1966 C10 Project Truck

[mehoff400]

Great looking truck! if you every sell keep me in mind for sure!

Question have you fixed the belt issue? i am having the same exact issue but i believe it to be because of the ridges in the inside of the belt. i have 2 belts 1 being solid rubber on the inside but needs to be replaced and 2nd new but ridged on the inside like yours but it flips like what i see yours is doing.

[scoot_mcgrute]

Originally Posted by mehoff400

Great looking truck! if you every sell keep me in mind for sure!

Question have you fixed the belt issue? i am having the same exact issue but i believe it to be because of the ridges in the inside of the belt. i have 2 belts 1 being solid rubber on the inside but needs to be replaced and 2nd new but ridged on the inside like yours but it flips like what i see yours is doing.

No plans to sell at this time but I'll keep ya in the loop if it ever changes.

I ish fixed the belt issue. I need to tinker with it some more but the pump is angled back a bit so it's wearing the front edge of the belt. My fix was to move a spacer that was between the pump and the bracket from the front of the pump to the back of the pump and put a shorter belt on it. It's been holding so far but the angle is still off. I'll grab a couple pictures tonight to help explain it a bit better.

[Bomp]

Truck is looking great.
Ground straps are good but to deal with the vapor lock you need a V8.

[scoot_mcgrute]

Originally Posted by Bomp

Truck is looking great.
Ground straps are good but to deal with the vapor lock you need a V8.

Best advice, ever! Soon enough

Everything seemed well on the way home until I stopped at the grocery store. From there to the house, it was idling rough again. I know I can get a thicker carb mounting gasket but will that really help?

I'm wondering if a 1/2" spacer would do me better but I'm not sure. I do know that the E10 gas has a lower boiling point, super helpful in the not vapor locking side of things. Not!

What say you guys?

[scoot_mcgrute]

I got my new steering wheel last night and slapped it on. I'm still in the undecided phase as it's quite a bit different than I expected. I was thinking the grip would be a smaller diameter than it is and the spokes seem larger than I was thinking as well. I'm after a similarly styled wheel, this has knobs on the backside, that will help me keep gripped on the wheel when I'm playing race truck. The search may continue but it should work for now.



I also smoked my clutch master cylinder over the weekend. I had a feeling the clutch rod was at too much of an angle but I wanted to see if it would be ok or not. Turns out that I got the or not . I'll likely get it swapped out this weekend so no big deal

[scoot_mcgrute]

Clutch master has been swapped out and bled. It took forever to bleed last time and was looking the same today. Not sure why I didn't think to run the hose into the reservoir last time. It sure cut down on the bleed time!

Moving the rod down on the pedal has resulted in a stiffer pedal, not surprised, with my 1:1 clutch system. I may go with a smaller master this winter, I'll wait and see how I feel driving it some more. The smaller wheel sure makes it feel like a different truck too!

That's all for now

[scoot_mcgrute]

Well, this old girl quickly became the daily driver after my last post. My Dodge has been suffering from death wobble since Labor Day Weekend and the Jeep has been grumpy as well. The Chevy has taken it like a champ!

I've since gotten the wipers working, the heater and defrost working and a few other little things done to it since I got it drivable. Shortly after getting the blower motor working again, it quit on me and I haven't been successful at removing the old blower motor since it hits the inner fender and I don't feel like beating the inner fender up that much.

I have had a recurring running problem where if it idles for more than a few minutes, it starts running really bad and tries to stall. Give it a little throttle and it's just fine. Thinking it may be electrical since I've working on the fuel side a bunch and it hasn't changed. Anyone have any insight to that?

[mattfranklin]

Awesome truck. Glad to see your V-8 moving ahead.

When you mentioned rough running with your 6 after getting warmed up and missing grounding straps, it reminded me about a Jeep vapor lock story.

We had a 1954 Willys M38-A1 that had that warm running vapor lock issue even on cold days. I had done some work myself and ignored those "dumb" grounding straps because they didn't look cool. As it turned out a mechanic friend diagnosed it and said the *fuel line* was acting as the ground and getting hot and boiling the fuel. When he reinstalled them the problem went away. Embarrassing for me.

Originally Posted by scoot_mcgrute

Best advice, ever! Soon enough

Everything seemed well on the way home until I stopped at the grocery store. From there to the house, it was idling rough again. I know I can get a thicker carb mounting gasket but will that really help?

I'm wondering if a 1/2" spacer would do me better but I'm not sure. I do know that the E10 gas has a lower boiling point, super helpful in the not vapor locking side of things. Not!

What say you guys?

[scoot_mcgrute]

Tinkered on the old truck yesterday. Not sure why but after lowering the truck down, the brake pedal got really soft. I've re-bled, replaced parts and even checked how the brake lines are routed and it's better but still not what it was. I'm still plugging away on that, my next thing to check is to get some shorter brake lines for it.

Before bed last night, I went and got the 5.3 on the engine stand and took the intake off so I could start sizing up what I needed for the car intake. Good and bad things happened. It turns out that before the guy sold the engine, he decided to wash it but not plug any of the holes. Bad to see water in it but good that it's at this stage. Everything is still in great shape, it just came with a little extra water

It sure has a great stance now!




First thing I saw when I pulled the intake, this is looking down the head


Oil pan was cracked, I'm glad I don't need this one




It sure made a mess when I turned it over!


All in all, it looked scary and disappointing but things really aren't all that bad inside. Run it and see what happens

[1966c10LS]

Your truck looks great! It does have a great stance. I'll keep watching your progress. Thanks for your input on the instrument questions I had.

[LostMy65]

Originally Posted by scoot_mcgrute

It sure has a great stance now!

:

Cool shot.
I'm surprised I hadn't posted in this thread yet.
I'm glad you kept the body as is - dings and all - and preserved the originality.
It has a unique nostalgic personality, rather than just another truck with a shiny paint job.

[Lokin4AReason]

work horse working hard ....

[Bomp]

loss of altitude is always funner

[The Rocknrod]

So your using 235-75-15's all the way around with disc brakes?
What is the backspace on those wheels, looks like the rear has less backspace than the front?
When you get a chance get a pic with it on level ground.
Looks great.

[scoot_mcgrute]

Originally Posted by The Rocknrod

So your using 235-75-15's all the way around with disc brakes?
What is the backspace on those wheels, looks like the rear has less backspace than the front?
When you get a chance get a pic with it on level ground.
Looks great.

Yep, all 4 corners with disc brakes on the front.

They are 15x8 rally wheels I got off craigslist so I'm not sure what the backspacing is. Somewhere between 3.5" and 4" I'm guessing. The disc brake kit pushed the front width out a little bit (73-87 spindles and hubs) and then I did have to add a 1/4" spacer to keep the wheel out of the lower control arm. I'll probably swap it out for a 3/16" spacer here before too long.

The driveway shot is pretty level but I'll get a couple more before too long, I mean who could resist taking pictures of their own truck?

[aggie91]

Just checked out your thread. Cool truck. I dig the Army vibe. I kinda miss my old 6 banger from years ago. I bet the 5 speed was a great upgrade.

You are gonna love the power of the 5.3, it has great power for a stock engine.

[scoot_mcgrute]

Originally Posted by aggie91

Just checked out your thread. Cool truck. I dig the Army vibe. I kinda miss my old 6 banger from years ago. I bet the 5 speed was a great upgrade.

You are gonna love the power of the 5.3, it has great power for a stock engine.

Thanks! The 5 speed was awesome. While I never drove it outside of the neighborhood with the 3 speed, I can only imagine that it would be not nearly as fun. I'm so excited for the 5.3 to go in, parts should start arriving soon


I don't think I ever posted this here, I got a GoPro for Christmas so I took a little video on the way to my buddy's place around New Years. It so fun to drive!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryDZ2UCNh-o

[scoot_mcgrute]

Parts are starting to roll in for the 5.3. To say I'm excited is an understatement!

[scoot_mcgrute]

Motivation has been on the low side the last couple of weeks but I'm still plugging away on the pickup. Last night, I bolted the intake back on after I had my buddy fix a mistake that I did, buttoned up the new under dash harness and just had to see what the gauges will look like. The gauges look awesome and I can't stop sitting in the truck and looking at them!



Since I was here, I tied the parking light wire in with the running lights. Super easy thing to do and should help the other people on the road see the truck at night. I hope.


Here's what the gauges look like. They turned out nicer than I was expecting


Later this week, my buddy is coming over to help me get the truck wire harness setup for the car intake. It'll look 110% better once we are done!

[scoot_mcgrute]

Last night was wiring night. I was less than thrilled how the truck harness didn't even try to fit the car intake even though my harness guy knew exactly what I was doing. My buddy came by and it doesn't even look like the same harness anymore. I honestly would have been better off buying a new harness rather than having mine reworked but this is a build where every dollar counts and this option was cheaper than going another route. Live, learn and move on

Here's how the harness ran when I got it all plugged in. Totally hiding the beautiful car intake


After a couple hours of my buddy working his wiring magic. So much better is a definite understatement! We worked the stock harnesses over and integrated them with the LS harness, the end result is it not looking too much like a 1966 when the hood is popped.

[scoot_mcgrute]

Running the car intake and fuel rail, I had an interference with the fuel inlet and a coil. Tried flipping the rail around and it still ran right into a coil and I also had the #8 coil just touching the firewall so I came up with this bracket to move the coils around a bit. Couple quick things to check out tonight before I have them cut but I should have a winner

[scoot_mcgrute]

I got some good shop time with the Army Truck on Saturday. Ended up torqueing the new crank bolt, installing the power steering pulley, pulling the in-cab tank and moving the shifter hole for the T5. I wanted to get a little more done over the weekend but had to spend some time on the 2 upcoming 4WD events I have coming up. Shooting to have it back together before the end of April

[scoot_mcgrute]

Time for a little update. I haven't had much time to work in the garage lately but I took the weekend off from my other projects and events to get some progress done on the old pickup. Thursday night, I finished plumbing the pressure side of the fuel system and started on the return side but ended up needing more fittings so the fuel system had to wait a little longer. I was happy with how everything was looking from underneath but when I got top side, I couldn't live with what I had.

This is how the feed line to the rail came out. It just didn't look right and I wasn't happy with that.


Friday night, I fixed that with a longer piece of AN that runs from the regulator up to the rail. Much much cleaner and looks like it was supposed to be like that.


Saturday, I had some running around to do in the morning but my AN fittings were in so I was able to get those on my way home and plumb finish the fuel lines. One thing I had to do was swing by my buddy's place and cut the final version of my coil pack brackets out on his plasma table. I wasn't sure how they would look after seeing them in CAD but I'm super happy with how they turned out.





New on the left, old on the right


Looks good on there!


While I was waiting for the paint to dry on the brackets, I took the time to clean the valve covers up and shoot them Chevy Orange. They turned out awesome.


Looking real good at this point and I was super stoked to see it all together!


Sunday morning, bright and early, my buddy Sean showed up and we got right to business. We started the morning off by taking the front clip apart and getting the inner fenders and core support bolted on the truck. From there, we were able to basically finish the motor install, all the wiring, radiator, air intake, etc. Here he is cutting a hole in the inner fender to mount my relay and fuse block for the 5.3. After that, we figured out where the ECU will sit, it'll be tucked down between the radiator and the motor so it will not draw any attention to it. Can't wait to get the mount done for it!


Gettin his cutting on!


This is where it ended up, looks super good here!


We had to go pick Sean's Coyote F100 up from being on display at the Performance Warehouse tradeshow and while we were out and about, we picked up some remaining wiring items, radiator hoses and some other miscellaneous items we needed. When we got back, I had a phone call to make and when I was done, I walked into the garage to see this. Holy crap, it's coming together!


I finished wiring the fuel pump and then we started working on getting the bed wood back in place. Some HUGE progress was made on the old girl over the weekend and I can't be happier with where it is right now. I truly have great friends that are willing to jump in and kick my butt into high gear. Wouldn't change them for the world!

The theory behind the install is that the motor needs to look at home, like it could've come this way from the factory and I gotta say, I nailed it.



My obligatory progress board shot. These items were all completed yesterday, it was a hell of a good day in the garage!


Check back soon for the first start

[scoot_mcgrute]

Last night, my buddy Sean came back to button up the wiring under the hood and to finish the hole for the fuel filler in the bed wood. My dad also stopped by and helped out finishing the bed wood install and a few other odds and ends. It's pretty great how much you can get done with 3 people all keeping busy! The wiring is basically finished, I finally wired in my reverse lights while dad wired in the fuel sending unit. What an awesome and productive Monday night!

The rain and snow took a toll on the wood last year, it's still in great shape but ultimately I will be ditching it for a steel floor at some point.


The filler just didn't look right on the truck but after a coat of OD Green, she looks right at home. I'm not a fan of the fillers out there that go through the bed but I have yet to see a stepside filler that I like so I went through the floor.




Sean does some amazing wiring work, I'm super thankful that he's willing to take the time to wire this for me, I couldn't make it look half as nice!


Here, you can kinda see where the computer ended up. I'll make a mount off of the crossmember to hold it at an angle. I like where it's at, it doesn't draw attention to it and fits really good there.


And, of course, the obligatory to-do list picture

[mehoff400]

Do you know the history on the engine? Willing to part with power steering?