is in the top 5. I am glad I shaved this off and got the cancer more or less out. The next few days should see me getting the new hybrid grille assy mocked up and ready to mate up with the hood.

[hgs_notes]

Originally Posted by sparkydog

Every vehicle has its own particular spots for rust and problems and the IH trucks certainly have their short list. The bottom section of the grille is in the top 5. I am glad I shaved this off and got the cancer more or less out. The next few days should see me getting the new hybrid grille assy mocked up and ready to mate up with the hood.

Good job there and I completely understand how a couple days work doesn't always seem like much progress on a couple pics. And if you ever ventured into the great white north, you would never say the IH trucks have a "short list" of problems. You rarely see them up here because they were long ago sent to the scrapper before there was nothing left to scrap.

[racedaddy]

Man O Man, just found this thread this morning and read it all. Nice work. Have you thought of going with an electric fan? You can get a GM one from pull-a-part for like $10. They use them in everything and then you could get much closer to the engine.