George...

[69gmcc10]

Thanks Dan, your truck is coming right along! I wish I had the resources and patience to get my frame painted like you did.

[Low Elco]

Go George!
Posted via Mobile Device

[69gmcc10]

News flash! You can get POR15 off your skin if you scrub hard enough with a scrubbing pad!*



*Giant red marks on your skin are more difficult to explain and remove than black paint. It may also lead to very pointed questions from your significant other that could be construed as doubts of your intelligence or that her mother was correct about some portion of your character!

[67c10rustbuket]

Originally Posted by 69gmcc10

News flash! You can get POR15 off your skin if you scrub hard enough with a scrubbing pad!*



*Giant red marks on your skin are more difficult to explain and remove than black paint. It may also lead to very pointed questions from your significant other that could be construed as doubts of your intelligence or that her mother was correct about some portion of your character!

lol
I prefer acetone within an hour, after that your pretty much stuck but I guess you fixed that. Thanks for the laugh! So what are you painting with POR other than your skin? pics?!

[69gmcc10]

I am just painting trailning arms, I will post pics when they are done.

If you want funny read this guys how to!

http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=536746

[69gmcc10]

I am finally done with trailing arms!!!!

As an fyi to everyone that is upgrading to Polly bushings, unless you have a hydraulic press to force out the old pos rubber ones it is going to take a few min to get these puppies out! I tried to beat them out with a mini sledge and they just smiled at me like a trailer park queen. ECE uses a 50k lb press, I used a knife, a drill and pipe wrench. The short and dirty of how I did it is that I cut the rubber ends off the bushings, drilled allot of little holes through the rubber bushing between the housing and the steel sleeve making sure not to scrape the outer housing so it doesn’t eat up the new bushings and finally locked on to the steel sleeve with the pipe wrench twisting and pulling at the same time. After that I made a hone out of a few pieces of red scuffing pads and cleaned out the inside of the housing.

[69gmcc10]

Some pictures of the finished arms (I welded a 1" bead every 6" down the top and bottom seam of the arm) and mounting brackets (the extra hoe is so I can flip the mount and add 2 more bolts when I remount it to the crossmsmber) they are painted with POR15 then scuffed and hit with some etching primer and finally 2 coats of engine enamel, they should hold up well. The lowering blocks are made from scrap 2x2 tubing with a ¼” wall that my brother had laying around. The blocks are 7 “long and the holes are 7/8” they came out real well and I estimate they saved me about $40, now all they need is to be primed and painted.

[Low Elco]

Good progress!
Posted via Mobile Device

[Houch]

Great job looks real good. I used a small propane torch and burned my old bushings out.
Posted via Mobile Device

[69gmcc10]

I had heard about doint it that way, but thought this would be less messy. I can only imagine how tough melted rubber is to remove.

On a side note installing the energy syspension bushings was not very easy with out a press, so I suck them in the freezer for a couple hours, greased them and they almost fell in.

[69gmcc10]

Most of the things I do in my life are all just steps of progress in the process to get to a result, what that result is I don’t always know but there is purpose to doing the task at hand. I think that through the process of growing up life pushes you in that direction and you loose sight of just doing something because it is fun or exciting or interesting, like a child and a door knob or a light switch. Children just do stuff that makes them smile and just for the hell of it! Last night I found that inner child when I took one of the rear springs out of a water and washing soda solution that I electrically charged to remove rust from parts! I can’t believe that this hokey, half brained science experiment worked. Now all I think about is finding rusty things that I can dip and see how clean they come out. I don’t even care if the parts have anything to do with my truck.

Take a look, it took my rusty spring from brown to grey raw steel!

[bigguy69]

Wow!
Posted via Mobile Device

[69gmcc10]

Rust removal made easy.

I saw this on Trucks, did a little more research, and figured I would give it a try because I didn’t want to pay to have my springs blasted or try to hand sand them.

Things you will need!
-A plastic container that will hold enough water to submerge what ever rusty item you are cleaning
-A way to suspend the item in the container you are cleaning.
- “Washing Soda” (sorry baking soda is not the same thing)
-old battery charger (new chargers have safeguards that wont work for this)
-a grounding system with several locations that will fit in the bucket
-water

I used an old keg tub as the container and a piece of wood across the top that I could wire parts to and hang them in the solution. For the grounding system I used a chunk of chain that I drooped to the bottom of the tub and back up to the top all the way around the tank. Then I hung the spring in the tub and began filling the tub with a solution of water and washing soda mixed to ½ cup soda and 5 gal water until the part was submerged in the solution. Then I took the old battery charger connected one lead to the chain in the tub, the other lead to the spring and watched the bubbles begin. I left the spring in the solution for 24 hrs and when I took it out the rust was gone and I was left with the raw metal.

[69gmcc10]

Lots to talk about, but not allot of pictures to show, sorry. Things went slow on sat, I drove an hour up to my 72 parts truck and bolted the 69 rear end under it, picked up a receiver hitch I need to modify and stole an 80’s quadrajet I might use with my 700r4 from my father. Then I drove back home and fought with cutting holes in the cross member for the exhaust pass through, the wood clamped to the cross member didn’t work well for me because the hole wallowed out and the board kept shifting. I fixed it good by tacking a steel piece over the opening and it worked like a charm.

Sunday allot happened, but it happened so fast that I didn’t have time to take more pictures. My brother and I welded up the pipe in the holes and did the mad dash to get all of the suspension under the truck in time for the 3 people I had to come help put the bed on so we could set the pinion angle. I ran into a few snags getting the suspension on and I had people standing around for an hour just giving me a bad time waiting to do 5 min of work. Thanks to them all I couldn’t have done it without you and I am sorry it took so long to do.

The largest problem was that when we mounted the trailing arm mounts to the cross member we couldn’t get the large trailing arm bolts in the mounts because the carrier bearing was too close, so we had to grind a little off one side of the head of the bolt for clearance. Then the weak minded people I had tricked to come help me move the bed of the truck made quick work of it and they were off without so much as a beer (Again thanks!). Then I mounted the springs, brackets and spacers, and mounted the wider and cleaned up axle housing under the truck. Finally I threw 3 tires in the bed, centered up the rear dropped it on some jack stands, hopped up and down on it, set the pinion angle, and tacked it in place.

Hera are all the pictures I have, sorry there weren’t more. I will take a few more after pics when I get home and post them tomorrow.

[69gmcc10]

My wife either loves me allot or has given up on me completely. We only got married in October last year so I am concerned, I have spent allot of time working on the truck in the last weeks and she is just fine with it! I don’t know if it is indifference or understanding?

I got home yesterday from work and I went straight to the garage to rebuilding the brakes and a few other misc tasks so I could take the rear to the shop and have them install the Eaton I bought last year ($400 for the diff at tomsdifferentials.com ). When I got to the shop they noticed and showed me that there was allot of excessive wear on the outer ends of the axles where they roll on the bearings that I had over looked and so I had them order a set. They are going to finish weld the saddles (no matter how high I cranked the temp on my 110 welder I could not penetrate the axle tube, just enough to tack it in) install everything and straighten the rear. I hope to get it back in about a week.

I also went and visited my engine and found out that the oil pan was once crushed in, pounded back out and the cracks were jb welded shut. On a positive note on monday the short block will be complete!

[fakerwade]

Sounds like your getting a lot done,,,what are trying to do, make me feel guilty???!!! Well it's working. Are planning on being finished before the snow flies?? Neat trick on that rusty spring.

[69gmcc10]

Wade, I am just cuttin holes and boltin things together that were designed to go together, you are shoe horning a biggest loser contestant into jennifer aniston, that takes time and effort!

[69gmcc10]

Taking a step back I want to quickly go over how to mount the axle saddles on the rear end and the dimensions that should be attained so that there is another location with this info on it for people to find. When I got my axle saddles from ECE I started looking for the dimensions on how far apart they should be, but finding that info was not as easy as I thought it should be. Thankfully I am a big fan of gringoloco’s work, as stated before, and I ran across a thread that he started that covered the subject.

Someone on the board measured there axle housing for gringo, then someone else measured theirs and came up with a wider number, but the distance from the upper spring mounting holes compared to the lowers was different. If you measure the width of the upper spring mounting holes on the frame they are 35” apart and if you match the distance on the trailing arm spring mounting holes to 35” when you go to measure the distance between the rear axle u bolt hole center to center the distance it is 41 ¼” apart. This is also the same number that the first person that measured his housing for gringoloco got as well.

So for any person looking to mount a non trailing arm axle under one of these trucks, weather it be a different GM rear end or a ford 9”, the rear u blot holes on the axle saddle are supposed to be 41 ¼” apart.

Here is the post I referred to in this post:
http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=217421

I hope this helps someone.

[Tinkermc]

a lot of nice work going on here, this will be a super nice ride!!!

[69gmcc10]

Thanks tinkermc, I wouldn't know what to do w/o this forum and all the members.
Posted via Mobile Device

[69gmcc10]

Paint! Paint! Paint! Seriously, my hat goes off to everyone who takes on painting projects or is a pro! It is boring, tedious and lets face it, it sucks! Here we are in the beginning of fall in Missoula, the first frost landed last night and I still have things to paint! To compound the issue I couldn’t drag my parts outside because ash from a fire 40 miles south has been falling on everything for the past week. There is only a small window of time for me in the day to paint because I don’t have a heated garage and if it isn’t sunny out the temp drops fast and keeps me from getting my spray on!

I think I am sneaking out of work for an hour to get primer on and dry so I can paint right when I get home before the temp falls much more.

[Low Elco]

Go George! Looks like good progress!
Posted via Mobile Device

[69gmcc10]

Went and visited my L31 357ci engine at the machine shop.

The short block is done and all we are waiting for are valve springs.

[69gmcc10]

Ok, I did sneak home early on wed and while the sky was clear and the temp was warm and got the rear end painted. Sorry no picture it came out like crap (the photo not the paint). But do have other pictures for everyone.

So I got the rebuilt rear end back from the shop and all painted so this weekend was when everything got together and became more than just a pile of parts my wife rolled her eyes at in the garage. I hope you enjoy the photos.

From this picture you can see that I flipped the trailing arm mounts.

[69gmcc10]

Do you remember when you were a kid and you would try to explain something to an adult and no matter how fast or how many times you explained what you were excited about the thought didn’t come across to them and they made you stop, focus and start over? That is what I feel like I am about to do to everyone who reads this. Forgive me while I type slow and direct so I don’t use the English language as vomit instead of a concise (hope I spelled that right, CRAP...it's starting already!) device to convey thoughts feelings and situations.

…a freshly painted rear end with a posi unit is not easy to roll around on the ground by your self, and it is heavy, but doable… ...your wife (if you have one) will walk outside at the very momemt you are draging your rear end (differential not rectum) across the driveway and ask you what you are doing... …it is a wider 71 unit with HD 2 ¾ rear drums and 3.73 gears with an Eaton… …the rear springs are a reused stock item and it has 2” lowering blocks and a long No Limit panhard bar… …I know that the bar should be parallel to the ground, but No Limit said that the 5* down is really good… …I rolled the rear under the truck and loosely mounted everything and then measured allot, all of my measurements resulted in me not needing to move or adjust the rear side to side, front to back or anything, so I measured again… …3/4’ u bolts take allot of foot lbs to torque (I used 180 because when I looked for the answer I found every number from 140 to 225 foot lbs)… …I purchased the inline tube braided stainless brake line kit for a 71/72 c-10 because that is what I am converting the suspension to… … I assumed that the fittings were tight and I didn’t tighten them… …I found out right before I got help bleeding the breaks… … the brake fluid was filthy… …the Monroe sens-a-trac shock looks good with all of my other black pieces…

I hope you understood that and enjoy my photos