1960 Apache K10 build

[Southcity]

As a fellow K10 owner (66 K10 Suburban), I appreciate all the fine work you are doing with this truck, thanks for sharing.

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completed filler assembly

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Pretty standard stuff here. For now, I just ripped a sheet of plywood down, used the dimensions from the internet, gave it a quick sand and seal, and called it good. A million carriage bolts later, this was the bed result. I did mess up the dimensions for behind the stake pockets, so this will have to be something I fix eventually, but for now, it works. I did not receive the bolts for bolting the bed to the frame in the kit, and there was supposed to be a spacer for the rear of the bed, which I did not receive either, but I just made one that fit and moved along.

to lift the bed, I used my engine hoist and the cab lifter 9000. I just used some poly rope in the stake pockets and it lifted it all up no problem. it was a bit heavier in the front than the rear, but i just used a ratchet strap to balance it out and it worked okay.

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So this is the part I am most excited about. I got the bed mounted and pulled her out of the shop to look at it for the first time. Man…was I excited. She looked good, she sounded good. All was well. So I took it for spin around the block.

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and then straight to the alignment shop

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and then...most importantly...to the pub

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I have a lot of things I need to fix and figure out, but all in all...it runs and drives! and mostly all the major systems work as intended. I'll drive it for a few days and report back.

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Originally Posted by Southcity

As a fellow K10 owner (66 K10 Suburban), I appreciate all the fine work you are doing with this truck, thanks for sharing.

Much appreciated friend! I would highly recommend this swap. It really wasn’t that hard if you have basic fab skills. I did learn a lot of lessons along the way, so a second one would be way faster and easier.

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Oh yes. She also now has a name. Apparently all women seem to think this is the same colour as the Tiffany jewelery box. One of my friends started calling her Tiffany, and it just kinda stuck.

[Braunschweiger]

Respect and congratulations on this fantastic truck, have fun with it.
You did a great job.

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Thank you friend!

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A few things that I noticed driving it so far.

I took her straight to the alignment shop, and got that all sorted out. And it drives pretty good! It is a little stiffer than I thought it would be. I think the extra weight of the tahoe probably softened the ride up a lot. But first impressions are pretty good!


The brake pedal feel is really really firm. I can probably change this some with where I mount the attachment point on the brake pedal. I had moved it down some to change the pedal ratio. so I am not sure if this made the firm feeling better or worse. I will try moving it back to the original hole on the pedal and see if that changes it.

I don’t have torque converter lock up. So I will have to figure that out eventually. I can feel it shift into 4th, but I never get lock up. I am really hoping that is something simple like I dont have a fuse going to the power it needs to see the signal. But I also did change torque converters, so who knows what it could be. I'll check wiring first, and go from there.


I really don’t care for the sound of the single super 44. I like how it sounds at idle, but I really do not care for it under throttle. It's hard to describe, but it sounds really rattly.
I have flowmaster delta flow 50's on my other truck, and I really like them, but they are a true dual set up. so I don't really know how much that will change things. Either way, I am planning to change all this over the winter anyhow. I have a full stainless exhaust with headers that I am planning to install, but the plan right now is to learn how to TIG much better than I can right now, and then attempt fabricating this. I signed up for welding classes on weld coach online, so we will see how that goes.


I have a LOT of work on the tune to do. I got it good enough to get it running after the cam swap, but there is still a ton of work to be done. I contacted a local guy to help me with a tune. He sent me a tune file, and the thing would not even run. So I sent him the data log, and he said my fuel system was not hooked up correctly. I told him it couldn’t be, because I didn’t touch the fuel system at all. Everything from the pump to the lines to the injectors and rails are all still bone stock. So his next idea was to check the O2 sensors. He said to use genuine GM or AC Delco seonsors. Parts store brands like NTK have given him a ton of trouble in the past. So I ordered up some replacements.

But all in all, she runs pretty good! You can tell the parts of the tune that work good and the ones that don’t. From idle to 2500, it runs like garbage. From 2500-4000 it goes pretty good, and then past 4000 it falls on its face. But the potential is there!

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Well this is interesting…
As you will recall from my last post, I was having issues with the O2 sensors. The tuner guy gave me part number of what I needed to order. With the part number in hand, I went to my local GM dealer. I ordered up the part, and they told me that they would be there in a few days.

SO back I go to the GM dealer a few days later. I ordered two…they only shipped one. No big deal. They had one at a dealer about 45 minutes away. Back in the truck I go, off to the next dealer. I pick up my part, and head back to the shop. I crawl under the truck…unhook the old sensor…FFS…the guy gave me the wrong part number. I had a male square 4 pin, I needed a female square 4 pin. ARGHH!

So this time, I decide to go to amazon for the parts. I order up the correct part numbers. And I wait another week. I pop in the new sensors…fire it up, pull it out of the shop…AND THEN…

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As I am backing it out of the door, i hear a pop, followed by the immediate whine of my power steering pump, and a plume of white smoke from under the hood...

If anyone with hydroboost experience can chime in here, i would appreciate it, but it looks like the accumulator blew off? It was cock-eyed, and thats where the fluid was coming from. It was a brand new unit from amazon, so I cant figure out why this happened, other than it was just a cheap quality reman or something.

I pulled it back into the shop, parked it, and pouted for the last week.

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Alright, so i realize i left you guys hanging for a bit here, but I will get at some updates.

The brake issue I had was probably just due to a cheap reman hydroboost unit that I bought off amazon. It blew the accumulator off, which, as far as I can tell, nobody I have ever talked to has ever heard of.

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So the whole reason I got a new one was becasue I took the old one apart, and parts flew everywhere. And of course, in doing so, i lost all kinds of stuff. But, i had the parts to make one out of two, so thats what i did.

I learned really quick that you need to pay attention to putting the booster back together properly. One small thing out of position, makes it do all kinds of strange stuff.

I had it back together, fired it up, and the brake would immediately go to the floor on its own.

google told me i had something together wrong, and I sure did. There is a fork that is really easy to have come out of position on you.
which you can see in the pictures below.

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So with the brakes all together, it came time to do an actual tune on the thing. I am a complete rookie at HP tuners, so I got enough of a tune in it to get the thing running, and thats about it.

In the beginning, it was doing some really strange stuff on me. It would stall, and run really rough.

Talking to the local tuner I was using, he asked what brand of O2 sensors I was running. I got mine fromt he local parts store, and he said I needed to use AC Delco sensors, as this was probably the root cause of the rough running.

I was skeptical, but I went ahead and followed his advice.

And wouldn’t you know it. it started running better immediately!

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So, I took it for another quick test run, and I was rather disappointed in the performance.

It would absolutely not downshift on its own, and it immediately was short shifting gears into 4th, and would not lock the converter. So it was really laggy.

The tuner and I both were scratching our heads, trying to figure this one out. Nothing we could do would make it behave correctly. He changed the shift tables to crazy settings to try to keep it from doing this, and no change.

His advice after reading through the data logs was that I must have hooked something up wrong, because the transmission just wasn’t listening to what it was being told.

So I had a long think about it...then I realized what might be the problem.

Based on some (incorrect) information on the internet that I had read, I had grounded one particular wire from the transfer case module to the PCM. Particularly, pin 16 on the green connector. This wire provides a ground from the TCCM to the PCM when the system is in 4 low, and I had (incorrectly) assumed that the computer would be smart enough to understand what range it was in because of the serial data communication. So I simply grounded this wire and moved along.

Having this wire ran straight to ground was fooling the PCM into thinking the transfer case was in low, and that was the cause of my problems. It was grabbing the 4 low shift tables, instead of the regular shift tables.

I simply unhooked that wire, and took it for another rip...and let me tell you...it was a DIFFERENT MACHINE.
Keeping in mind it was -15 celcius that day, or 5F, so the roads and tires were a bit on the cold side, but wow…it would light the tires up all the way through first no problem. The converter locked up no problem on the highway, and everything was working as it should! I was REALLY pleased with how it handled. It rode a little bit rough, so I decided to drop the tire pressure from 45lbs down to 30lbs, and that made all the difference in the world. It now rode and drove exactly how I wanted it to.

[Braunschweiger]

It's nice to hear that they're gradually working through their little problems and that the truck is so much fun.

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Well I can tell you, there are a lot of little bugs to figure out on this thing. But...It seems to be worth it!

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The next thing on the list to tackle is the Exhaust.

The astute readers out there will ask themselves ‘Why didn’t you do the exhaust when you had it all apart…Wouldn’t that have been far easier?’

Well, yes and no. Yes, some parts would have been easier. But at the same time, I didn’t want to make a really nice exhaust, and have it hit something down the road. I am trying to tuck everything up nice and tidy, so nothing hangs below the frame. And I am also trying to make it easy to take it apart. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I generally find that I have a lot of things that I need to fix or do on these things, and it is usually so much easier without exhaust pipes in the way. My plan was to make the whole exhaust system out of 3” stainless, and have it all held together with V band style flanges. It should be easy to take apart, and it should be less prone to leaking than the traditional header flanges.

I had ordered the parts years ago. So I wasn’t really sure what I had. I Got a set of Texas speed headers that were made for the 2006 tahoe. And I had a stainless flowmaster universal fit system. And I had ordered some flowmaster 50 delta flows. I really like the sound of the flowmaster 50’s on my other truck, so I figured I would give them a try. Turns out that the mufflers I ordered were not stainless, but that isn’t the end of the world.

I also had a Magnaflow x pipe. I have never run an X pipe before, so I decided to try one out on this one and see what I think.

I am making the system welded together from the x pipe forwards, and clamp together from the x pipe back. I want to be able to easily try it with and without the x pipe, and I might even try a few different muffler combinations and see what I like best. And when I find something that I Really like, I will weld it all together.

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The very first problem I ran into, I had to reroute my starter wires, since the passenger side header was sitting on them. I also had to bash one tube in slightly, as it was hitting the frame. So much for 'Direct fit'

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header to frame after some 'clearancing'. I have about 1/4-3/8" all the way.

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I do have to get new plug wires. The stock ones hit the header tubes.

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Now comes the fun part. The rest of the system...The first thing I learned is that 3" pipe eats up a lot of real estate in a hurry.

I had to run the whole system along the passenger side because I had Driveshafts, transfer case, fuel tank, etc on the drivers side. My plan was to run both pipes in the same general location of the factory system.


I started at the passenger side header. It was pretty much centered in the opening that I needed to run both pipes through. So I decided to kick it up and towards the frame a bit. This would set the final height and direction for where I wanted the x pipe location. I rolled 2 45’s up and out, and this got me in pretty good shape.

This picture is not the final location, but this is looking from the rear towards the front. i shortened the joint up a bit to keep it away from the frame.