Halfbreed - GMC Z71 + IH Extd Cab

[sparkydog]

And to wrap up Saturday's tasks - I did a half teaser/half real mockup and put both the IH front bench and the GMC X-Cab rear bench into the truck to start getting my ideas for some interim bench brackets fabbed up.

(Note that the chicken was mocking up shotgun.)

I should mention that my long term goals for seats are pretty vague. I know that I want to use the 97 GM rear seat frame and "technology" to fold up/down, but I want to loose the headrests and have the cushions/covers match and look like 60's era. Up front I may go with either buckets or 60/40 bench. However all that is a long way off. So for now it's make do with what I have!

[low'n slow]

Progress is good. I like your build. Those old IH's look cool.

[89muscletruck]

If you want a rear seat that will more closely match the Ih seat in shape. Maybe you should look into an older gm ex-cab rear seat. The lower level trim seats from 94 and back dont have headrests, and they do not have the padded contours that your seat has. Plus they can be pretty cheap at a picknpull.

[sparkydog]

I wasn't feeling so hot most of today so I took it easy. I did manage to get some minor stuff done.

First I acted upon a brain fart from last night and figured out a way to shim the lower hinge on the DS door without having to remove the whole door. Worked great and now my DS door shuts nice and fits about the best that it will.

Then I started prepping the rear doors for surgery. I took the windows out of the rear doors. Of course I ran in to a couple more wasp nests because those guys must have owned the TAll. (Inside joke from the IH forum where I was always griping about all the wasp nest during the demo of the TAll.)

I stopped when I got to the little chrome trim strips. Does anyone have a special trick they do to get those things to come off without harming them?

Approx 6.5" is going to come out of these doors to make them X-cab rear doors.

[sparkydog]

Next I scratched an itch I had and pulled out a roof arch I had "harvested" off the GMC cab. I wanted to see how close it would come to fitting into the interior roof of the IH cab. I could not believe how close it came. So I decided to trim it up and get it ready to really go in. That pile of metal is ALL that I had to shave off the thing to get it to fit. I don't know why but I really get off on grafting stuff from one thing onto another.

I won't weld this arch in until I take care of the rust cleanup and treatment on the inside of the roof first. Then I will do the same thing the GM factory did and expansion foam between the arch and the roof skin.

[sparkydog]

And the last thing I did today was sketch up my design for some temp seat brackets for the IH front bench. I'll get the channel sometime this week and hope to have the seat use-able by the weekend.

[sparkydog]

I began the work to fit up the fenders and grille of the IH onto the GMC. First up on the chopping block was the GMC grille/radiator subpanel. I trimmed off some height on the corners so the IH fenders would clear. Next was a little trimming on the IH fenders up near the firewall - where I am trying to preserve the GM cowl drain outlets so in this area I was more willing to trim off IH metal.

These quick trims allowed me to get close to a proper fitment. But there are a number of areas where I need to either shorten the GM metal or clearance the IH grille.

If all I want to do is get the IH metal bolted up then I only need to take 1/2" out of something. But if I want to prepare the truck for the ultimate goal which is to shorten the IH nose 3" then I need to think of ways to get 3" of clearance into this area now.

I can get the 3" by either sliding the GM radiator/grille subassy back toward the fan 3", or - I can cut into the back of the IH grille and clearance by 3", or - a combo of both. After my 1st eve of studying all this I am presently thinking I will do a combo of both. Move the GMC equipment 1.5" rearward toward the fan and take 1.5" out of the back of the IH grille unit. If I did proceed and do this - then I would have ample clearance for now and an easy job of bolting on the IH fenders and grille.

[sparkydog]

Now that the IH fenders are able to fit in more or less their final positions I can probably list what the official mods are going to be to GMC gear inside the engine bay:

a) battery and tray have to drop 2" down into the fender skirts.
b) air filter/ice chest thingy has to move inboard toward the engine 2-3".
c) coolant puke tank is gone to provide room for the PS hood hinge to mount.
d) ECM and relay block have to move inboard 2 - 3" toward the engine.
e) GMC cruise control module has to probably mount to the hood rather than the firewall in order to offer up a mount location for the DS hood hinge.

[FRENCHBLUE72]

This thing is really comming along .. Looks great cant wait to see her done..

[sparkydog]

I was overdue for a humbling episode.
Spent 4 hrs tonight and only got the batt tray lowered. Sheet metal was not my friend. I liked my work while it was on the bench but when I put the inner fender skirt and batt tray back in the truck the tray wasn't level. Never thought about how I needed to mockup and tack while it was inside the truck. Doh!

Oh well I am OK with doing it all over again. This is really my first wasted 4hrs and I've been having a good string of luck for some time.

[JimmyFloyd]

have you considered other coolent overflow tanks? i know some older dodge trucks had a long narrow one that mounted to the radiator support, or some late 90's regals had a thin narrow one to fit between the shock tower and the pulleys on the motors. They might offer up some better solutions if you want a catch can.

Truck looks great and seems like a fun project. can't wait to see it finished.

[jd4300fel]

great thread glad i was at work so i could read it all

[sparkydog]

Originally Posted by JimmyFloyd

have you considered other coolent overflow tanks? i know some older dodge trucks had a long narrow one that mounted to the radiator support, or some late 90's regals had a thin narrow one to fit between the shock tower and the pulleys on the motors. They might offer up some better solutions if you want a catch can.

Truck looks great and seems like a fun project. can't wait to see it finished.

Good suggestion. The radiator I got at the wrecking yard is not rigged with the nipple for a puke tank and as I mentioned I wouldn't be able to put the stock '97 era config back in my truck. Is it bad to run a '97 motor without a puke tank and just keep a pressurized loop like the good old days?

[BlueJeep]

I'd do the recovery tank....and that's a recovery tank not an overflow tank. Some of the fancy aftermarket ones don't have any way for the coolant to return to the radiator. Especially driving with A/C on in the summer, you'll want it. Much less work than most of what you've already done.

[sparkydog]

I got a late start Friday but managed to tear out my 1st batt tray attempt and redo it. My fab skills are mediocre at best. But now the batt is down and reasonably level.

[sparkydog]

This morning I started getting the IH grille mated up to the truck. This is a shot after the 8 other trial fits and gradual clearance cutting I did on both the IH and GMC metal.

The next shot just shows a bolt in a fender but it represents a couple of hours of aligning the front end and finally anchoring down the fenders and grille to the GMC chassis.

Then I went "Around the engine bay in 1 day" and took care of:
the air filter housing (chop chop).

then the ECU got flopped around and a bracket fabbed up.

[sparkydog]

Next I fabbed new seat mount brackets. These are "temporary" (which with me means somewhere between a day and forever.) This allowed me to get the IH bench back in and now I no longer look so silly driving around sitting on a footstool.

[sparkydog]

And I wrapped up the day by cleaning out the shop, then cleaning off the inside and outside of the IH hood and throwing it up on the truck.

I'm not sure I'm ready to tackle the hood hinges yet but tomorrow I should be able to trim the GMC firewall and get the IH hood to sit where it belongs.

[Palf70Step]

That is really coming together. You are doing a great job!

[383Ram]

I have been following but had to go back and reread some from the beginning again. So much has happened in this thread. This is truly amazing work going on here. Keep it up!!!

[sparkydog]

I vowed that today I would slack off a bit and.... if I did work on the truck... I would only do things that did NOT involve a cutting disk or flap disk.

I am kind of burned out on those guys..

So, first thing I did this morning over coffee was take a couple of Under Hood Cam shots. Which show absolutely nothing but since I took them I will post them and waste all of our time!

[sparkydog]

Then I decided to play around with dashboards since I have two of them. I took the one off the 67 Pickup and started trying to figure out how to get the padding off and restore it to the way God wanted us to have dashboards - in all their solid metal, face smashing glory!

Then I proceeded to start cutting away at the GMC firewall top to clearance the IH hood. I think it only took 5 maybe 6 fits to get it. I may be done or.. maybe a leetle more I theenk.

(I realize that in order to get the hood hinges .. er the heenges mocked up I will probably need to drop the PS wheel and fender skirt so I can get my fat head up inside the engine bay.)

[sparkydog]

I mocked up the baldy dash and trimmed it a bit to clear the GMC steering column bracket. I also liked it better slid out some toward the driver. This looked right and also will probably overhang the HVAC unit better. I have to create room up inside for the HVAC ducting.

I should mention that the steering wheel is most definitely going too far out into the pass area. This was the byproduct of my decision to slide the cab forward. I'm going to run with what I brung for now but will have to either shorten it or get something else if I want the proper ergonomics someday.

[89muscletruck]

So cool...... I REALLYwish I had the gonads and the time to start cutting up a Truck like this.

[sparkydog]

I'm ready to consider using a professional body guy to shorten my rear doors and finish off the rear of the roof. My skills aren't far enough along to do a good job on these two areas and they just aren't something I want to kluge up.

Does anyone have a good SoCal body guy they want to refer me to? San Diego or Orange County is great but LA or Riverside is also no problem.

Thanks!