1991 V3500 Project Heavy Hauler

[whitels1]

The Big Beast is coming along!!

[MTCK]

Thanks guys. It's coming along slowly. The tires are cooper st's. They work great but are only load range d's and I've probably overloaded them a few times. Interior should get out together next weekend.

[LuckyLightning]

Thanks MTCK for the tire info. Keep up the awesome work on that truck.

[MTCK]

Made some progress on the interior. Headliner is in and suspended on all four corners. some of the trim is in, visors are in, 2 of 3 seats upholstered with heating pads installed.

The SEM coating seems to have adhered very well to some trim and not at all to others. I'm a little bummed some of it scratches so easily but luckily not much of the high traffic pieces needed to be painted.

[MTCK]

Sorry for the sideways cell phone pics. Er upside down.

[y5mgisi]

I desperately want someone to try plastidip on the interior pieces! It seems like it would stick well and give a fairly oem finish.

[COS399]

Nice. Those heating pads are going to come in handy this winter.

[DirtyLarry]

The truck is looking great Marcus! Very clean work you’re doing to her. Those harnesses do seem to need some attention after 20+ years of heat soak. The interior looks pretty darn comfy! Did you have your center console covered as well? Whatever you did looks good from here.

I forgot to show you a picture of how the one in the K10 turned out after I gave up on getting any SEM paint to stick and just had it covered with vinyl. The odd thing is the SEM paint did stick to the removable cup holder but nothing else on the console

[MTCK]

Appreciate the comments. Console looks great Larry. I actually didn't have to do anything to mine. It came with the buckets, dash, seatbelts and rear door panels from the suburban. I still need to replace the upholstery on the driver's seat, and put the fabric over the door panels front and rear. I ordered a yard of fabric that matches the velour on the seats. A couple more pictures...

[whitels1]

Clean!

[MTCK]

Finished up the driver's seat today and installed it. I also mounted the gauge pod that I got from Chris Lucas (73-87chevytrucks.com) and am pretty happy with it. I didn't do enough coats of bedliner to make the texture match, but it looks OK. Still need to wire up the gauges, but I'll do that at the same time as the seat heaters, 12v power ports, etc. I started the process of recovering the door panels in the fabric I bought that matches the seats. Taking off old glue is so much fun. I need to buy more goof off tomorrow.

[MTCK]

I don't think I posted a pic yet, but I installed a little factory under-hood trouble lamp when I had the motor out. I put an LED bulb in that I had laying around which is nice and bright.

I like the way it sits up in the back a lot better now with the new springs. Hosed the truck off this weekend. I need to hit it one more time with some polishing compound and swirl remover and then call that phase of body work done.

[y5mgisi]

Your truck is just so awesome!

[whitels1]

I can't believe how clean it is, good work! The gauge pod looks right at home.

[DirtyLarry]

The interior looks very comfy Marcus. Its coming together real nice! I may have missed it, but where did you get the seat covers? Are those mail order or did you have them made? I could use a front pair for the Burb. Oh, I like that LED idea for the underhood light! I'm stealing that one

[MTCK]

Thanks all. Larry, the seat covers were mail order AND I had them made. The local upholstery shop wanted almost 3k to redo my headliner and cover the seats. That's cutting into the big block budget! A buddy I work with suggested this outfit so I shot them an email. www.carandtruckupholstery.com Denise was the gal who took care of me and she did an awesome job. The fit and finish is good, materials are good and price was right. It was less than $700 plus shipping (which is always terrible to AK). The brand they sell makes a suburban set, and regular pickup sets of seat covers. I explained that my truck had suburban seats in the front and a regular bench in the back. They asked for pictures, said they could make them and asked what fabric I wanted. The suburban seats normally have a different velour type fabric on the back, but I wanted vinyl. No problem! I also ordered a yard of the seat bottom fabric to do my door panels and the foam backed headliner material. Great customer service and a good product. Took about 3 weeks once I pulled the trigger. I would buy from them again in a heart beat.

[SCOTI]

Originally Posted by MTCK

Thanks all. Larry, the seat covers were mail order AND I had them made. The local upholstery shop wanted almost 3k to redo my headliner and cover the seats. That's cutting into the big block budget! A buddy I work with suggested this outfit so I shot them an email. www.carandtruckupholstery.com Denise was the gal who took care of me and she did an awesome job. The fit and finish is good, materials are good and price was right. It was less than $700 plus shipping (which is always terrible to AK). The brand they sell makes a suburban set, and regular pickup sets of seat covers. I explained that my truck had suburban seats in the front and a regular bench in the back. They asked for pictures, said they could make them and asked what fabric I wanted. The suburban seats normally have a different velour type fabric on the back, but I wanted vinyl. No problem! I also ordered a yard of the seat bottom fabric to do my door panels and the foam backed headliner material. Great customer service and a good product. Took about 3 weeks once I pulled the trigger. I would buy from them again in a heart beat.

You plan to wrap the door panels w/the velour type fabric or the vinyl?

FWIW.... In the LMC catalog, they list the replacement consoles (the 82-91 type) as non-paintable because of the poly material (you can have any color you want.... as long as it's Black). The OE console that I got w/the burb buckets (90 model) sure feels like it's poly so no paint is going to want to stick.

I already had an earlier 73-80 style fiberglass console that I planned to use. The SEM adhered to it well. I also used the SEM on my trim pieces & door panels. No real milage yet... but it looks nice & nothing has peeled off after the install LoL. You can see it will come off under screws if removed/re-installed multiple times (but the screw head does 'hide' it).

Nice looking rig!

[watahyahknow]

just read the whole tread sofar , extremely nice build
great job on it , maibe you can have the small block with the bad bearing you took out machined and build intoo a 383 , from wat i seen on summit a basiline cast 383 rotating assembly is 750 dollar
machining prolly be about 245 dollar
a set of new vortec heads with the valves and springs installed about 500 dollar
about 350 for missalanious like bearings and gaskets
say 1845/2000 dollar ...... its getting close to a pick and pull bigblock but remember this : when the 383 is ready its basicly brandnew inside and will give you enough power to pull a 2 foot treestump out of the yard
i just pulled these numbers using google but you could prolly get some of the materials and the machinework done cheaper

about painting the plastic
when the stuff is new they have a kindof wax on it to get it to release of the mould
when its used theres a big chance someone used siliconespray on it , wish basicly means nothing will stick
you might get lucky with the paint if you use a undercoat for plastics that keeps the top paint somewat flexible and realy scrubb the part within an inch of its life using a silicone remover before paint

[MTCK]

Thanks for the compliments. The velour type fabric is what I'll be using on the door panels. No need to spray the console as it came from the suburban along with the dash, seat belts etc the color I wanted. The rest of the SEM painting is done so we will see how it holds up.

Good points on the SBC stoker build but I am going to stick with a factory fuel injected big block. I've gone the aftermarket fuel injection route and won't do that again. The GM engineers did a lot of work putting together a good package that will work reliably at +90F to -40 and that's what I'm looking for. Plus I want a PCM that will run it all including the 4L80E.

[watahyahknow]

definetely right , if you running a cookiecutter setup that has the ecu from the factory you able to run it without any problems , when you want more you have to go intoo the aftermarket stuff
i just started on an aftermarket setup
still collecting parts
have the vems ecu , bosch wideband lambda and honda motorcycle cop coils
going to go with bigger injectors and a turbo
the reason why i go this route is because the ecu for the engine im using isnt suitable for hacking intoo

[MTCK]

Sounds like a cool project. Do you have a build thread going?

[watahyahknow]

not yet
the engine i'm using is a jaguar aj6
4 liter 24 valve multipoint fuelinjection about 250 hp stock NA all aluminium and build like a brick house
prolly be able to squeese out a little more than that with some basic pocketporting and gasketmatching and a better airflowsensor
i allso have the jaguar version of the 4l80 transmission different case but inside is the same as the gm version
all will be fitted in a 1978 c10

theres some things i want to find out before i (re)start a topic , like if the engine will fit in the truck
they done the chevy intoo jaguar swaps so i guess the other way around should work to
i prolly start posting everything by the time im halfway through the build and i know it will work

[Greenlee]

Nice work. Interior looks great.

[MTCK]

Thanks Greenlee. Been a while since I posted anything but I have been working on and working the truck. I replaced the brake booster, master cylinder and all the power steering / brake pressure lines with new parts from AC Delco. The brakes are amazing now. 100 times better.

[MTCK]

Wired up all the gauges in the pod. This was necessary because I had some heavy hauling to do. 12 loads of gravel at 16k combined and three equipment trailer moves later my inlaws and I had our driveways re-rocked.