1970 K20 Z62 Full Restoration

[Ol Blue K20]

I just found this thread, it's looking great so far! I'm definitely watching another of your great builds!!!

[IronCanine]

Originally Posted by DeadheadNM

Swimming upstream against entropy in a brisk and beautiful way. Great progress!

Thanks Pete. Can't wait to get home and get back at it.

Originally Posted by Ol Blue K20

I just found this thread, it's looking great so far! I'm definitely watching another of your great builds!!!

Glad you found it and you're back on board. It's the last one! Gotta try and make it good!

[cst204x4]

Great thread will be a awesome truck

[IronCanine]

Originally Posted by cst204x4

Great thread will be a awesome truck

Thanks! Updates this weekend.

[Chaparralman1974]

I just read through the entire thread. Very impressive!! I am restoring a 1967 K20 myself. It is so nice to see some of the older K20 workhorses being brought back to life. Your attention to detail is superb!! I look forward to following along.

Clay

[IronCanine]

Originally Posted by Chaparralman1974

I just read through the entire thread. Very impressive!! I am restoring a 1967 K20 myself. It is so nice to see some of the older K20 workhorses being brought back to life. Your attention to detail is superb!! I look forward to following along.

Clay

Thanks! And thanks for hopping on board! Some fun stuff happened this week...

[IronCanine]

Eric shot some color!

If you have ever pulled a high hump out of a Fremont truck (probably the same at other plants too) there's a ring of primer on the floor lip where they just sat the hump in there and painted over it...effectively masking that lip. We're only spraying the brown primer where it would show from the factory. Technically this is one of those places since you guys at least will see it.

The plan is to shoot the firewall in single stage so that we can write in the wet paint as they did at Fremont. Eric refuses to shoot the rest of the truck in a single stage metallic. So this floor is basically a practice shot for the firewall (what you see is single stage). After that it's base/clear so it can be buffed without goofing the metallics.

I am very excited about the color. It is a remarkable match to the original paint on the truck in the areas that were UV protected. We checked against the glove box under the 4x4 decal and the firewall under the A/C box.

[IronCanine]

Again I've tried to utilize as many NOS and date code correct parts that I can. Sometimes that's been easy/gone well...sometimes, well...

Mike Cofield helped me find a date code correct steering gear, which was then rebuilt by Mike (not Cofield) at powersteering.com. While he puts a blank yellow sticker on there, from the factory that decal would have had the broadcast code. Thanks to some sleuthing and member help, the broadcast code for N40 on this truck in 1970 was "PC". This wasn't that hard of a decal to make and I did it at home.

I found an almost date code perfect fan and fan clutch (March 70). They were a pair off a truck. I sent the fan clutch off to kirkconnellcorvettes.com to be rebuilt. I talked to them on the phone, and since the date code is effectively just an ink stamp, they asked what I wanted the date code to be. In a moment of weak vanity, I thought...I've memorialized all the other members of my family in one way or another in numbers on these builds...how about MY birthday! Unfortunately April is D, 1970 is K and a 1 and an I look a lot alike. Doesn't help that the damn thing is made by Eaton. Thank God for a fan shroud.

[68bowtie]

Looks great! Medium blue poly?

[IronCanine]

Originally Posted by 68bowtie

Looks great! Medium blue poly?

DARK blue, 508!

[IronCanine]

A good bit of writing on these engines from the factory. My donor had "TBC" (the suffix code) written all over it...and a fair few inspection marks. But since it was a Flint truck, I'm sticking to what was on Joe's Fremont K20. He had his suffix and two digits of his build sequence. As of this writing I don't know my build sequence number. I am not sure if the stamps on the midline of the cabs of these trucks is the build sequence or an inspection stamp. I will go back and add if I can confirm.

I do not know what the "IT" stands for. But it was on my Flint motor and on Joe's truck.

FWIW I used a Markal yellow paint stick and it seems a perfect recreation.

There is a physician that makes the yellow suffix decals for Corvettes and I got him to make me a "TBC" decal. I put in on the front and back of the passenger side valve cover as you see it in this vintage pic from the Flint plant.

[IronCanine]

Eric came over today to lend a hand in setting the transmission and engine. I used the threaded holes that I think they used from the factory to set the transmission and the lift brackets on the engine to set that.

All things considered I would say that it was relatively drama free. I am trying so hard to seal this thing up. I have never had one that didn't leak somewhere.

I would have liked to have gotten more stuff on...but I'm waiting for some parts...like exhaust bolts. I did mock the right side exhaust manifold up there just for fun...but it's got to come off.

It is nice to have the drive line complete. A lot of work to get some rough pieces to this stage. I like this part the best.

[IronCanine]

One final pic tonight. This is not an NOS or rebuilt fuel pump, but a new reproduction. I do like seeing that AC on there. But also the original refinished hardware. The "f" bolts and "L" bolts. Love it.

[DeadheadNM]

Nice progress sir. The bolt affixing the fuel pump looks to have a real nice finish. Those bolts are neat.

[Ol Blue K20]

Looking great

[IronCanine]

Originally Posted by DeadheadNM

Nice progress sir. The bolt affixing the fuel pump looks to have a real nice finish. Those bolts are neat.

Originally Posted by Ol Blue K20

Looking great

Thanks guys!

[IronCanine]

I was lucky enough to put together two NOS exhaust manifolds. I had them ceramic coated as we have done in the past. I had a nice heat stove that I had ceramic coated as well...but it honestly didn't turn out too great. The black was too flat and the silver on the inner panel just made it look painted. In the meantime NOS bird dog Pete, alerted me to an NOS outer panel that I jumped on. We elected to strip the enamel and paint it with high temp. I had another nice inner that looked great in its original finish out of the electrolysis tank. The original finish kind of looks galvanized.

As an aside, few things are more mechanically satisfying than a nice fold over lock.

[IronCanine]

Dave (DaHos) came through on the elusive 1970 K truck (with J70) oil fill tube. It was a nice example that cleaned up well. The rubber gasket came off a regular valve cover oil cap.

The style of oil cap that goes on this tube is kind of ubiquitous. I had a lot of NOS options available to me at reasonable cost (how often have you heard that in the last couple of years). But I don't know what the finish should be. This example has a phosphate finish. They put chrome ones on Corvettes (at least the higher HP versions). Dave did not have the OE cap. The pics of the original tube/cap earlier in this thread could be phosphate...could be raw. I don't think it was painted black.

We'll leave it as is for now, until hopefully more info emerges.

[IronCanine]

I started putting on some of the accessories and you know how I love to get in the weeds (as much as I can) on the plant processes.

So the engine shows up from Flint at the Fremont plant assembled and painted. The A/C is obviously installed at the truck assembly plant. The (honestly insane) bracketry that holds the compressor has mounting points on the intake manifold and water pump. The bolts that hold the intake and WP on are too short to hold the brackets too. So instead of chucking bolts in the trash, it appears that they repurposed the three intake bolts to the back of the compressor and the long water pump bolt got moved up to the top water pump bolt hole. Then new longer bolts are added where necessary. So you end up with a mix of painted (but scratched up) and unpainted bolts from the process.

I also finally got to break out my date coded Frigidaire decal that I've been sitting on since we did that run back in 2019 (I think).

[1970cstblazer]

Originally Posted by IronCanine

Dave (DaHos) came through on the elusive 1970 K truck (with J70) oil fill tube. It was a nice example that cleaned up well. The rubber gasket came off a regular valve cover oil cap.

The style of oil cap that goes on this tube is kind of ubiquitous. I had a lot of NOS options available to me at reasonable cost (how often have you heard that in the last couple of years). But I don't know what the finish should be. This example has a phosphate finish. They put chrome ones on Corvettes (at least the higher HP versions). Dave did not have the OE cap. The pics of the original tube/cap earlier in this thread could be phosphate...could be raw. I don't think it was painted black.

We'll leave it as is for now, until hopefully more info emerges.

My cap is grey phosphate.

[68bowtie]

Wow just beautiful.

[Ol Blue K20]

Very nice, I love the runs..

[chewychevy67]

I asked my painter about recreating the runs my cab had before taking it down to the metal and he said he wasn't interested in doing it. Nice detail on the engine! Just curious why the ceramic didn't turn out on the heat stove? That was my plan but now mabey I won't do that on mine.

[IronCanine]

Originally Posted by tim71

Absolutely beautiful! Every detail looks so crisp. That heat shield and pipe really turned out nice. Did all of the 1970 trucks have the fold over lock on the exhaust manifold bolts?

Thanks. I don't know about the locks. The extremely original 71 Fremont K20 that I've been using as my guidepost had em.

Originally Posted by 1970cstblazer

Agreed!

My 1970 TBC engine had the French locks on the manifolds, and the tabs were never bent over.

Well...that's enough for me!

Originally Posted by Ol Blue K20

Very nice, I love the runs..

Me too...except after Mexican.

Originally Posted by chewychevy67

I asked my painter about recreating the runs my cab had before taking it down to the metal and he said he wasn't interested in doing it. Nice detail on the engine! Just curious why the ceramic didn't turn out on the heat stove? That was my plan but now mabey I won't do that on mine.

We have been borderline ridiculous in preserving runs and recreating them. Fremont seems especially bad at painting these trucks. They miss whole swaths of the truck entirely and then in other places empty the gun in a waterfall. Eric has gotten used to the insanity and just goes with it. The advantage is...if we do screw something up we can say we were trying to recreate a factory finish. It's honestly not a high bar to get to.

I can absolutely recommend ceramic coating for the heat stove. We've done it before to good effect. I just wasn't happy with the colors in this case and didn't push the powder coater to re-do it. I've attached a pic of the ceramic coated ones below. The black was too flat and the silver just looked like paint. I think you can get a better result than I got.

[Orange71shorty]

Did you paint your frame or powder coat? If paint do you mind sharing what kind?