1949 Chevy 3100 - the journey begins

[focusedontheprize]

Yeah was a typo. Pusher fan.

[99 to Life]

figured, you seem to know what your doing.

[focusedontheprize]

Originally Posted by 99 to Life

figured, you seem to know what your doing.

Haha I try to.

[focusedontheprize]

This weekend wasn't a weekend of photos really.

Saturday we bled the clutch with the Mityvac. What a breeze. We had 4 small bubbles and was enough air to hold up the clutch system from fully disengaging. Truck shifts like a dream now. We then tackled the driveline. I was not pleased with how the engine/trans angle and the pinion angle on the rear (it was my mistake in the beginning). So I modified the trans cross member and took some of the angle out. The u joint angle looks a lot better and was dead on.

As for the rear, I am running rear lowering blocks. I decided to machine 0.004" off the top of the blocks instead of running shims to keep everything cleaner looking and not introducing more variables in. Thank god for the mill we have at the house. Everything was dead on for the driveline now. Much happier.

Sunday was a bit of a "we need to be somewhere early so be prepared" day. Ran over to the junkyard in the morning to grab the missing sway bar brackets I needed. I am planning on running the stock rear sway bar and building my own rear shock cross member.

On the drive home, my uncle stopped over who is doing the wiring for me. I had called him on Tuesday to tell him I would like to hook up a main connector so if I need to remove the front end for engine work, I could just disconnect the connector and be on my way. He did a really nice job on it and I know it will save me a headache down the road. He was finishing up the wiring in the front and getting the turn signal switch in.

[focusedontheprize]

Memorial Day Weekend:

It was one of those weekends that you work and work and then look around and it seems you didn't complete much. This was the weekend to get the rear end setup - rear shocks and sway bar in and ready to go. I end up going to the yard and grabbing the lower rear shock mounts from the leaf springs off an Explorer and brought them home. After putting them in place, I realized I didn't like how low they sat. That would have been the lowest point of the rear suspension, which I didn't want.

I end up putting them on the rear axle. Running some thing angle iron to mount the top of the shocks to, I was happy with the result. The sway bar is just getting finished up. Amazing how much a difference shocks make in a truck.

This upcoming weekend I am breaking it all down to POR and paint it and then reassemble. Then I am focusing on the interior. Rims arrived this week so they are off to the powdercoaters and hopefully back soon.

Itching to drive this thing..

[chevyboy73]

any updates? love this thing

[mknittle]

lookin good! I am becoming quite fond of the sixes!

[jeffrow62]

What a great build to watch, I learned some too, thank you and good luck !!

[focusedontheprize]

Thanks guys.

I am pushing this month to get this thing drive-able. I will post some pictures from last weekend, mocked up, broke down and painted the rear shock and sway bar setup along with the calipers.

As of this morning - rims are painted and are ready to be mounted on the white walls. Interior parts are all here and the wiring is very close to be finished. There is a light at the end of the tunnel...

[focusedontheprize]

The truck drives...

[jeffrow62]

Awesome!!
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[dubie]

right on man!! time for a video eh

[Coach529]

Originally Posted by focusedontheprize

The truck drives...

Awesome!!

[jeffrow62]

Coach. I got questions brother. One of these days lets chat?!
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[Coach529]

Originally Posted by jeffrow62

Coach. I got questions brother. One of these days lets chat?!
Posted via Mobile Device

Anytime.

[focusedontheprize]

And we have a little issue...no reverse haha.
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[99 to Life]

ewww boy that sucks, did it ever work? I got three of these trannies cause when I see em I buy them up cause I hear they are hard to work on.

[focusedontheprize]

Originally Posted by 99 to Life

ewww boy that sucks, did it ever work? I got three of these trannies cause when I see em I buy them up cause I hear they are hard to work on.

Hey 99. They are a bit of a pain to work on. My father work in transfer case manfucaturing for years and he has a buddy that is very knowledgable about these transmissions. He said they are incredibly complex to work on and just a pain to rebuild.

Do you have HM290 (4 shift rails) or the actuals NV3500 (1 shift rail)?

[focusedontheprize]

It has been a busy couple weekends, unfortunately I try to update the posts with pictures as I go, but they are still on the camera.

This past weekend was a short weekend for me with parties and other events so I did as much as the time allowed me to (and maybe how long the girlfriend would allow me to be acceptably late haha).

Spoke to Sid this past week and I realized I was only running a 2 degree shim in my front axle - needed 4 degrees with the radials. So Saturday morning I woke up early to run over to Napa and decided to roll the truck out of the garage. Hmm, truck leaned to the driver's side in the front. Well long story short I had an extra leaf in the passenger side. Counting must have not been my strong suit that night I re-assembled them. Anyways, went over to Napa and grabbed the shims and put them in. Took out the extra leaf and we now are level in the front. Much better.

Sunday we were up early and started on aligning the hood and the vinyl seats. I am very happy how they came out. For anyone that needs the C clips that are used to put the vinyl on (much cleaner than the hog rings in my opinion), Classic Parts USA sells them. I couldn't find them anywhere else even LMC who includes them in the seat kit doesn't sell them separately. Amazing.

[99 to Life]

cool glad its working out and yeah classic parts is a good supplier, good to know on those.

[Atommik]

PM me .,..what you need?? I'll post some more pics of my truck in a few days. Weather is not great and I need to do a little more polishing!!

[focusedontheprize]

Been some time since I updated this, let me get it up to speed.

That following weekend, I came home for a short trip. I wanted to repaint the grille to break up some of the orange on the truck. Here is what I started with:



Two coats of epoxy:



Finished product:



It would be just enough to break the truck up a little more, which worked out great.

[focusedontheprize]

My gauges had a lot of wear and were unreadable. So after a little of scrapping and a call to LMC, I was able to freshen them up just a bit.



A company called Archer actually sells the "battery", "oil pressure", etc decals, but I wanted to leave them as mine weren't as bad as I thought.

[focusedontheprize]

So here is a picture of the maiden voyage. It was great to actually take her down the road and it was even better seeing how much technology has improved in our cars these days. Still at this point, the truck didn't have reverse and 3rd and 4th were not working either. I knew the transmission was a gamble and knew I needed to pull it sooner than later.



As nice as the weather was, it turned for the worst quick. Rain started coming down and I was in a pitch because I didn't have a working wiper motor in the truck. Stopped at Pep Boys on the way home and grabbed a bottle of Rainx. No problems.

[focusedontheprize]

After driving the truck and parking it, I soon realized I needed to lower the rear end. I already had been running Sid's 3" lowering blocks in the back and still it was no where near what I was looking for.

Here is a before shot:




I decided to put an order into TCI for their rear leaf spring setup. A couple of the guys run the setups here on the forum and they make top quality products. A couple weeks later, I was greeted by the brown truck and a TCI box was dropped off.

Their kit was very high quality and I was very impressed. Mockup was painless and everything fit like it was suppose to. Primed and painted the shacks and back in everything went. I re-located my rear shocks and swapped out those with a set shorter shocks.

Here was the result:



Everything tucked much better. Exactly the stance I was looking, I did also modify Sid's lowering blocks to get it just a little bit lower.