71 K20 Idaho Edition

[best view]

Jim u are really getting into this one,i look forward to seeing you finish this one

[Ol Blue K20]

Originally Posted by landarts

Thanks for tuning in!

I hope it makes a difference when it is all said and done. Thanks!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Was finally able to get things taped off and etching primer over the areas where I had wet sanded through to metal. Pulled off the wiper mechanism and was able to get everything cleaned up in there so that I can attempt to get a little color in those areas in the cowl. It is a really hard area to paint it right but it does need some paint so I will turn down the nozzle and see if I get it done without too many runs.

The firewall took some time to get it really clean after all the sanding, scrubbing with hot soap and water, degreasing, and then rinse and repeat. Can't wait to get this part done then move on to get the front portion of the frame cleaned up and painted so this can go back together and be mobile again.

Below are a few pictures after the first coat of etching primer is on. Also a picture of all the items that have shown up for the motor.

Looking good!

[Richard]

Good to see the truck moving forward.

[landarts]

Got out this morning and sprayed the firewall after another once over with wax and grease remover and getting everything set up for a few coats of paint. The paint flowed out nice and now will let it cure for at least another two days before I move on to the next item.

While that is occurring I will finish getting the two inner fender wells and core support ready with the front frame section so this can get back together.

[Ol Blue K20]

Originally Posted by landarts

Got out this morning and sprayed the firewall after another once over with wax and grease remover and getting everything set up for a few coats of paint. The paint flowed out nice and now will let it cure for at least another two days before I move on to the next item.

While that is occurring I will finish getting the two inner fender wells and core support ready with the front frame section so this can get back together.

Nice! It looks good..

[Greg58]

Exciting to see such great progress.
Greg

[Dieselwrencher]

Very nice!

[landarts]

Here are a couple of before shots of the frame and area that I wanted to clean up and paint before putting all the front sheet metal back on. Boy is that a chore to get 50 years of gunk and dirt off. I did the best I could do with the products and tools available in the garage and hoped that whatever I did would be better than the way it was.

Anyways i started off with using a needle scaler I bought about a year or so ago and that really did a good job of getting the caked on oil and dirt in a few places. Used several different sizes if wire brushes on handles and about 6 buckets of Simple green mixed with water for scrubbing. Once I thought I was close I went over one more time with Oil Eater solution, rinsed with water then wiped everything down with wax and grease remover. Shot a coat or two of Rust Reformer and then two coats of TEC Chassis Black. The finish came out nice and has a satin sheen which is what i was shooting for.

Did not do the springs since I already have 2.5 lift springs that will go in next, will clean up the axles and steering and shoot with the same as frame rails. When I was pulling off the crossmember i noticed a few cracks in the metal and the back tab ear was broken off so I will do some metal repair and prep it to paint also. Also was able to expose the vin and it matches the truck so that is always a good thing.

Overall I am pleased with how it turned out and it will work good for this application. Next up will be spraying the core support and inner wells.

[Greg58]

Very nice!

Greg

[Ol Blue K20]

Nice job, it looks great!

[BASE]

I'm about to attempt the same thing on mine while I have front sheetmetal off. I'll be very happy if it turns out that nice.

[landarts]

Originally Posted by BASE

I'm about to attempt the same thing on mine while I have front sheetmetal off. I'll be very happy if it turns out that nice.

Take your time and do lots of scrubbing. Here is the product I sprayed it with. Bought at the Napa Auto store along with Rustoleum Rust Reformer.
Two coats of Rust reformer and three coats of TEC Chassis Black.

[BASE]

Will do. I've been spraying everything with SPI epoxy so far, I'll probably stick with that. I haven't quite figured out what to do with the firewall though. It's horrible looking now and needs to be fixed while the engine is out, but I don't want to go get paint mixed just to shoot it with.

[Dieselwrencher]

Nice work! Does brake fluid and brake clean eat that TEC? I've got a couple of trucks to spray the front of the frames on and with it getting colder out poof can would be easier/faster. I was wanting to gun spray them but may not be able to.

[Louisvillekytruck]

Looks great

[best view]

Jim what have you been doing that truck is never going to get done at this pace hope your not sick kenny

[landarts]

Actually have been working on the truck everyday for the last two weeks. Just have not posted any pictures or updates. They will be coming soon.

[landarts]

So I guess it would be a good time to get caught up on what I have been working on over the last few weeks. I have been working on a few other projects including the Idaho Edition truck. A few months back I bought two trucks from the same seller here locally. One truck was a 70 K10 and the other was a 72 CST C20 parts truck with really good sheet metal.

The 70 K10 truck is actually a pretty solid truck with no rust but had a motor that was toast. So I decided to get a motor ready for the truck so I could drive it while repairing a few small items on the truck before I put it up for sale.

The additional repairs on this truck will be fixing a dent on the passenger door and respraying it, fix the clear coat where it is peeling and do some general maintenance.

Here are a few projects from that truck.
Pict 1 Truck at the P.O. house the day I went over to look at it
Pict 2 Truck at my friends place after we hauled to his property
Pict 3 Truck for parts that is rust free
Pict 4 Truck at my friends place after he pulled the motor and stripped the good parts needed for motor redo
Pict 5 Motor ready to go into the 70 K10 after lots of tedious work

[landarts]

Here is the one issue that I ran into while putting together the motor for the K10. A broken off thread chaser in one of the exhaust manifold bolt holes.
Looked it up on YouTube and found a video where a guy had the same situation and welded a washer to the chaser and built it up then welded at larger bolt 3/4 bolt size to the washer. Then slowly with a breaker bar unscrew it out.
Worked the first try. Last picture is it all loaded up and heading to my friends to get it installed into the K10.

[landarts]

With that out of the way back to the Idaho Edition. I needed to get that out of the way otherwise it might be a few more months until I get around to getting that truck drivable so I can work on it.
So next on the list was to get the motor from the K20 cleaned up stripped down, painted and back in the truck. While I was working on getting the oil and dirt off of the motor I needed to also do some repairs on the motor crossmember sand motor mounts.

When I pulled the motor at the end of October I noticed that the one of the mounts and two locations on the crossmember needed some welding done. So I finally got around to getting them cleaned up and a quick round in the Sand blast cabinet before the welding. That turned out to be about a half days worth of work since the blasting cabinet needed some maintenance and care before use.

Did the welding and a little bit of beating with a hammer to get the bolt hole area that was cracked back into place. Then used a carbide bit to grind down the welds a bit and then switched to a 3"disc on a little die grinder.
About half way through using the die grinder to knock down the welds I was getting a boat load of tiny metal shavings and shard from the grinding so I laid two really strong magnets on top of the crossmember where I was grinding and let them do the work of containing the mess. Still need to chase the holes with a step bit to open them up and a little paint and I can cross that off the list and install.

Pict 1, 2, 3 are of the mounts and frame before repair
Picts 4,5 are out of blast cabinet and the welding done and smoothed out a little

[Rickysnickers]

No picture is complete without the "Merc" in the background! HAHAHAHA

[landarts]

Also had a little side project for my friend Travis that is building an 68 service bed truck that he is getting ready to sell and he also the one installing my 350 V8 I built into the Teal colored K10. When I was out at is property dropping off the motor and box of parts to go on the truck we got to talking about the progress on his 68 serve bed truck project. The truck has a really cool medium blue color that has oxidized and some patina that he is going to keep original. He had a original dash pad that he pulled off to do some repair work in the interior and asked me if I knew of a way to fix the four small defects/holes in the dash. I said yes and I happened to have the color in SEM you need so I took on the small project to help him out moving the ball forward on his project.

When I got home I scrubbed it down a few times with a couple of different products and addressed the areas that were punctured or open with some sand paper to create so bite for filling. I used some JB weld epoxy that is made for plastics, vinyl, and a few other substrates. It is a 5 minute cure epoxy so I knew in my garage at about 65 to 68 degrees it will give me a little more pot time before it gets sticky. Knowing that I did a test sample on an old dash pad piece that was trashed I had in the shop. The idea I had was to hit the epoxy with a crunched up piece of Saran wrap just when the epoxy is getting tacky but not 100% hardened. The test sample worked out great and I decided to move on to the dash pad for Travis.

I taped off the areas that needed epoxy and left just enough revealed to do the repairs. Mixed up the epoxy and added a little West Systems colloidal silica for filler to the epoxy to get to a harder peanut butter consistency. Smoothed it on and when it got tacky pressed in the Saran wrap for texture. After that I took it in the house to cure for a couple of days. When it was all good I knocked down those areas with a little wet and dry paper, wiped it down with wax and grease remover and shot a coat of adhesion promotor to get it ready to except the SEM blue color. After a couple of coats had flashed off I could see the areas that I repaired were not taking the SEM as the rest of the pad was so I did a couple of spritz with SEM texture spray then two more coats and that did the trick.

I had also recommended a shop truck logo to go with the patina so I did a mock up in Photoshop of his door while he had off to do rocker repairs. If we go with this I will cut a stencil with my vinyl plotter and hand paint on with thinned down one shot paint and treat for patina look.

Pict 1,2 shows where a few of the holes were on the pad in white filler
Pict 3 shows after the last coats were applied
Pict 4,5 shows the door from the truck and the mockup

[landarts]

So back to the Idaho edition build with the motor I pulled from the truck is in great shape, has good compression and is a strong running motor.
So I will keep this motor in the truck and just freshen it up a bit. Here is the plan going forward on the motor.

These are the items on the motor that I am replacing from the top down:
-Edelbrock 1406 carb with electric choke
-Edelbrock 2701 Performer intake manifold
-Edelbrock valve covers
-Pertronics Flame Thrower HEI small cap distributor
-Pertronics 45K Flamethrower coil
-Jegs Ram Horn exhaust manifolds
-ACDelco water pump
-New fuel pump
-Spectra thermostat housing
-Gates thermostat
-Taylor spark plug wires
-ACDelco spark plugs
-Wire loom holder
-Woven heat shield boots to go over spark plug wires to protect from exhaust manifold
-New heater hoses 5/8" and 3/4"
-New Grommets for valve covers
-New belts
-Duplicolor primer and ceramic paint

Spent a boat load of time degreasing and cleaning up the motor for paint. Had to do it in the garage so I laid down a large piece of thick Visqueen plastic to catch any of the mess falling down on the floor. I also have an hard plastic tray that mounts on bottom of engine stand to catches fluids. So I started with the needle scaler to knock off any hard oil deposits then moved into the oven cleaner from the dollar store. Couple of rounds of that then moved on to a few degreaser products with a bunch of scrubbing. Finished off with a round of Brilo soap pads and rinsed with water from spray bottle. Wiped it down with wax and grease remover and shot the first round of primer to see if any thing pops up that I missed or primer not sticking. That went well so I shot two coats of black Duplicolor ceramic paint.

I a few days of the motor paint curing I started the weekend assembling the motor parts. Everything went well bolting on and also for the first time did the spark plug wires cut to fit using the new terminal crimper cutter I bought. That process took for ever on the first side and once I got the hang of it about 20-30 minutes to do the other side. Over all the motor freshen up went the way I wanted it to go and really like the look of how it turned as well as the added performance.

[landarts]

I have also been getting ready for a twin stick install coming up here in the near future. Installing a twin stick onto the existing NP205 transfer case will give you the following 4 wheel high, 4 wheel low, 2 wheel high and 2 wheel low. I became interested in this after seeing it on the jimbosprint thread with his 72 k10. After talking to the owner of JB Custom fabrication he wanted top down pictures of the gear linkage to see if the sticks needed to be modified.

The install is done by removing the shift tubes and modifying or purchasing different shift tubes modified by them and install the linkage and new gear shifters. I am going to go with the new shift tubes so I can include the stock shift tubes and shifter if I sell the truck and someone wants to turn it back to complete stock NP205. I will do this when I pull the transfer case to change out the seals and freshen up. Right now I am on the hunt for extra NP205 so I can do the work on it then just change out over a weekend to keep the truck drivable.

Pict 1,2 are from my shifters in the truck
Pict 3 is from the jimbosprint thread to show what it will loo like. They also sell other shift knobs if you dont want the stock ones

[jimbosprint]

Looks like you might need the same modified handles as mine. It's a little difficult to tell from the photos, but it seems like the connection to the transfer case is at the rear of the opening in the floor, not in the middle. I think his regular handles are for 1973 and up trucks.