Bkndsdl's '67 short step - Jake

[Bkndsdl]

Meet Jake, my '67 short step.







'Jake' just seems to fit. Nothing special, 250, 3ott. Got it locally for a decent price. Just concentrating on getting the truck road worthy at the moment, juggling working on my son's '80 short fleet, Dirty Dan.

Plan on keeping it a stepside. My '64 was a step, and I've always liked a step over the fleet.

Right now I just want to get the truck on the road for a semi-daily driver. The transmission didn't last long, a light-duty muncie that is impossible to find parts for, and wouldn't be much if I did. Non-synchronized first gear is a pain. So I swapped the saginaw 3 from my son's truck into mine and put a saginaw 4 in his. The driveshaft is in the process of being shortened and new u-joints installed. Today I took the time to make new linkage, so all I'm waiting on is the driveshaft. Can't wait!

[Katrina/10]

I like your new truck!

[Bkndsdl]

Originally Posted by Katrina/10

I like your new truck!

Thanks man! I see you're in Ocean Springs, I work right down the road from there, maybe we can meet up sometime so I can admire your truck!

[68 C10 Driver]

I love the truck, but then again I am partial to the SWB Stepsides. Your truck looks to be very solid, mine is a rust bucket, well at least less of one since the bodywork on the cab. I look forward to following your build!

[Bkndsdl]

Originally Posted by 68 C10 Driver

I love the truck, but then again I am partial to the SWB Stepsides. Your truck looks to be very solid, mine is a rust bucket, well at least less of one since the bodywork on the cab. I look forward to following your build!

Thanks! One of the reasons I bought it was because of how good shape the cab was. It needs corners and rockers, but the floor board, drip channels, cowl, all of the bad spots are really good. There's bondo, but it looks to be just skimmed so should be ok I hope.

[Bkndsdl]

So I noticed some of the white paint flaking, and there was this awesome green color under the flakes; here's what Jake originally looked like:



Kinda tempted to go back that way. When my son and I were at Battle in Bama, I saw a few that piqued my interest:

This one was all around nice. Love the color.



BUT...............this one was just perfect. Hard to capture this green but man, this is the color.

[Bkndsdl]

What I've done sofar:

• Installed shoulder belts; it had lap belts only.
• Removed the tool box and sold it.
• Changed the clutch, pressure plate, throwout bearing, pilot bushing, and flywheel. All were in sad shape.
• Got the radio working; it's got a 10" subwoofer and a 200 watt amp!
• Had a small leak in the radiator repaired.
• Ordered a new heater core; PO broke the top tube trying to replace the hoses. While I had that apart I ordered new gaskets, fan, and resistor.
• Rebuilt the carburetor multiple times, trying to cure a bog after acceleration. I've taken it apart and put it back together about 10 times.......still not working. I believe there is a vacuum issue as well....

On top of this, the engine is leaking water near the firewall side of the block, somewhere in between the intake runners. It leaks when standing still.......Also, when the radiator was repaired, they told me it was full of mud. I think it's leak stop, it's been flushed repeatedly and still comes out brown....AND, two of the three freeze plugs appear to have been replaced, and it looks like they didn't do it right because it looks like whatever they used to seal them wasn't right and melted out of the block. Lucky me!

This prompted me to start looking at replacement engines. I am not ready for a V8 yet; like I said, I want a dependable daily for right now. V8 will be later. So surfing the internet landed me a 250 and a 3 spd saginaw for $450. It's running and driving and has 84k original miles on it. It's from an
81 square, so it has HEI, but does not have smog. It's still in the truck, waiting for someone to purchase it. It'll be pulled next weekend, and I'll make a 6 hour round trip to go get it.

[Bkndsdl]

So this week has been crazy. Prepping for Jake's heart transplant while juggling life. Plan is to pull the old out tomorrow after work, then Saturday early make the 3 hour drive to get the new engine. I've gotten a few things done, like taking the engine pulling tabs from Dirty Dan and installing them on Jake. My son calls this 'stealing', but both the titles are in my name, so......

Here's where I started questioning the motor's integrity.
I don't think the PO did this, because he was absolutely clueless on vehicles, but somebody did, and I got screwed. Looks like stop-leak, acts like stop-leak.......must be stop leak.



That was after having the radiator repaired and rodded, and flushing multiple times after heat cycling for several hours BEFORE putting the radiator back in the system. That picture was taken some time ago. This was this week, after I flushed the engine some more.



This is also a concern. Believe it or not, that is after flushing the fuel tank. That is the second filter too.........it's coming clean, but I think I will flush one more time.



Aforementioned 'acquired' hardware from Dirty Dan, after a quick run-through in the parts washer.



Good thing about Chevy, they liked redunancy. These came off a truck 13 years newer than mine, and bolted right in place. Gotta love 'em.

Removed the radiator and hoses, pulled the fan and pulley from the water pump, disconnected the electrical connections on the alternator and passenger side, and disconnected the transmission shift linkage from the trans.




Last night, I was able to get the exhaust off, disconnected the clutch connections, and removed the transmission bell housing mounts.



All that is left to get ready is to disconnect the throttle linkage, the starter wiring, then unbolt the engine mounts, which I'll do Friday hopefully.

[Bkndsdl]

Not brown truck, but new parts nonetheless. The window felt is completely gone, so a call to YearOne was put in. Arrived this week.



After watching a few videos on the replacment, I made me a trim removal tool.

Before:



After:



Works like a charm. Now if it'll stop raining and I have some time, I'll get that replaced so it doesn't whistle, and doesn't rain inside the truck.

[Bkndsdl]

Sadly, it doesn't take long for things to accumulate.........shop needs cleaning again. Gotta get that cleaned soon.

[Bkndsdl]

And, motor's out.



That was difficult. It's not worth the time and work it took to remove the engine with the transmission in place. Won't be going back in that way, I can tell you that, lol.

Once I got it out, I pulled the intake/exhaust manifold to find the source of the leak:



Freeze plugs..........Evidently whoever 'rebuilt' the motor neglected to change these out. All three are leaking. Good thing is, it's rebuildable. I don't feel like I could have rebuilt it for the price I'm paying for the new engine/trans, so I'm ok with this. Don't think I would have just fixed the freeze plugs anyway, so that's just that much longer before I was able to drive the truck again.

[Bkndsdl]

Slowly but surely getting the motor ready to go in. Had a brain fart Tuesday putting the pressure plate on.......had to put something in the flywheel so I could torque the flywheel bolts; quickest thing I could find was a long screw. Got the bolts torqued down, and went ahead and put the clutch and pressure plate on. Of course, I put the screw in from the wrong direction.............and got the pleasure of removing the pressure plate after torquing it down of course.



After I got that done and put the bell housing on I called it a day.

Next day was a big day. I was able to get the remnants of the exhaust back together and welded up. Basically, I wanted to weld it back together, then cut it where and how I want it. Right now the plan is to go with dual exhaust, but it's still up in the air at the moment. Went together relatively easily. There were two full cuts for each exhaust, then one incomplete cut where they only could go so far and started over.

Here's where I tacked it up back where it was.



Then I removed the exhaust from the engine and welded it up on the table.





After that, I did some clad weld repair to the clutch linkage. I think it's seen its share of clutch engagement.......



Other side was almost as bad:



I cladded the rod back up, and I'll grind it back into shape later.





Next up - Got the engine in the engine bay!



Big accomplishment for this fella!



I got the mount bolts only started; I need the rear of the block in a slight down position for installing the trans, so just put the bolts into the mounts and not tightened.

Boys helped me put the hood back on, rain was in the forecast.



Called it a day after that.........after a full 10 hours at work, I'm beat at the end of the day. Almost done though.

[Bkndsdl]

Today's work was to install the transmission, install the driveshaft, connect the shift linkage, install the bell housing mounts, tighten the engine mounts now that the trans was installed, install the parking brake cable, install the alternator wiring, install the starter wiring, install the radiator, install the fan clutch, and install the fan shroud, if you want to call it that. Also installed the oil pressure sender, because the engine came with a two spade connector and the original was a single spade connector. Also used my original alternator, as the connections are different between the two. I'll have to buy an alternator belt or use my original pulley; since I've installed the fan clutch already, I'm just going to buy a new belt for the '81 year. Getting closer!!

[Bkndsdl]

Always a welcome ring of the doorbell.



Blower motor and fan. All that is left is the gasket kit (which I got confirmation of being shipped today), and the bolt kit for the hood-to-cowl connection, which also secures the seal at that point, and which I already have. Parts are good!

[Bkndsdl]

Took Friday off last week to do two major things; 1) Fix the power steering leak in my daily (1995 Mazda Miata M Edition) as well as replace the AC components, and 2)get the engine completed in Jake. Unfortunately I was only able to finalize one of them due to the weather. Ended up pushing the Miata into the garage as far as I could so I could finish that work.



Fought me the whole way, but now I'm not leaving my mark in power steering fluid everywhere, and I've got ac, so it was worth it.

As for Jake; I was able to get the belt put on, clean up the clutch rod ends, get the clutch engagement bar installed somewhat, get the window gaskets installed on the drivers door, get antifreeze in the radiator, and get a meager start on the exhaust. Oh, and got it started.

Here's the clutch rod after cleaning.



Installed easily, and got that all hooked up. I will have to revisit the clutch engagement bar, because it's just a bit too long, and it's actually impacting the rear exhaust stud just a tad. Not a biggie, but if I can't get it machined I'll have to build another one.

Next I tackled the antifreeze.......that was a BEAR. I was not able to get the petcock to stop leaking, and ended up wasting 2 whole gallons of antifreeze. Three trips to the parts store to get the right size, and finally got some antifreeze in the stupid thing.

Then I tackled the window rubber. It was gone.....it was so hard and brittle I had to just break it out. Came out in pieces.



Some more of the telltale signs of Jake's original hue.



The vent window rubber had to be scraped out.



The rear glass runner was pretty rusted up. Decided to blast that, and put some paint on it.



After a few minutes in the highly modified HF blast cabinet:





Pretty pleased with that. Was not able to find any black paint (I know where it went; son's choice of colors for his engine just happened to be black), so brown is the color of the day, boys and girls.

[Bkndsdl]

Replacing the rubber was pretty straightforward. just gotta take it slow. While I was there I cleaned up a few surprises in the door.



The window whiskers were pretty used up.......I believe these to be the original set, as bad as they were.



As far as the exhaust, wasn't able to do too much, just get the main drops positioned where I wanted them. Spent a few trips to all the parts houses looking for the parts. Seems each store only had one elbow and one u-joint....ended up going to no less than 9 stores!!!! Finally today I managed to get all the pieces (I think) to finish the exhaust. After that, all that's left is the throttle cable. Hoping to have Jake back on the road this weekend!

[Bkndsdl]

Ol' Murphy and his laws. Spent the time to fix the ac in the Miata, and had almost a week's worth of AC. then on the way home, the car decided he didn't like the harmonic balancer staying where it was......so on the wrecker he went, and out of a daily I went, so this weekend was a full-on mad dash to get the exhaust done and throttle linkage installed on Jake. Thankfully it was done Sunday with some time to spare for driving so I could see if any bugs remained.

One of the fittings I had to make to get the exhaust around the trailing arms and up to the muffler.



I got it all tacked up under the truck then took it out to weld it.



My buddy helping me getting things straight.



And then striking arcs.



It was pretty straightforward on the route, but I had to pie cut some elbows to get things to work...........I will never ever ever do that again. That was a PAIN welding up all the pie cuts. Next time, it'll be worth the $$ to get someone to do it or find a tubing bender somewhere. This was crazy.

[Bkndsdl]

Next came the throttle linkage, and some tuning.



The truck was de-smogged when I got it, and the PO merely plugged all the vacuum lines on the carb. It's because of this that I believe the idle tends to climb. Gotta figure that out. Since Dirty Dan has the same motor and carb, I'm going to copy his vacuum layout but bypass the canister. If that doesn't work I'll add the canister but I think it should work without it.

I drove Jake to work today. All good! Whew.......didn't have to borrow anybody's vehicle. I hate doing that.

Parts won't come in for the Miata until later in the week, but this was kind of my plan all along, get the truck to a daily state, then pull the motor out of the Miata, do a timing belt replacement (timing belt, water pump, front main seal), replace the leaking gaskets, replace the clutch, and just get it back to reliable daily status, then start to hit the rust areas of the truck. Murphy just kinda jump started it for me.........