Daddyjeep Hauler - 85 K30 crew cab short bed

[daddyjeep]

Well, it looks like my alternator decided to die on me. I have been dreading this day because the pivot bolt was seized in the head. Heat and PB blaster let me down and it broke off in the head. I made several attempts at welding a nut to it, but was unsuccessful. In order to drill it out as accurately as possible I decided to pull the radiator, shroud, ac condenser, tranny cooler, and the grill.

That shiny spot is the broken bolt ground flat.



After grinding it flat and center punching it as accurately as possible I started drilling. This pic is after the 3rd bit size.... start small and work up.



I tried my easy-outs ,but they felt like they would break long before the old bolt would give up so I just drilled the final hole to 5\16 and tapped to 3/8-16.



I just need a new bolt. i got the rest of it put back together.

Good times.

[daddyjeep]

I have owned this truck almost exactly 4 years at this point and I am finally going to get to use it for what i bought it for... towing my Jeep to an off road park. Pretty exciting times. I have used it to tow smaller loads locally a fair amount. I towed the smoker to a party I was catering last weekend and I used it to help my wife's business move the week before. Since we will be camping at this event, it is about time I get my truck cap modified to fit. The new one that I bought is the right length, but is too narrow. I also have one that is too long. I have completely disassembled the long one so I can harvest the material I need to modify the other. I think I am going to get some foam and insulate it as much as I can since it is going to be in the low 30's at night.

Here it is ready to start cutting.

[Ol Blue K20]

Have a good time, I'm glad it's coming together. Stay warm and healthy...

[daddyjeep]

Just a couple short weeks ago I had the front of my truck all torn apart. Imagine how easy it would have been to change the water pump at that time..... Well, now I'm changing my water pump. Good Grief.

[daddyjeep]

Fact check.... I have owned my truck for 5 years, not 4.

Anyway, I finally got to tow the Jeep with it last weekend. It rolled down the road awesome and handled the weight like a champ, while looking good doing it. When came to a hill is when the problems started. I know I have some vacuum leaks, but never bothered to take care of them because I really downplayed the importance of the vacuum system. Well, this truck can't advance or retard the timing without vacuum now can it. Also, the transmission won't downshift either. Obviously I can manually down shift it, but the non adjusting timing was just kicking this thing's ass trying to pull a hill. Even though it struggled on the hills it still did great. The temps stayed rock solid at about 210 and it averaged right around 6MPG. This was a real hilly 150 mile drive so This will probably be about as bad as it could be. I have another Jeep trip planned that will be a much easier drive so we will see how it does there.

Since this trip was happening I finally got around to modifying my cap to fit my truck properly... and my needs. I pulled all the skins off to get down to the base frame and did the same to the other cap that I had. I cut out pieces of the framework from the parts cap to widen the one I will be using. There were even some angle aluminum that worked perfectly to join everything together. I widened it 2".



Since I was here and had a camping trip planned I figured that I might as well insulate the cap while I had it all apart. I used the skin from the parts cap to make an inner skin to trap the insulation.



I had some 2" foam so I made a hot wore cutter with a saw horse, a couple screws, some .035 mig wire, and a battery charger. I ripped the foam down to 1" and put it between all the supports.



A couple thousand screws later and a bunch of screwing around cutting and fitting pieces of aluminum it was done. I picked up some static cling window tint to add some privacy. That **** is garbage. I should have just got normal adhesive stuff, but it does it's job for now.





It worked great camping. The temps were down around 30 degrees and it stayed nice and warm in there. I built a mattress platform to get above the wheel well so it was a bit tight to the ceiling, but that helped to keep it warm.

[MTCK]

Looks great and nothing better than putting your project to work. 6 mpg isn't bad for the load you have in my opinion. Time flies, doesn't it?

[daddyjeep]

Originally Posted by MTCK

Looks great and nothing better than putting your project to work. 6 mpg isn't bad for the load you have in my opinion. Time flies, doesn't it?

Yeah... 4 of us in the truck with all our gear for a weekend and around 6K dragging along behind. That would put the combined weight around 13K.

[daddyjeep]

I addressed my vacuum leaks. It really woke up this old big block. I can't believe I overlooked that... oh well. I can't wait tp put the trailer behind it again and see what it does.

As it turns out I was browsing the classifieds and found me some doors in the same town I was in last week at the off road part... 150 miles away. Why didn't I find them earlier? They are Suburban rear doors with factory tint. There is just one spot of rust on the bottom inside of one door that I need to deal with. $100 for the pair isn't too bad.

[daddyjeep]

Got me another deal on truck parts...... I did some work for a friend and let him use my shop and lift. He did some work while I was doing the welding and fabricating. When it came time for my compensation I suggested he just give me his 02 Avalanche with a rusted frame. This gives me a good 5.3, that will get inspected and at a minimum new gaskets and a cam, all of the wiring, and a computer. I am also going to pull the interior and use what I can to update the inside of my old truck. Not a bad score for a few hours of labor.

[daddyjeep]

I finally got the Avalanche home. It has sat for almost a year, but it fired right up and ran nice and smooth. No knocking... no ticking... no smoke... good oil pressure.



I really love the interior. I did some measuring and it shouldn't be too bad to get the seats to fit the truck. The biggest challenge will be reinforcing the floor enough to be safe. the new seats have the seatbelts built into the seat. I am going to strip everything from the interior of the donor. I am thinking about using all of the window switches and the wiring and computer that goes with them. Of course I will have to build custom door panels which sounds like fun anyway. Hell, I might even use the steering column.That would probably get a little complicated integrating into the lighting and wipers and such, but that kind of sounds like fun too.

[Palf70Step]

That definitely was a good deal. Glad to see the ole hauler still clicking along.

[6DoF]

10/10 would haul with

[daddyjeep]

So in an effort to get the old 454 pulling the way it should, I figured it was about time I put the timing light on it. It was retarded a fair amount. According to the google I should set it to around 18 degrees advanced with the vacuum advance hooked up. This seems like an odd way to set the timing, but id certainly did make the old truck run better. So much so that I was able to spend a fair amount of time above 70mph on the interstate with the Jeep tagging along behind. Of course this meant that it got real thirsty. I averaged 4mpg for the trip. I guess I need to keep my speeds down under 60. This truck wasn't built to run those speeds.

[daddyjeep]

I finally did some truck related things this week. I picked up a pretty nice bed side. It is a new bedside that has been sitting in a container for a lot of years. It has some light surface rust and a few dings, but it is much better than what I have now.

I also started tearing down the Avalanche. The core support is gone along with the radiator and condenser. Most of the wiring is unhooked. Another productive night like that and the drivetrain will be out.

[lunatic1968]

Nice Find, Makes me wanna rent out my lift. ha

[daddyjeep]

Back to working on the Squarebody... Woo hoo. I finally got the Avalanche completely stripped. The first order of business is getting those leather seats cleaned up and installed. Clean up was not fun. The PO put on her hair spray while driving and the headrest and top of the seat was coated in sticky brown goo. I soaked it down with alcohol and used a plastic scraper to get it off. It was a couple hours work, but the results were pretty nice.

Here is the gutted Avalanche. It is completely gutted because I wanted all of the wiring. I plan on making most of the interior features work with the newer wiring and computers. I will be using the newer window and lock switches, the seat heaters and switches, and even the fob to lock the doors.



Front Seats.



Rear seats



I started trimming down the interior harness. All of the HVAC stuff was removed as well as the Onstar stuff. I just have a few more things to clean up.