TA_C10: Stage 1

[TA_C10]

Originally Posted by siggyfreud

Could look for seats from a mid 2000's BMW convertible, as you could get electronics, heat, and they have the shoulder seatbelt built into them, if that's a concern/consideration.

Thanks for that

Originally Posted by Camaroguy

I wish I had known someone made brackets to move the seat back and down because that was A LOT of work when I did the one in my son's truck. Also, one of my biggest regrets was buying an aftermarket tilt column without planning and not ordering one that was shorter.

Good job.

And look at how simple those new brackets are.....

They seem a little flimsy when you mess with them, but once they are bolted to seat and floor board they don't move.

[Scurry67]

nice update! who did you source those new seat brackets from?

[TA_C10]

Update - PDU panel is complete.

Well here it is. v2 completed.

Honestly I like it a little better since I got to move some things around that weren't great on the original panel. Things just function better now.


I put rubber washers under the TAC module.







All the distribution blocks installed. Bottom left(red) is my Key + coming straight from the ignition switch. Top left is the smaller gauge stuff. Top right is the larger gauge/power things like horn and starter and etc.





This is the spacers and rubber washers for PCM mounting.





The two terminals on the right are my PDU ground and power distribution. 1awg cable comes direct from battery positive fused of course, and ground is direct as well from battery. You can see my complete diagram back a few pages in my thread. These 2 feed everything for the engine compartment except for the vintage air and PCM, I ran a seperate power source direct from battery just for those.





Panel mounting, getting ready to wire it up.





Front panel wired up(minus the battery/ground feeds).





The main engine harness from cab will be hidden in the fender.





Getting there







Here is where I ran all my core support grounds to. It a mounting tab made out of 16awg steel to mount the PDU panel to. It now doubles as a grounding tab on the back.





That's pretty much it. I just need to zip tie everything up and during reassembly I can get everything completed like the parking lights and few other stragglers. Oh yeah, and I got rid of the remote battery posts. I couldn't fuse that direct 1awg hot wire back to battery because during charging from another vehicle it would just pop. I didn't want that hot all the time so I got rid of it. I will figure something else out for jump starting should I ever need it.



Who else out there works like this? Gotta pull everything out to work, then put it all back at night... Ah. This hobby is gonna kill me. Or my wife will if I don't finish soon

[TA_C10]

Originally Posted by Scurry67

nice update! who did you source those new seat brackets from?

Thanks! They came from full custom fab.

https://full-custom-fabrication.square.site/

[jjzepplin]

WOW! You move fast. That is looking really nice. I apologize as I am new to this , but what does the TAC module do?

[TA_C10]

Throttle Actuator Control Module. It's the accelerator pedal control box for the GEN III LS motors. Drive by Wire gas pedal

Also handles cruise control

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[SCOTI]

Originally Posted by TA_C10

Who else out there works like this? Gotta pull everything out to work, then put it all back at night... Ah. This hobby is gonna kill me. Or my wife will if I don't finish soon

I would bet most of us have or had to do this. My situation changed only when I split w/an X & needed room for working. An apartment doesn't allow that & even a small house has more 'rooms' than needed (no pets, no kids) as well as limited garage/storage so I opted to rent a shop for the price of a cheap apartment.

Definitely not for everyone but man is it nice for the enthusiast. But, my shop still looks similar when multiple projects are disassembled.

[Jason Banks]

I have a much larger area than a 2 car garage and still feel like I spend more time cleaning and rearranging than working. I sometimes wonder if having a smaller area would be better.

[jjzepplin]

Oh thank you. I have a cable throttle so no TAC. I thought I had forgotten an important part LOL! So imagine for a moment your garage with two trucks stuffed in there. I have to take a truck out just to get to my ladder! My only workbench is when I open the tailgate on my pickup. I am used to working from a tailgate though. Might be a PITA when I lower it back down.

[TA_C10]

Update - Headlight Buckets - Wrong Radiator Support

This is where research really pays off. And writing down your plan on paper and then going over it and all the parts you have first before ordering new parts.

So my truck is a 70 with a 67-68 dog house. Turns out, the radiator support is different in those years.... All the parts I ordered I just defaulted to 1970 without even thinking about it. So GM got smart and instead of re-engineering the whole core support they just re-tooled their existing with a bracket to relocate the headlight buckets. You can tell that's what they did... More on this later.

So I found this thread and basically did what he did, but I did a few things differently.
http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=399960

He gives you the basics, and enough detail to get it done, but he doesn't mention how DANG HARD IT IS TO ALIGN THESE THINGS!! And how many times your have to remove your grill and put it back on again. It's a LOT lol.

So, long story short. I ordered wrong radiator support(1970 version), and didn't want to order a new one($200 down the drain) mainly because I already painted mine and modified it. So I cut the bucket brackets off and modified mine to work. Took be every bit of 8 hours to do this....


Here is the original bucket setup for the 69+ models. You can see the bucket mounts to the added "bracket" they spot welded on the rad support.





I drilled the spot welds and removed the bracket. I then flattened that bracket and cut off all the excess I didn't need. I only kept the mounting points for the headlight bucket(2 square holes and the little spring hole). This is where I differed from the thread above, he cut all that off and cut into the rad support. I then marked and cut my center hole larger and moved it down and over to line it up correctly(install and remove grill several times when you don't get it right the first time.... It's a pain cuz it all has to be lined up just right. You know that means you gotta get all the other sheet metal lined up too(fenders and etc)....





Here is the bracket, flattened out and trimmed. This to me was much easier to just re-use rather than cutting new holes into the rad support. The guy above cut all that off, but yet he still used sheet metal screws to fasten to the rad support for that nice 4" round hole....





Here you can see how much of the original hole I actually cut out of the rad support. And I ground down the edge of where I was going to weld on the flattened bracket.





And here it is tacked on. I intend to go back and clean this up a bit, prime and paint. But you can see it's easier to keep this for all the mounting points, now I know it's perfectly aligned for when I go to install the headlight buckets back on later.





And here are the final results after installing everything again. The headlights of course not aligned to their final spot yet but you can see this works rather well. Good enough for me anyway!!


BEFORE pics:







AFTER pics:

[Kronald_70GMC]

Wow lots of fun! Looks good, glad you got it all figured out.

[siggyfreud]

What headlights are you running?

[SCOTI]

Looks good so it was worth your effort.

[TA_C10]

Originally Posted by Kronald_70GMC

Wow lots of fun! Looks good, glad you got it all figured out.

I wouldn't use the word "fun", I was cussin all day long lol But the payoff in the end was awesome. Saved $200+ dollars on buying ANOTHER new rad support, plus the satisfaction of it done by yours truly.

Originally Posted by siggyfreud

What headlights are you running?

I like to call em the T-bar LED's from LMC They are from LMCTruck, LED replacement bulbs. They are awesome. I have a post on them a few pages back I think. Shows the daytime runners vs low beam vs high beam. The pics don't do them justice however, they are badazz at night or dusk with just the daytime runners on. Just a sleek little bar of LED's running through the middle of the bulbs. They look mean from a distance with the look of this style truck lowered on the road.

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[MDPotter]

I can say I learned something new today! Thanks for the lesson and solid work.

[TA_C10]

Originally Posted by SCOTI

Looks good so it was worth your effort.

Originally Posted by MDPotter

I can say I learned something new today! Thanks for the lesson and solid work.

Thanks guys

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[towstrap72]

following

[towstrap72]

Originally Posted by TA_C10

Tanks Inc PA-4 Install - LMC 21 Gallon Side Fill tank


The PO had relocated the gas tank to the rear and used a SummitRacing universal fuel cell with baffles. Worked fine and I originally planned to reuse the tank until I did some extra research on my new fuel system(fuel injected). This truck is going to be a DD, so a quiet and LONG LASTING pump was in order. So I sold the poly fuel cell for $100 which helped purchase the new LMC tank. I went with the LMC tank and PA-4 fuel pump kit because they were much cheaper than the popular boyds tank and also held more fuel.

I wanted the side fill and extra capacity. The truck isn't "draggin crete" with a 4.5 / 5.5 drop and with plans to use a normal 2wd bumper I think I will be fine. I may have to paint the tank if its too visible but no big deal to me. I also plan to put the filler in the bed stake hole up top, or maybe behind the marker light. Not sure yet.

With the LM7 going in for reliability I also needed a new in-tank pump setup with baffle for slosh. So I decided to go with the TANKS INC PA-4 unit. Comes with a Wahlbro 255 lph pump and a little pan that acts as a small baffle in bottom of tank. Here is how I installed the unit.



The PA-4 kit is universal for fuel injection systems. Comes zinc coated with a drop arm that can be cut to fit your tank. After researching the LMC tank I knew there was a flat spot on the top of the tank so I ordered it up and prayed it was a large enough area for the PA-4. Turned out to be perfect size.










I followed pretty much the same video directions provided by tanksinc.com website but with a few modifications... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3jyyOGlD9o

The PA-4 comes with a slotted ring to mount the unit. I used the ring to mark by hole to cut. The PA-4 hole diameter is 4.5". I found large hole saw blades and bit unit at harbor freight, turned out the largest hole saw was only 4.25" but it turned out to be almost perfect size to use because it gave me the ability to use a die grinder and diamond bit to enlarge the hole to the perfect size of the ring. The 4.25 hole saw doesn't cut a perfect hole










Then I slid the PA-4 unit into the tank and marked the front/back for reference later. Then turned the unit upside down and marked the holes to drill.











I then punched the center of my marks, drilled the holes, inserted the slotted ring inside the tank using supplied screws and tack welded it in place with my mig. I cleaned up the welds with the die grinder. Wasn't much to it, pretty simple.














Here is where it got tricky. Because my tank was so large, the PA-4 unit was only setup to be used with a maximum tank depth of 10.5" and my tank depth was 13 and 1/16". So I went down the local hardware store and bought a small piece of galvanized sheet metal. Galvanized because it will be submersed in fuel and I didn't want it rusting. I cut it to size, bend the sides, drilled holes in the center for the screws and it mated up pretty easily to the original unit extending the PA-4 unit the extra few inches I needed so the baffle tank sat on the bottom of gas tank.
















Before finishing the install I wanted to seal up the welds I made on the top of the tank. So I bought some gas tank sealer from Eastwood and it turned out to be some really good stuff. I put 2 coats on.



I then








I then proceeded to install the rest of the components in the kit. I used Permatex gasket maker(fuel resistant) under the cork seal that came with the kit and I put a little antiseize on the screw threads as well.



















Because the unit was extended I also had to buy another foot of submersible fuel hose because the kit only came with a 6" piece. That stuff is expensive!! All in all the unit turned out pretty solid. The wahlbro should provide plenty of fuel for future mods to the LS and now that it's in the tank it should be quiet and cool running.

The top fittings are 1/4" NPT so I will adapt that to AN style fittings for the fuel lines. The 3rd fitting is the rollover vent valve. And the 2 wires for fuel pump will be soldered and waterproofed later on when I get the engine harness completed and fuel pump relay installed.

I capped off the old sending unit supply line but plan to still use it for fuel level gauge.

im interested in this but i see no pics could you help me out

[TA_C10]

Originally Posted by towstrap72

im interested in this but i see no pics could you help me out

I got your message yesterday. I'm working on it man. I will restore these 2 posts first. Basically all my links were cut the way I used to post pictures and I need to go back and redo them all. I have all the new links ready to go I just need our moderators to open up these old posts for me so I can edit them...

I sent a PM to the moderators 70LonghornCST last night but no reply yet.

@70LonghornCST, @leddzepp

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[TA_C10]

Update - Hood Letters

My original hood was pretty beat up, if you go back to first page on my thread you can see the hood dents and was in bad shape. It had so many "extra" holes in it, at the time, I didn't realize what they were so I filled them all. Fast forward a year or so later and I ended up seeing pics and decided I wanted the hood letters so I had to re-drill all the holes. Oh well, wasn't too bad, I just did a lot of measuring.

Hood is now ready for filler and paint.

[Scurry67]

nice work on the core support. Those headlights are sweeeet! I’m hoping to get something similar.

also, nice work on the hood. How’d you know how to layout the letters with the holes filled? template?

[gringoloco]

Clean work on the core support. I have done this job in my head a few times, nice to know it’s actually possible.
Posted via Mobile Device

[TA_C10]

Update - Bed Sides Shaved.


Not much to say here. Except this was the easiest welding I have ever done on this vehicle. I cut a strip of metal that was the "length" of the bed stake pockets opening. Then cut them all the same "width" with a template I made. Cleaned them. Put a little primer on the back side. Welded them in.

I only have 2 more metal projects left to finish. Custom gas filler in the bed and I need to weld up the holes to get rid of the big bulky chevy emblem in center of grill. Then I am ready for filler and paint...

[jjzepplin]

I am also interested in your fuel system. Can't wait for those pics.

[TA_C10]

I can't edit my old posts.... The button isn't there anymore. I sent a message to both our moderators and one sent message back telling me to start a new thread.... I sent another message to ask if they could open my thread back up so I could edit old posts. No response.... I might have to start a new thread if they don't get back with me. That would really suck.

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