It's my turn, 47 S10 build

[Cautrell05]

Threads not dead. Gonna try and get some updates in the next couple days.

[Cautrell05]

Sorry about the lack of updates. Last year was a bit of a roller coaster. Between all the covid bs and quality of my work environment going to crap my motivation was long gone for much of anything. Between bad management chasing out good help and the new help being way under qualified and under motivated I had just had enough. I got really lucky and one of the guys I work with sent me a link for a restoration shop near me looking for help. I knew it was going to be a part cut, they just went through and gave everybody big raises to stay. In a shop with 17 techs, 5 had quit in the previous 2 months. I went over and we talked numbers and he was close enough to make it work so in September I loaded up my tools from the gm dealer that I had been at for 13 years and started over as the new guy. For someone that enjoys building things from scratch as a hobby this place is the definition of a dream job. No set schedule, work whatever days I want, 40 plus overtime however I want to schedule it. Nobody yelling at me at 802 because I'm late, no customers showing up 2 hours early and wanting their stuff done right now, nobody pissed off because they got towed in for the third time this month. No stress, no pressure, nothing like the car shows on tv. And I have a key to the shop and full access whenever I want.
The place is pretty well set up. Three hoists, two band saws, drill press, sheet metal stomp shear, large and small sheet metal brake, 2 110 migs, 220 mig, 220 Tig, plasma cutter, full size industrial lathe and mill. They do everything from small upgrades to full frame off restorations. The shop owner did the interior and upholstery work. Many times all from scratch. Needless to say progress had tremendous. I'll and get updates as I can. My laptop is being stubborn and it takes forever to type on my phone.

[Cautrell05]

Couple pictures of some shop projects we're currently working on

[6DoF]

life happens, it's not always a bad thing :thumbsup:

[Cautrell05]

Throttle hook up wasn't too bad but it did take some work. I wanted to be able to use a standard replacement 47 pedal inside for looks and simplicity and also run the standard steel rod under the hood for the same reason. I have ran them in the past right from the pedal to the bottom of the throttle arm at the carb as a push rod but it didn't line up as well as I wanted on this one. Instead I built a bell rank that bolts to the firewall and the throttle arm pivots on that. Used a universal 3/8" door bushing and pin set and tapped the pin for a 3/8 lock nut. Initially it seemed good but now that it's on I need to pull it and make the arm a little longer.

[Cautrell05]

The front sway bar was the next thing I worked on. I was trying to get stuff mocked up while the front sheet metal was off. With the 4 inch frame mod a third gen Camaro sway bar just fit in place. 3 inches would have
Made it line up perfect but it clears and I think it will be fine. I got lucky at the you pull it and there was a 90s formula firebird with a 36mm hollow front sway bar. Works out well as the front sway bars on 07 and up suburbans are also 36mm and the mounts on those are a little better.
So the suburban sway bar mounts and bushings combined with some 2 1/2"x3/8" strap for the frame mounts were tacked in place. I drilled and tapped them first for 3/8". Studs ended up being used just to make it easier. Standard sway bar end link bushings were used with a custom length sleeve. I fully welded the mounts in later when the chassis was at work.

[Cautrell05]

About the middle of may the wife mentioned a local car show that was coming up in the middle of June and suggested that I enter it as a work in progress. I really had no interest in pushing it into a car show as it sat but considering the equipment available at my new job I wanted to be able to drive it in. Even if it's just functional enough to drive, stop and steer safely. The next 5 weeks were an idiotic continue thrash session of going in early, I was there several times before 6, and staying late after work. I made a ton of progress but I don't remember what I did and did not get pictures of so I have to sort through and find or take new.

[6DoF]

i'm jealous of that throttle link, that's awesome.

[Cautrell05]

Originally Posted by 6DoF

i'm jealous of that throttle link, that's awesome.

Thank you. It took a bit to get it worked out properly. Now I need to figure out how to add a kickdown cable sand cruise cable to it so I don't have either one up on the intake.

[Cautrell05]

Kinda jumping back and forth between this past summer and now because im really bad about doing updates. The plan for a long time had been to mount the hydroboost and master cylinder under the floor on part of the chassis brace that I previously welded in. After getting the plate welded to the chassis and the booster mounted The next step was the push rod and as expected it did not line up directly with the pedal. It was possible to go straight from the pedal to the booster but it would be severely sideloading the booster where the pushrod goes in and I think long-term it would not be good for it. So the not so quick solution was to build basically an idler that pivots halfway between the pedal in the master cylinder. That way the pushrod from the brake pedal is lined up at 90 degrees and the pushrod from The idler to the booster is going in a 90°. The other added benefit is the side coming from the pedal I have a couple different holes I can mount it into either increase or decrease brake pressure. I spent an afternoon making use of the equipment at my job and got all my individual pieces made on either the mill or the lathe and then tig welded it all together. My TIG welds might not be Instagram quality but they're more than structural I don't look horrible anyway. It worked out really well that that the front bar for the chassis brace lined up and made a good mount for the idler.
The rest of the brake system consist of GM full size calipers on the 92 Impala spindles up front, and then out back it has GM metric parking brake calipers that you can get from speedway. As it sits right now there is no proportioning valve. There's just a distribution block that I don't know where I picked it up at but it fits really well with where everything fits. Brake bias was handled by a different size calipers front and rear. The big full-size GM calpers up front and 11 7/8" rotors and outback the smaller metric calipers on the 11 1/2" Rotors.

[_Ogre]

just noticed your mc pic. i had my tank under the floor for a couple years, had to check/fill the reservoir from under the floor, that worked fine until i had a leak. found this little item on a cobra replicar site, they mount the mc under the fender where it's hard to service. find a nissan quest or mercury villager and get the tank and mc adapters from one to convert to a remote reservoir. teflon lined hose is pricey, i got lucky and bought the end of a roll from a gearhead

1st pic is the adapters stuck in 2003 ford hydroboost with the tank in the back
2nd pic is the remote reservoir on my firewall

[dsraven]

That works great. I did the same thing g on a rail buggy I built a few years back.

[Cautrell05]

Originally Posted by dsraven

That works great. I did the same thing g on a rail buggy I built a few years back.

The tunability is a huge bonus. Because the master cylinder is huge, 1 3/8" I believe, there is practically no extra pedal travel but the booster makes up for it and it stops great. Right now the pedal is a couple inches lower than stock and I might drop it a little lower just for comfort since I don't need the extra travel.

[Cautrell05]

Both pictures are engine running, second one is with pretty firm pressure on the pedal.

[Cautrell05]

Going through my list. Cab and front clip is mounted, steering and brakes are hooked up, throttle and shifter hooked up. Getting the bed mounted was the next step. I cannot express how lucky I am to have a full Fab shop in my disposal after hours to work on this thing. Most of the work was done on the one far hoist that we weren't using at the time. With it up on the hoist and leveled front to back and side to side within an eighth of an inch I started getting the box in place. I have about a half a dozen of these trucks within a hundred yards of the back door of the shop for reference measurements so that was nice. I also mocked up the running boards in place to make sure everything seemed about right. The front mounts are some 1 1/4" square 1/8" wall tubing with a piece of inch and a half angle on top. The back one is a section of I believe it was three inch square tubing that I cut in half lengthwise to make two L brackets. If it was a work truck I probably would have went heavier on the mounts, but let's be real here. It's working days are done. It's getting the easy life from here on out. The heaviest load it might have is a motorcycle and luggage from our place up to the Black hills which is 8 or 9 hours. Other than that it's going to be coolers and lawn chairs. It won't be hauling firewood or scrap iron.
For the two middle mounts, I used a set of standard 47 Chevy bed cross bars, both of them to the box with a piece of wood is a spacer so they're at the right height and then bent and welded an ear on the crossbars that bolted to the top of the frame rail. That may end up being a pain in the ass later, as my intention when I blow it apart to paint and powder coat everything is to fully box the frame. But I'll cross that when I get there.

[Cautrell05]

Originally Posted by _Ogre

just noticed your mc pic. i had my tank under the floor for a couple years, had to check/fill the reservoir from under the floor, that worked fine until i had a leak. found this little item on a cobra replicar site, they mount the mc under the fender where it's hard to service. find a nissan quest or mercury villager and get the tank and mc adapters from one to convert to a remote reservoir. teflon lined hose is pricey, i got lucky and bought the end of a roll from a gearhead

Generally I'm not a big fan of master cylinders under the floor mainly from a service standpoint but I get it. Most of the builds we do have it on the firewall but we do put some under the floor depending on what the customer wants.

I was kinda the same way, I wanted it clean under the hood. I hate filling the little cast master cylinders. Mines not much better but the huge 1 QT+ res is see through and has a low level sensor that I will eventually hook up when I get to the gauges. Makes it a lot easier to check and I have plenty of warning before it runs out.

The remote reservoir is a good idea. I'll have to keep that in mind.

How do you like the Ramjet? I put one in my 68 Impala with a 700r4 and 3.08 gears and I was super happy with it. Ran smooth, insane torque at lower rpm, tire smoke at will from a stop. Put another one in the bosses 64 Chevy pickup. I think that one still had the deep gears from the 6cyl in it because it wouldn't even try to hook up.

[6DoF]

holy chit, that bed floor is amazing! well played!

[Hey Dude]

I'm going to steal that bed wood idea for sure.

[6DoF]

Originally Posted by Hey Dude

I'm going to steal that bed wood idea for sure.

not if my wife steels it first

[Cautrell05]

Originally Posted by 6DoF

holy chit, that bed floor is amazing! well played!

Thank you

[Cautrell05]

I suppose drivetrain is next. I knew from the beginning I wanted an old school small block in it because I wanted the vintage look, and I had a 400 block that I've been dragging around for close to 20 years waiting for a project to put in. But unfortunately I found out the hard way that the hood on these trucks is not waterproof. And by that I mean the center strip it covers the seam between the left and the right halves just has tabs to go through holes in the hood and are twisted to hold it in place. There's no actual weather strip, and when you get steady rain it follows those tabs down and it drips right on top of the intake manifold. Now if you have a complete sealed engine it's not a super big deal other than you get water spots and it's kind of pain. But, if you have an engine block, heads intake and valve covers bolded together for mock up with no gaskets, it will drip on the intake enough to eventually run down the intake ports and into the cylinders. I found that out the hard way when I got the engine down to the machine shop and we started tearing it apart. There is several cylinders that had really deep pits from water sitting in them. So rather than go through all the work of cleaning the block and everything like normal, we just put it right on the boring machine and punched the two worst cylinders out to 30 with the intention of if they cleaned up we'd knock all them out to 30 and then backtrack and throw the block in the parts washer. But even at 30 there's still some really deep pits that I don't think 40 would have cleaned up and 60 over on a street motor I just didn't really feel like dealing with it.

So to backtrack a little bit farther last Christmas my wife surprised the hell out of me and she got a hold of a friend of mine who runs machine shop that actually happens to be right next door to where I work now. She picked up the bill ahead of time for all the machine work on my engine. She been working a bunch of extra shifts at the hospital through the big covid rush last year and she wanted to help out and try and give my project a little boost. I think the labor Bill ended up being somewhere around $1,000 between going through the block, going through the heads, assembling and everything. I didn't have the heart to tell her right away that that was just labor and that parts were still additional on that but hey it was still a pretty cool gift.


Bottom end of the engine is a 4 bolt 400 .030 over, I got lucky and one of the guys I was working with at the time had a 72 Chevy pickup that had a 400 in it. So 200 bucks later I've got another block. That one cleaned up good over at the machine shop. Rotating assembly I priced all over, most of them for decent parts were a little over a thousand to 1200. And then from there it could go up to wherever you feel like spending money. The hard part for me is I keep thinking about what I put in my race motors back when running Street stocks, and it keep telling myself do I really need that in this? It's not turning 7000 RPM night after night. I highly doubt it'll ever see 6,000. Speedway motors in Lincoln had a pretty decent deal on the rotating assembly. The standard weight cast steel 400 crank, set a $350 H-beam rods that were probably Overkill but why not, and I believe it said Keith black dished pistons. Compression ratio with my heads should be about 9.5-9.7 to one with the standard head gasket. Cylinder heads are set of cast iron Dart iron eagles that I picked up for $450 assembled. 2.02,1,6 valves, the intake ports are only 180 cc's which if I was looking for all out power they would be choking it out on the top end in that 6,000 RPM range. But because I'm looking for low-end mid-range power the smaller ports will give me a little better velocity. I really wanted to send them out to brezinski's and have a set of camelbacks milled on the end of them for the overall look but they wanted another 400 bucks for that so I opted out. You'll see why in a little bit. For camshaft I don't know if I'm just getting old or what combined with the numerous posts I've seen in the engine forums about flat tappet lifters self destructing. But I just have no patience to break in a flat tappet cam and hope it survives considering the amount of work that I need to do to clean all the metal out if it fails. Ignoring protest from my wallet and maybe that one card that the wife doesn't watch that close when I make payments on I went with the Howard's retrofit roller cam. spent several days looking at different cams doing a lot of reading trying to decide on what I wanted. There's more to it than just left and duration. The big choppy idle sounds nice but they don't always perform that well at lower rpm. And then when you're listening to video clips on YouTube of people that are nice and poster cam specs you got to take into account a smaller engine will respond more to a cam than a bigger one. I'm pretty happy with the cam I picked out. It's got a very solid lope at idle that in gear or out of gear you can't mistake. But in the 50 or so Miles I put on it it's very drivable it doesn't struggle at low RPM that much. And it runs really well through mid-range and top end. Instead of Comp cams push rods and some 15 roller rockers around everything out. I don't remember the length right off hand but the stock length pushrods for a 96 to 2000 vortec 350 are the correct length for anybody else wanting to run one of the retrofit roller cams.

[Cautrell05]

I wanted the scripted valve cover no breather look for the engine. I had one of the old 327 cast iron intakes with the factory breather pipe and the four-barrel Holley flange. That would have functioned, but I felt like it needed to breathe a little better than that. Edelbrock still makes a performer RPM intake it comes with the oil pipe and it's machine from the factory. They're only 260 bucks on eBay but I still didn't want to spend that much. One of the extra intake manifolds they had from my racing days was Edelbrock 2101 just a standard aluminum performer. It was not drilled for the oil pipe but it had the area cast for it. Years back there used to be a lot of intake companies that did that. Now there's only one or two. So I built a jig at work from some leftover bits that held the intake up at an angle so that that filler pipe was straight up and down. Once the intake was mounted right angle I put it in the mill and with the help of my friend that runs the machine shop we bored the home in the front of the intake for the oil pipe. The next question is how to run the pcv. I could have just run a breather on that pipe but the downside of that is all your engine vapors are going to come out of there continuously as designed and be cleaning oil residue off the motor. And where I got a mile and a half of gravel between my house and the highway it would just end up being a constant mass. GM went away from a PCV valve and just went to a fixed orifice system probably a little over 15 years ago on most of their V8 engines. Did some reading on it and it's actually pretty simple to do. Basically you just got your intake vacuum port with the hose runs to the valve cover and somewhere in that passageway there's a restrictor with a small hole. Somewhere around 2:00 to 2 1/2 mm depending on the engine. That way you've got steady vacuum to the crankcase to pull out fuel fumes which also helps prevent minor leaks and compensate for blow by at idle. Pretty much the way you check it on mine it was easiest I took my vacuum gauge and I hooked it to the dipstick tube and I took my hand and I pulled it the end of the pipe on the intake. You should have somewhere around 3 inches of vacuum at idle. If you got more than that you need a smaller restrictor, if you got less than that you need a larger restrictor.
The restrictor was made from just a piece of aluminum bar stock on the lathe. Center drilled it through the middle and then cut the outside down small enough that it would be a fairly tight fit and the PCV hose. Which in this case is just a piece of 3/8 fuel line.

[Cautrell05]

The restrictor itself is the easy part. The fitting on the intake not so much. From the top side it seems simple enough, I picked a spot in front of the distributor, drilled and tapped it for quarter inch pipe thread and I've got an elbow fitting with a hose barb on it. That would work, but there's a lot better chance of it picking up extra oil that gets slung around the lifter valley. What I did for that was well the baffle on the bottom side of the intake. Being aluminum helped versus cast. The piece that I welded in is fit really tight all the way around except for the back edge there's a quarter inch Gap along the top and then behind that there's another piece that goes from the top down and overlaps around so there is no direct path at where anything can spray up to the fitting. My TIG welds as I've said are not Instagram quality, and cast aluminum especially one that has been run on an engine for extended time is not always well to cleanest but at least I know they're solid and ain't going to come off. I also took a small belt sander to the Edelbrock logo just behind the thermostat housing. Very carefully ground off the letters and then took it upstairs and put it in the more aggressive of our two sandblasting cabinets and hit that area really really hard just to put a little texture back in it. After it's painted if you know where to look and you get the light just right you can see the difference in texture but at a regular glance you don't see that area was modified. Just another thing to try and camouflage the upgrades.

The intake was upside down when I photographed it. I have no idea why the picture of the hose is upside down.

[oldman3]

Nice work...Jim

[Cautrell05]

I also modified a set of oil pan reinforcement plates for a '96 to 2000 small block with a one piece main to use on my 400. I had a couple sets of them that I held on to years back. GM went the easy route when they did their oil pan rails. When they switched to a driver side dipstick they just reverse the two and tweaked the back a little. Flip them side to side and they match up for 85% of the pan. The back needed a little bit of reworking but it really wasn't that hard to do. I had maybe 45 minutes in the whole thing. I know if you get a good pan and make sure everything's flat you tight it up properly they generally don't leak, but I feel a lot better with these in there.