78 K20 custom delux "modern meets vintage" build thread

[85k30]

Love your truck! Cant wait to finish mine.

[K20chevy]

Originally Posted by motornut

these are what i ran on my 88,and two still new

Thanks for sharing!

Originally Posted by smashingchuck

very sweet build.

Thank you!

Originally Posted by 85k30

Love your truck! Cant wait to finish mine.

Thanks! Good luck finishing yours!

[cleansquare]

So what are your plan for this rig? Full time off road? Daily driver occasional offroad? No offroad? Lol. I'm gonna venture to say you have a fortune in drivetrain and axles. Almosttoo nice to get dirty!

[85k30]

I thought I was the only one crazy enough to put a zf trans in a square body. Glad to see one up and running!

[K20chevy]

Originally Posted by cleansquare

So what are your plan for this rig? Full time off road? Daily driver occasional offroad? No offroad? Lol. I'm gonna venture to say you have a fortune in drivetrain and axles. Almosttoo nice to get dirty!

Good question! It will be both, street legal and driven on the weekends to go anywhere, as well as my off road toy. Everybody tells me it is too nice to take it offraod, but that is what I built it for. Sure I won´t go rock crawling and smash it all up, but it´ll get used well both on and off road. It is no daily driver though.

Originally Posted by 85k30

I thought I was the only one crazy enough to put a zf trans in a square body. Glad to see one up and running!

It´s been up and running for quite a while now. I put the ZF in the truck in 2008 and ran it with the old 350 first. And then in 2009 I swapped in the 6.2l VVT engine. That took a while to get the electronics to work, but all in all the transmission has been working great for the last 6 years now. When will you have yours up and running?

[K20chevy]

Please keep the votes for the light setups coming! Thanks!

[K20chevy]

This is how the tank sits now. But I have to remove everything again and move the tank back to the very back of the frame rails in order to clear the mag hytec diff cover at full bump. The way the tank sits now, the cover will hit the tank about half way through bump travel.

The thing hanging on the wire is the rear ultrasonic load leveling sensor for the adaptive headlights.

I´ll also replace the aluminum tank straps that came with the tank with some stainless steel ones.

[85k30]

I was trying to finish it up by the end of April. But I ran into some trouble with my Howell harness and had to send it back to have it fixed. Hopefully they can get it working and back to me in the next few weeks.

[85k30]

Looks tough!

[K20chevy]

Originally Posted by 85k30

Looks tough!

Thanks. It´ll look even thougher when on the truck and all completed!

[85k30]

What angle did you set that zf at? Factory 3 degrees, or a little steeper to match the rear pinion angle?

[K20chevy]

Originally Posted by 85k30

What angle did you set that zf at? Factory 3 degrees, or a little steeper to match the rear pinion angle?

It was actually set at 3 degrees but I had to space the engine up a little to clear the crossmember, so it is 5-6 degrees now.
I thought about notching the crossmember sometime, to lower the engine back down a bit, but too lazy to take the engine out just to do that now. When I take the truck back apart for paint and powder coating, then I might add the notch. It drives great the way it is though, so maybe I shouldn´t mess with it.

I´m running a rear 135CV shaft, so the pinion angle on my setup didn´t have to match the output of the t-case. All the angle comes from the CV. The 1410 u-joint at the axle is the same angle as the drive shaft tube.

[K20chevy]

More votes for the light setups please!!!!!! Thanks!

[K20chevy]

Some more progress on the cage...

[K20chevy]

Seats are finally mocked up. I must say I think the seat fabric works great with the retro theme...



Besides the windshield a-bar and the rear x, everything is well hidden, almost a sleeper cage.



Thanks to Craig and his crew at Stewarts Raceworks for doing such a great job on the cage.

[kikkegek]

damn those headlughts are cool! sweet overall build also.

I am interested in your projector headlights.

I just finished my second retrofit on my 74 GMC Suburban...got any more info on yours?





low beam output! didnt take a pic of the highbeams


I added angel eyes behind the Porsche Panamera Shrouds I used, but still need to connect those. Here is a video of them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTpkbV4KdK0

[K20chevy]

Originally Posted by motornut

does it ever work well,great rollcage btw

Thank you! Craig @ Stewarts RAceworks and his crew are doing the cage. I love their work as well!

Originally Posted by kikkegek

damn those headlughts are cool! sweet overall build also.

I am interested in your projector headlights.

I just finished my second retrofit on my 74 GMC Suburban...got any more info on yours?





low beam output! didnt take a pic of the highbeams


I added angel eyes behind the Porsche Panamera Shrouds I used, but still need to connect those. Here is a video of them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTpkbV4KdK0

Thanks! Well, what I have is WAY different than what you did. I assume you took an OEM projector and cut a 7" headlight housing and crafted the projector in there. While that looks a little more "stock" than what I have, my setup is totally different. I did not use any of the original headlight housing or mounting stuff. Actually there is a huge hole in the radiator support on each side with a custom stainless bracket that is holding the new headlights. The headlight are Hella 90mm Bi-Xenon modules. These are the same that a Rolls Royce phantom uses. It is a complete Hella HID light,so no retrofit or messing with it. The mounting plates are custom built. The shrouds, believe it or not, are stainless steel salad bowls, that I modified to work as a bezel to cover the large gap between the 90mm projectors and the OEM headlight bezel. I chose the salad bowl because they almost have the same curve as the seald beams have in the glass. I might actually have these "bowls" airbrushed like seald beams sometime, to hide the mod a little more.
But other than this setup being different than what everyone else is doing, what really sets these apart is the auto leveling system. The truck has an ultra sonic snsor in the front and one in the back, measuring the distance to the ground at all times when the lights are on. When you load the truck and the tail comes closer to the ground, the headlights adjust down with an electric motor on each light unit. that way you don´t blind oncoming traffic and can still see where you are going. The same is true fpr accelerating and it also works when braking, the nose comes down, so the headlights adjust up to not just light up 3 feet in front of the truck. You can say they always stay at the same level, no matter what the body does. It is called adaptive auto leveling system. It also comes from Hella. Pretty sure no other truck has this feature!
Hope this helps as to what I have set up here.

[kikkegek]

yeah got it! supercool setup man! rockin

[K20chevy]

Originally Posted by kikkegek

yeah got it! supercool setup man! rockin

Thank you!

[K20chevy]

Some more cage pictures. It´s done now and the cab is ready to be shipped...



little triangle added to mount the rear view mirror...



seats are wrapped up...



cab is being put back in the crate... (pretty cool sun visor mounts!!!)



Thanks to Craig and his team at Stewarts Raceworks for their awesome work!!!

[kikkegek]

sweet!

[chevak20]

Great pictures. I do wonder about the van 14-bolt axle, any positive or negative aspects of that swap? increased stability? narrower turning ratio? I would like to use the same axle. I found one -91 g30 with locking (gov?) and 4:10 gears for my K20 Suburban instead of the 14-bolt sf. Just need to open the wallet and convince my wife.

[K20chevy]

Originally Posted by chevak20

Great pictures. I do wonder about the van 14-bolt axle, any positive or negative aspects of that swap? increased stability? narrower turning ratio? I would like to use the same axle. I found one -91 g30 with locking (gov?) and 4:10 gears for my K20 Suburban instead of the 14-bolt sf. Just need to open the wallet and convince my wife.

Thanks! The van 14 bolt FULL FLOATER is the exact same axle as the truck 14 bolt FF, the only difference is the width. The truck axle has a WMS to WMS of 67" (singel rear wheel) and the van ahs 70" WMS to WMS. Since the fronts are usually 69.5", the van width matches the front pretty good. So that means that you don´t need spacers to have the same track width. The spring perches are wider on the van axle though, so they need to be cut off and rewelded further in to work fit the truck springs. Also the shock mounts are different and need to be changed out.
Stability is the exact same as the truck axle and your turning radius will suffer, so get worse. That is why they put the narrower track width on the truck axles to begin with, to give them better turning radius. Turning radius will increase!

I´m happy with that, because it gave me the chance to loose the wheel spacers and my truck has such a bad turning radius that I didn´t care about making it a bit worse!

Hope this helps!

(Gov lock -> Detroit locker)

[LS-K]

This is a hell of a build!! Subscribed! any chance you can post up additional pics of the ORD x-member and what it looks like for clearance in and around the engine corners and A/C stock location for those GenIII/GenIV engine?

Thanks, greatly appreciated.

[K20chevy]

Originally Posted by LS-K

This is a hell of a build!! Subscribed! any chance you can post up additional pics of the ORD x-member and what it looks like for clearance in and around the engine corners and A/C stock location for those GenIII/GenIV engine?

Thanks, greatly appreciated.

Thank you! I´ll attach all the pictures I have. I´m not with the truck right now, so the exact pics you would like to see have to wait til the last week in May, when I get back to working on the truck.
The cross member is very close to the oil pan. I had to space the engine mounts up to even make it clear. the pics show the first setup, where the transmission mount was a little low, with the new trans-mount, it is up a little higher. Next time I take the engine out, I might notch the cross member a little, just to make sure. Right now I have about 1/4" between the oil pan and the cross member.

If you want A/C you need to move it up to the top passenger side, it will not work on the bottom unless you notch the frame... and I would not do that, jsut my 2cents.
I´m not running A/C yet, so I can´t show you pics with an A/C installed.

here are the pics I have for now...













Hope this helps for now. I´ll take more at the end of May.