Uncle Loyd's 72' C-10

[cornerstone]

Hah! You and me both! Sometimes it seems like it may never be back on the road. Every time I make some good progress some other fire has to be put out. For example, last Thanksgiving day our oven crapped out 1 hour into cooking the turkey which of course means a full kitchen remodel. Then when I'm wrapping up that job, my daughter became engaged and decided her wedding was going to be at our house and the reception needed to be in our pole barn. So now I'm building a giant carport to put all the stuff in it that was in the pole barn... It never ends! For cryin' out loud... when can a guy get some alone time with his truck!!

[Tusky]

Lol i do understand. I got a 2000 camaro z28 car im go be chasing 10s on motor here soon. Thats one project.

Another one is my tow rig.... its running but it needs some updating.

Thats just the beginning.....

[1971Stepside]

Hah! You and me both! Sometimes it seems like it may never be back on the road. Every time I make some good progress some other fire has to be put out. For example, last Thanksgiving day our oven crapped out 1 hour into cooking the turkey which of course means a full kitchen remodel. Then when I'm wrapping up that job, my daughter became engaged and decided her wedding was going to be at our house and the reception needed to be in our pole barn. So now I'm building a giant carport to put all the stuff in it that was in the pole barn... It never ends! For cryin' out loud... when can a guy get some alone time with his truck!!

^^This!!^^ I'm just hoping my corona check covers what I owe in taxes this year LOL

[cornerstone]

Now that I've got a shortie, my emergency brake cables are too long. Anyone have a solution that is fairly clean looking? I know I can use a cable stop but don't know If there's a stronger way. I don't have a proper crimper for something this big, and smashing it with a hammer will disfigure it badly.

[MDPotter]

Originally Posted by cornerstone

Now that I've got a shortie, my emergency brake cables are too long. Anyone have a solution that is fairly clean looking? I know I can use a cable stop but don't know If there's a stronger way. I don't have a proper crimper for something this big, and smashing it with a hammer will disfigure it badly.

Here's what I did:
- Bought a cable for a shortbed
-Started installing all of the cables and hardware that the truck had originally and found out that the shortbed cable still wouldn't work because the combination of all of the loops and hooks took too much length out of it.
- Eliminated one or two of the shortest retainers that pull the cable towards the outside of the frame.
- Shortened the one long rod that pulls the cable towards the front passenger corner until the adjustment on the front parking brake cable was towards the max amount of tension. At first I had it to where it was in the middle of the threads on the parking brake cable, but found out that it takes quite a bit of tightening of that nut to get enough tension for the parking brake lever to get enough tension in the cables for the parking shoes to actually grab so I had to shorten the long front rod again.

I can take some pictures tomorrow. Because of where my mufflers and custom trans crossmember ended up, I had to do a couple other modifications because the cables were touching the mufflers or the crossmember.

[cornerstone]

Thanksgiving morning (4 months ago) I had high hopes of firing the motor for the first time. I had my brother in law and his family coming over for dinner with us, and thought it would be great to have a second set of eyes on the first attempt. It cranked over just fine but wouldn't bust off. The first problem I found was a slap your forehead moment. I had previously installed an aftermarket air intake and filter and left the plastic bag on the element. You know, to keep it clean... Bonehead forgot to take off the bag so the pretty new straight element looked like a dried prune with a few cranks of the motor. After we had a good laugh at my expense and remedied that situation I gave it another go. Same thing... good crank with no fire. At that point I determined there was a nice spark, so the remaining possibility would be fuel or lack thereof. I had pressure to the mechanical pump on the back of the intake manifold, so my next conclusion was stuck injectors. I pulled the intake off and started the removal process. Of course they were not gonna just pop out like I hoped, so I sprayed some lube into the injector holes in hopes to soak in and make it easier to remove. While I had the intake off I looked down the runners to see if there was any indication of valve coking. To my surprise there was some buildup on the intake valve and runner. This is a downside of having Direct Injection, since there is no fuel in the air charge entering the cylinder, there is no cleaning effect to the intake valve. As combustion occurs, some gunk can blow by the intake valve before it fully seats. Sprint9 had warned me of this possibility since he has a 2014 Silverado and went through this problem already. He easily persuaded me to add a catch can to my system to assist with providing clean air to the intake and cylinder

[cornerstone]

Originally Posted by MDPotter

Here's what I did:
- Bought a cable for a shortbed
-Started installing all of the cables and hardware that the truck had originally and found out that the shortbed cable still wouldn't work because the combination of all of the loops and hooks took too much length out of it.
- Eliminated one or two of the shortest retainers that pull the cable towards the outside of the frame.
- Shortened the one long rod that pulls the cable towards the front passenger corner until the adjustment on the front parking brake cable was towards the max amount of tension. At first I had it to where it was in the middle of the threads on the parking brake cable, but found out that it takes quite a bit of tightening of that nut to get enough tension for the parking brake lever to get enough tension in the cables for the parking shoes to actually grab so I had to shorten the long front rod again.

I can take some pictures tomorrow. Because of where my mufflers and custom trans crossmember ended up, I had to do a couple other modifications because the cables were touching the mufflers or the crossmember.

Whew... sounds like another 10 minute project turned into a full day event. Par for the course... Thanks for help man! Don't go out of your way for the pics, I'm in no rush.

[MDPotter]

Originally Posted by cornerstone

Whew... sounds like another 10 minute project turned into a full day event. Par for the course... Thanks for help man! Don't go out of your way for the pics, I'm in no rush.

It'll only take me a second to take pictures. I'll have it up in the air working on exhaust anyway. You might be able to have a local wire rope outfit crimp the end on a shortened cable for you too. If it wasn't for the conflicts I had with the mufflers, it wouldn't have been a big deal.

[TA_C10]

Good move on the filter sherlock.... And, Oh, you mean back when we used to have people over when it was safe? Oh I already forgot about those days.

Check this video out, the guy is funny but cool DIY to stop a cable end without special tools (besides the lead). Just a thought.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ysd8JkWclmc

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[cornerstone]

Originally Posted by TA_C10

Good move on the filter sherlock.... And, Oh, you mean back when we used to have people over when it was safe? Oh I already forgot about those days.

Check this video out, the guy is funny but cool DIY to stop a cable end without special tools (besides the lead). Just a thought.

.

Yeah...not very bright. I look at it this way, I wanted a blue filter anyways. Thanks for the vid. That dude is pretty clever.

[cornerstone]

Pulled my injectors last night, wasn't as difficult as I thought it was going to be. After I get the new injectors I'll give it another go and maybe I'll hear that sweet rumble we all crave after so much down time.

[Kronald_70GMC]

I hope she fires right up this time. I cant wait to see a video of it making some sweet noise!

[TA_C10]

What do you think about running additives to keep her clean being direct injection?

[MDPotter]

Here are some pictures of my setup. In the last picture you see the brackets I fabbed to drop the rear brake cables to clear the mufflers. I slid some sections of rubber hose over the cable where it touches crossmembers.

[cornerstone]

Thanks man. I see what you are talking about. Your truck is so clean! I can only imagine how awesome a lift would be at the house. Glad to hear that the full length pipes kept it quiet enough for a conversation in the truck, that's what I'm aiming for.

[cornerstone]

Well, no luck. Here's what I did since last attempt.

I cleaned out the intake runners in the head and the tops of the intake valves of deposits, it's now way cleaner.

I bought a set of OEM re-man injectors that have been cleaned with multiple ultrasonic baths, tested for electrical shorts, back flushed and leak tested, and flow matched and calibrated, reassembled with new seals and filters. Yesterday I got everything back together fairly easily.

I wired up the fuel pump and ran it until gas flowed out of the fitting on top of the motor. Next I pulled the spark plugs, attached the fuel line back to the feed line on top of the motor, got power to the ecm and spun the motor over for about 15 seconds. My thinking in doing this was to get oil flowing through it and also to hopefully pressurize the fuel rails so the injectors would spray fuel sooner than later. I don't really know if any of these things happened. One thing I did notice when turning the motor over was the plug wires would arc if a ground was close by. That little bit of life got me excited to think it was gonna fire up...

All that was left to do was to put the spark plugs back in and crank her over. (After a quick prayer of course) I turned it over for about 5 seconds and nothing... waited a few more seconds and gave it a longer crank. This time I went for probably 12-15 seconds and I saw smoke. The ground wire shrouding from the battery to the frame was beginning to melt, it wasn't really the proper gauge so I should've known better to crank it that long.

So today I'll add a proper gauge ground wire from the battery to the motor this time and give it another go.

How would I know if the injectors are adding fuel?

Any other ideas on how to get this thing started?

[sprint_9]

What was all done to the tune/ecm? Do you have any codes?

One thing you could do is unhook an injector and hook up a noid light to see if its pulsing the injector.

[cornerstone]

Originally Posted by sprint_9

What was all done to the tune/ecm? Do you have any codes?

One thing you could do is unhook an injector and hook up a noid light to see if its pulsing the injector.

Thanks for helping me Sprint! I really can't say what was done to the tune. I will send the guy an email and try to get some details. He is a board member so I'll shoot him a PM first. I hooked up my code reader but it is not seeing it I guess. At this point I'm betting it's something on my end.

I had to look up what a noid light is if that gives you an idea my about understanding of fuel injected engines. I watched a good video on testing injectors and I do have a test light so that'll be my next task.

Today I fixed the lousy ground from the battery with a legit battery cable from the donor truck. Also used a full size Optima red top car/ truck battery instead of a Harley Davidson battery. Gave it another go and again no fire... at least this time I din't dump a few ounces of tranny fluid out of the slip yoke hole. I found a cap that fit snug and pushed it on. Now that most of the weight is on the chassis do you think I'm good to go get a driveshaft made?

Since dinner wasn't ready yet and I needed some good vibes to gain motivation I put a spitshine on the truck and cleaned up the wheels. For the past few months I have not had the bags inflated since I needed to relocate the manifold. Not wanting to let the trucks weight rest on the collapsed bags, I stuck some pieces of 2x4 between the lower control arms and the cross member. It looked pretty goofy up in the air all this time so I yanked those out and replaced them with shorter ones. It will be way easier to work on it now too. Looks way better now. The primer actually looked pretty good after I wiped a few layers of dust off it. I took these pics today.

[Kronald_70GMC]

That does look good! That should be plenty of motivation to keep you going. I know its motivating me on my build

[TA_C10]

Love those wheels. What kind of scanner do you have? Bluetooth obdII dongle that you connect your phone to? If so, and your not seeing any connection with ignition on, I'd be checking all your wiring. If we weren't in a quarantine I'd drive over and help.... Corona B.S.

Maybe start with power to all the right pins in PCM. Check all the ground pins too. It's easier to grab a needle, longer the better, and alligator clips on it, DC meter that puppy. LT1Swap.com for pinouts.

Keep us updated

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[cornerstone]

Originally Posted by TA_C10

Love those wheels. What kind of scanner do you have? Bluetooth obdII dongle that you connect your phone to? If so, and your not seeing any connection with ignition on, I'd be checking all your wiring. If we weren't in a quarantine I'd drive over and help.... Corona B.S.

Maybe start with power to all the right pins in PCM. Check all the ground pins too. It's easier to grab a needle, longer the better, and alligator clips on it, DC meter that puppy. LT1Swap.com for pinouts.

Keep us updated

.

Thanks for the compliment bud. I have one from Harbor Freight, it’s the ZR13 code reader... That’d be fantastic if you can make it to my place and help me. If I don’t get it figured out before this lock down is over, I can also load it up and trailer it to you.

[cornerstone]

We have ignition! <----- That's me doing the happy dance.

Mitch from Swaptime was super quick to respond to my email. We texted back and forth and he figured out that I had the fuel rail connectors installed wrong. After I reversed them and cleared the codes it started after a few cranks. It didn't sound all that great because one of the O2 sensors isn't hooked up yet, so a giant exhaust leak at the back of the header soured the rumble I was longing to finally hear. That'll be an easy fix.

So I gotta give Mitch props here. The guy knows his stuff on these Gen V's. Watch and subscribe to his YouTube channel (Swaptime) and don't hesitate doing business with him. Seriously excellent service. Here's an example... I had him rework my factory harness and modify my computer back in April of 2017, (at the time his price was 500 cheaper than another major competitor) he sends it back to me and I proceed to leave it in a box for the next 2 and a half years. Keep in mind this wasn't my original plan. Once I finally get it out and start to fit it to my truck I noticed the connector on the harness didn't match the connectors on my O2 sensors. I sent him a picture of the issue and he said send it back and I'll take care of it. Then, while it was in his possession, he noticed my harness was not up to the standard he is currently providing, so he upgraded several things on mine. A higher quality external wrap as well as some other wiring upgrades I never would have known I needed. He sent it back to me basically new, again... and only charged me 10. bucks!? I got it back from him the second time about 7 months ago and just yesterday I was ready to try to start it for the second time. Good grief am I slow! Well as you read a few posts back it didn't fire and I had no idea as to why. It's embarrassing how little I know about all those little sensors and countless wires. So I shot off another email telling him my woes... again... and he was nothing less than awesomely helpful.

What a relief! Now with that behind me, I can move forward on to other things, like getting a driveshaft, repainting the frame and several components that have been scratched up, or just not painted at all during assembly.

Today, I got that motivation I needed to keep at it, and I give all the credit to Mitch Vannatta and his company, Swaptime.

[kingsolver72]

Brian, you’re doing good! Glad you got the engine fired up.

[TA_C10]

Glad you got it figured out!

[cornerstone]

Originally Posted by kingsolver72

Brian, you’re doing good! Glad you got the engine fired up.

I appreciate that Scott. I'm still hunting for 3 more correct wheels so I can proudly display those sweet P03's! (thanks to YOU!)