Wtf did i get myself into 51 s10 swap

[rtinniste]

Little update spent all day Saturday installing air ride on a 350z ended up missing the nutserts for the rear bags so finished everything minus the rear. All I can say is that car blows to take apart way more interior plastic panels then my Infiniti, and it took longer to put back together then it did for me to line and wire the system. And my hands are covered in cuts from the stupid panels just have to put the nutsert and rear bags in, calibrate the system, set the presets and its finished.

But did get to work on the truck Sunday afternoon, wasn't even planning it until my brother in law sent me a pic of his nova clip installed on his Apache. Crap need to get back in the lead!

Made a lower U frame for the radiator support the side stands bolt to it and its all 3/16" angle iron and plate. Ended up making two risers off the frame with some scrap C channel. Thing that sucks is the passenger side frame rail slopes down right where I needed my pad to land so i couldn't make each side equal height.
I spent close to a week thinking the best way to do this. From using a weld in bung on the frame but if that ever strips I'm screwed, to the route everyone seems to take with the lower bar but i think i cut my frame horns to far back slightly, this route just seemed the best way to me.

Happy I just did it and got it done. Now time to mount the bed and running boards, bed should go quick running boards I'm not looking forward to. But at least I'm done cutting plate steel with the wheel of death I'm pretty sure.

But the way I made it, it has tons of adjustment.
I can pinch my fenders in by putting washers between the side stands and u frame. I have about a 1 inch side to side movement and height adjustment i can drop it 1/2" by flipping the bushings or raise as much as I need using fender washers under the bushing cup as shims. Everything is square, level, and lines up perfect. And you can't see the mounts once the grille is on and the hood lines up and latches and unlatches nicely even with the front clip being loose. So I must of done something right.



Today I need to pick up some shorter grade 8 bolts cut the driver side tab and straighten it some and add a gusset to each tab doubt its needed I can stand and jump on each tab with no deflection but it will make it look better. I think I went slight over kill on it. I'll post a better pic tomorrow with it completed that pic makes it look like a complete hack job with the 7" bolts and crooked tab.

[rtinniste]

Little update no pictures tho since my phone cord seemed to walk off my desk here at the shop so I'll do a photo dump tomorrow for anyone that cares.

But I ended up cutting off the drivers side core support tab straightening it and adding gussets in. Made my running board mounts made them bolt on instead of welding them to the frame. Got the bed mounted that was a headache I had to cut the bed more to clear the 4wd calipers and the bed is about 3/4" higher then were it should be but i ended up dropping the front of my fender down and tweak my splash apron slightly but it all works out.

Rolled my rear fender lips to clear my wheels 15x8 2 inch backspace supremes with 205/75/15 has credit card clearance when you use the 4wd blazer rear end. They fit the fronts and comes within MM of the fender brace, but I'm going to order the 15x8 3.625 backspace for the front and run a 205/70/15 and a 1" spacer should work out perfect. The 2" back space looked awkward with that deep of a lip on the front only downsize is I can't rotate tires now.

Waiting on parts to show up now Little shop mfg no toe steering kit since they have $150 off right now, new splash aprons since the jackass who worked on the truck before me thought welding them to the bed was smart.

And i need to order a new bed front panel mine has a really bad bend in it, whats funny is that it matches the radius of the cab perfect just backwards like this )(. And order my front wheels they are in stock at summit just tired of spending money to give myself headaches haha

[Clay54]

Well rtinniste, I care. Anxious to see the picture of how this rad support ended up. It is another idea that no one I know of has built before. Thanks for sharing. Clay

[lower50's]

I like pics.

[rtinniste]

Sorry for the lack of updates nothing really ground breaking on the truck kinda slowed down some on it. Thought i took more pictures but here's what I have.

I ordered 2 15x8 reverse offset supremes so I can test fit originally i wanted to run the same size all around but something about the lip size looks off on the front and with a 205/75/15 it barely clears the front fender brace when the truck is laid out.
So they offer the same wheel with a 3-5/8" backspacing instead of the 2" back spacing. So I plan on running that up front with a 1" spacer and a 205/70/15.

This is with the 15x8 2" backspace



Got my running board mount done just have to drill holes to bolt the running board down. They bolt to my frame using 7/16 grade 8 bolts with nylocks and the base plate is 1/4" plate.
**pic is before i added the triangulated gusset's**


I really should spend some time building a welding table using 2 trash cans is getting old trying to balance crap then weld it haha.
Honest opinions on my welds? I've been teaching myself over the past couple weeks and staying away from the millers autoset feature, I always try learning using manual settings on everything before touching any auto features because you end up relying on auto features.
The only welding experience I had was off a junk harbor freight flux core 110 unit I used to make wrought iron doors for my bbq island and what I read online or on youtube. Still want to take a couple classes at the college for mig welding and tig. But my weld profiles seem decent I'm getting good color on the backside with no burn thru.
I really need to force myself to slow down I've noticed and I need to work on hand motion keeping my beads straighter I've been running my visor on the lower end of its settings or I might just need better lighting in the garage.



Got the bed mounted but ended up about a 3/4" higher then it should of been grrrr but it was easily fixable by enlarging a couple of the holes and tweaking the splash aprons slightly. I hate it but it works and its not noticeable knowing me I'll probably redo it.
No pics of that process. **fender wasn't bolt on**


But my little shop mfg no toe steering kit came in wasnt planning that just yet but they gave me $150 off because it was some over stock from their last group by so i jumped on it. Rear wheels fit perfect with the 205/75/15 had to flatten the fender lip slightly, it cleared before but was credit card clearance and if there is any side to side play with the 4 link it will hit so now I have almost a finger space there. Also took the brace out of the rear fenders I saved them but i doubt it will need it.



And that's where I am now as of yesterday. Prob wont have a update for a week or two the Infiniti is going to be back under the knife soon.
It needs brake pads and my rotors look like crap from rust on the rotor hats. So might as well upgrade for this season.
So I've been collecting parts that I need to swap over the akebono sport brakes from the 2010 g37s for a factory big brake kit.
Front brakes go from 2 piston 12.5" rotor to a 4 piston 14" rotor setup
Rear goes from single piston 12" rotor to dual piston 13.8" rotor setup
Still need my stupid fender fixed and repainted and planning on changing to a full titanium exhaust setup and still debating new wheels since I'm bored of my current wheels and I can squeeze something a little more aggressive in there still.
some pics of that POS if anyone cares



And Clay I'll get some pics of the rad support when I pull the front clip when I start mocking the motor up.

[Clay54]

Thanks for remembering. Appreciate that. Clay

[Advanced Design]

The wheel selection on your truck looks good. You have some nice looking welds going on there too.

[Jaik]

Awesome stuff. Love the truck and Love the car. I was looking at one before I found my truck.
Can't wait to see bags all finished.

[joedoh]

welds look sharp! might turn the wire up a hair, its hard to tell in the picture if there is any undercut, but looks like you got the motion down. penetration looks good too from the heat marks.

truck looks great, bet you excited to get it on the road.

[lower50's]

Wheels look good and welds look good, just takes practice. I agree with Joedoh bit more wire or slow down a little.

[rtinniste]

So my front wheels should be here today. And I have this itch to pull the front clip and start mocking up my motor and trans I need to go pick up s10 2.8 motor mounts to see if my jagsthatrun motor mounts work out. And I need to clean out the cab seems to be storage locker and I think half my tools are in it since my tool box seems kinda bare.
Fingers crossed that I actually do something to this truck besides stare at it today.

[rtinniste]

Been slacking on the updates been almost a month! Here's a recap been a crappy month kind of

The weather has been amazing the desert is full time spring mode right now. So seems lately my weekends I've been out of the garage wheeling which is a nice change. Except i work on the truck about 4 hours a night.





Scored a sand blaster and flame proof cabinet...... Except the dodge decided it wanted to DNF on the 5 freeway bringing it home. Pretty sure it collapsed a lash adjuster and spit out a rocker arm. So I'm still unsure on what I'm going to do my garage is at maximum capacity right now so its been sitting.

Mopar mo problems leaves you with no car.

[rtinniste]

Now on to better stuff I decided to mock the motor up. Had to trim the fire wall to gain some trans clearance. (i have no pics of any of this so use your imagination)
That's when i started finding more fiberglass in this cab noticed the floor pan and fire wall were starting to split minus needing both cowls rearcab corners.
So I started looking around craigslist, military auctions, yacht trader, the Russian black market.

Well ended up finding a cab on craigslist says in decent shape no bondo minor rust located in Ventura county about a hour from me for $650. So we hopped in the car on a Saturday hauled ass down there checked the cab out. It was clean two rot spots the size of a nickle in the rear lowers and a dent on the roof. Ended up scoring the cab for $450 bucks.

Cruised down on Monday and picked it up. Took forever to get home tons of rain and in the canyons its started to hail then snow. Got the cab washed for free since we are in a drought and everything.
Made it to the local watering hole for celebration cervezas.



Told you my garage is packed



Since the weather has been nice and my truck is dead I've been using my hog for a parts store runner lol. Forgot how wrong this bike feels riding around on the streets and it takes me way longer to get home since i always find myself taking the scenic route

[rtinniste]

So now i have my motor set in place pulled the crap cab off. I had to figure out the trans cross member situation. I'll be completely honest this drove me insane 2 weeks of staring at my frame asking myself why and thinking about my life choices haha.
I didn't want to hack the stock s10 cross member, didn't care for any pre fab universal ones, the driver side frame rail step drove me crazy.

So i decided I'll just tackle it myself and wing it and I'm glad i did i love the way it came out everything is flush with the bottom of the frame.
I had about 4ft left of 1x4 .120 or .150 (cant remember off the top of my head but its some heavy stuff) wall box steel left from my running board mounts. Cut it to width then started trying to figure out mounting tabs. I didn't have much 1/4 plate left laying around but i did have a pair of stock shackles from my dodge. And go figure the leaf springs are 4" wide so quick hack with the chop saw i had my mounts.
I'll let the pics speak for themselves **not grade 8 bolts, ill be replacing everything with grade 8 shanked and cut to length bolts on final assembly**



was thinking about making it a k member to stiffen the frame up


overlapped the welds in the corner looks ugly




tail shaft sits right at 4.5 degrees down, but i need to go up to the higher hole on my motor mounts (starter motor is to close to the frame and might tap the frame with engine twist) and add a spacer on the trans to get it back to 4.5 degrees.


And this is how she sits now waiting on headers and center knock offs to arrive. Used some satin frame paint to spray bomb the frame so hopefully that works and the cab might get dropped on today. I'm still debating on media blasting the cab since every panel on my truck is a different color and I doubt I'll be able to match the patina haha. Oh and I'm going to have to c notch and dehump control arms I'm about 2 inches from laying running boards on the new tires.
Also the drive shaft isn't bolted to the diff it clears the brace by about 1.5" when the truck is all the way up.
The length is also pretty much dead on i think it came out of a late 60s early 70s c10 long bed, I got it with my motor and trans.

[rtinniste]

Made some more progress yesterday if you can even call it that, feel like I've been taking 2 steps forward 1 step back lately and making zero progress.

But the motor is bolted in, trans bolted in, mounted headers, painted the frame under the cab, and got the rot free cab on hopefully this is the last time.
Modded the stock column drop to raise the steering wheel up an inch or two and pushed about 3 inches closer to the dash so from the looks of it ill be able to keep the stock seat stock column stock steering wheel and still be comfortable.

The motor mounts from jags that run and patriot clippster h8036 headers work perfect. Valve covers are about 2 inches from the fire wall plenty of room for the dizzy hopefully there's enough room up front for an electric fan seems like it when the front clip is on.
Only issue I see is my brake lines that will go to the booster that will take some tweaking to work.

Still have alot left I want to have it running by may but i doubt it will be. Still unsure about what to do about the truck being 6 different colors i was quoted 600 to media blast the cab bed and tail gate but that's out of budget as of right now




Running boards are 2" off the ground and drive me insane so guess time for a bolt in c notch and dehump the control arms.



and at the end of the night i had the front clip mocked back up dont mind the 1975 dumpster i mean c10

[joedoh]

looking good, that is one seriously overbuilt trans crossmember but hey, better than underbuilt!

[lower50's]

Well that's moving right along.

[rtinniste]

Originally Posted by joedoh

looking good, that is one seriously overbuilt trans crossmember but hey, better than underbuilt!

Thanks and yea I agree its over kill but i had the material laying around so why not. but now I'm kind of wishing I pushed it back 4 inches and added a trans mount tab. Right now the trans bolts down to the bar and I bored 2 1" holes for socket access which is a pita when you bolt the trans down honestly so I might cut a notch and plate it back in.
But the mount is flush with the bottom of the frame and i have plenty of room to route my exhaust over the cross member.

Originally Posted by lower50's

Well that's moving right along.

Thanks doesn't feel like it tho been feeling like 1 step forward 2 steps back lately. And i'm at a stand still again because now I'm at the point that i need to start buying more parts again.

[rtinniste]

No new updates really but do have some tool updates. Around the corner from my work there's a habitat for humanity and they sell reclaimed home stuff cabinets, light fixtures, plumbing stuff, random tools. So we usually check it out weekly on lunch break see whats new. Well this was sitting there...





So check the price $250 bucks?!? Says untested so pop the rear cover off belts look good, rotates freely, oil is a little dirty, air filter is good, and the drain valve has a little rust. Ask the manager a few questions only reason they didn't test is the building doesn't have 220 but it came from a storage unit with a bunch of other tools and everything else worked that came out of there.
But its 80gal, 5 hp, 175 psi, two stage, 22 cfm, single phase, baldor motor.


So took the gamble threw $250 down. Called ciasons when i got back to the shop for more info on it. The compressor was built in 2004 cost $3100 bucks they are about a 2 hour drive from my house. And $75 to service it and go thru it. Checked ebay a new rebuilt motor is going for about $300. So that was a come up hands down.



Got it home on Saturday. Now just have to run some conduit, add another breaker to he panel, plumb the garage with copper line, add a ball valve water drain, buy a couple water traps and regulators, change the oil and I'm good to go.




This is to funny not to post for those not keeping score.
I've just now realized the jeep is more useful then my dodge. The jeep so far has pulled a trailer to San Deigo to get the frame, all around Ventura county to get a cab, down to Los angles to get the compressor, multiple trips to the metal yard, the welding shop with a argon bottle strapped to the cage. Its taken me all thru Mojave and some of the harder trails in California.

I bring a sand blast cabinet home and my truck decides it doesn't need rocker arms anymore.

[iowaboynca]

good score on the compressor. That drill press looks good too.

[rtinniste]

Originally Posted by iowaboynca

good score on the compressor. That drill press looks good too.

They were only asking $75 for the drill press it needed a new switch panel tho. But I did find a craftsman 15" drill press with laser trac and someone changed out the chuck to a jacobs keyless chuck in perfect shape. It was marked down from $300 to $200 and I tried low balling at $150 but got shot down.
The manager told me come back during the week. Little does he know I work around the corner so I'll be back everyday this week hounding him for a deal haha

[lower50's]

Wow good deal on a nice compressor.

[joedoh]

Originally Posted by rtinniste

They were only asking $75 for the drill press it needed a new switch panel tho. But I did find a craftsman 15" drill press with laser trac and someone changed out the chuck to a jacobs keyless chuck in perfect shape. It was marked down from $300 to $200 and I tried low balling at $150 but got shot down.
The manager told me come back during the week. Little does he know I work around the corner so I'll be back everyday this week hounding him for a deal haha

I would take the delta for $75 over a hundred laser craftsmen for $10.

[rtinniste]

Been a minute since my last update. Here's some stuff that's been getting done budget has been tight and I'm to the point where I need to start spending money again.

So the whole plan with the truck was to lay the running boards on the ground without dehumping arms or notching the frame.

For mock up i had some s10 take offs from my neighbor the tires were bald showing belts I admit, I screwed up and didn't think about it at all. That a bald tire's overall diameter is going to be smaller. So when I got the new tires on my supreme's and put them on, my truck went from running boards a half inch off the ground to almost 2".

I got fed up ripped my control arms out and dehumped them trimmed a couple spots on the frame and got it to smash the fenders into the ground good. I spent maybe 5 minutes looking at pics online and had a good idea of what to do just by looking at it. I'm happy with how it came out.






Now the front was smashing the fenders in the ground the rear end was sitting stinkbug. You can tell this is where everything started to snowball. Ordered a bolt in c notch from douggies chop shop I really should of just made one oh well.
I need to trim the bump stop pad on the axle since I'm using a blazer axle it has that funky bumpstop pad and that's whats holding me up from getting lower. But I'm alot happier with the stance now.



Then hit another issue after getting it lower, it drags in my garage and I cant get a jack under it. I'm used to this tho the Infinti had a whole process when I was static. As of now the truck is on jack stands waiting for bags and brackets from Jason and thorbros should be here on the 11th

The latest update from yesterday went riding in the morning came home and cooked up dinner. Then decided to work in the garage a little. Since I'm going to run a tank under the bed no need for the old gas cap on the cab. Originally I wanted to make it a bottle opener but decided screw it I'm shaving it.

Well the metal yard isn't open Sunday's and I had to go to Lowes anyway I picked up some metal there. All they had was 16g and the cab when I measured was about 20g.

So here's how I made my patch the hole for the filler neck is 3". 16g is to thick to cut with hand sheers and I don't own a nibbler etc. Figured i can use a hole saw to cut a perfectly round patch. Well taking into account the OD of the hole saw is slightly smaller and taking into account of the wall thickness of the hole saw.

3-1/4" holesaw was perfect, so threw a 2x6 on my drill press clamped the sheet metal to that set the rpm as low as it will go took the pilot drill out of the arbor set the table height as high as I can.

5 minutes later had a perfectly round patch panel a little fine tuning for a hand file the fit was dead on. Took me maybe a hour from start to finish I have to grind the welds today since it was to late to grind anything.

This was my first attempt doing anything that thin of metal everything I read online made patch panels sound like a nightmare, only annoying thing is rapid tacking and making sure to spread the heat around took forever, I couldn't imagine doing a entire quarter panel. Up next shaving fire wall and figuring out a trans tunnel.

[rtinniste]

Since I like adding other things to my thread. Went and did my practice loop about 70 miles mixture of tight single track open fireroads mixture of terrain. Decided to take it easy and just cruise it for once since its my first time back since my buddy broke his hip on this same loop.

But noticed down one of the hillsides a car. Which is weird because this is maybe 20-30 miles into the hills nothing around. So hiked down a couple hundred feet to check it out. Looks like a pre 47 cab full of bullet holes.

Like I said I have no idea how it even got here, this is pretty deep back in the hills.




And the normal rest/half way spot lookout hill.