I don’t have any other good profiles of my truck saved but here’s the general layout idea. I liked it when I had the Mazda but I didn’t drill a hole in the fender for that one, I ran it underneath. The multiple PVC joints were kinda annoying and I had to do a lot of heat bending to get smooth curves, this time I’ll do it in stainless. The A pillar is fairly straight, not a lot of curvature like some newer trucks. Should just be a 60 degree, then a 45 degree bend and then a smooth 90 into the fender.
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And now is the period where I regret not cleaning up in front of my shop before taking the interior apart in the truck. I forgot my MIG welder is 240v only and my shop is the only place with a convenient 20a source.
Found an 11lb spool of .023" wire that I forgot I had, this Vevor welder doesn’t have a preset for .023", just .8mm and 1mm wire. I am pretty sure I can take the machine out of Synergistic Mode and dial it all in manually. I’m not even going to fool around with flux core, while I like using it even on thin stuff it’s just too messy and throws hot bbs everywhere. I have a bunch of those 48x40" tarps so I might make some wind breaks so I don’t have to crank up my shielding gas flow.
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Well that was “fun”. Cleared up at least enough to squeeze the truck into. Forgot I unbolted my floor shifter, so I had to have one foot on the brake and one holding down my shifter so I could get leverage on it. The base of the shifter is so narrow that even with my foot holding it down it just wiggles when I have to get out of a detent. This is only exacerbated by my TH400 acting weird since the beginning of this year. For some reason it takes a lot of effort to get in and out of Park. I’m afraid I’ll stretch my shifter cable if this keeps going on. I must have messed something up when I did my transmission fluid filter. I might buy a new clean transmission oilpan to catch my fluid and go back under the truck to check. It’s basically all new fluid except what was left in the torque converter when I did a filter change. I’d hate to waste all that Dextron III.
For the record it still goes into park, and I can even park at an incline or decline, but it’s just like the detent for Park is deeper and catching harder than RND21. Doesn’t matter if the engine is running or not. I haven’t seen anything similar being talked about online. It’s got me worried and I may go back to my single rod driven column shift because of it, though it was still an issue with that too at least I wouldn’t worry about a cable stretching.
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Going crazy without having the square body as my weekend driver. I need to buckle down and get these pans in. I’m putting the shifter back in first for sure. With how thin the transmission tunnel is I’m welding on a 1/8" or 3/32" plate between the floor and the shifter base, and the studs will get welded into that plate. The shifter base would flex the tunnel the way I had it previously, I think it’s mostly because of how narrow the base of the shifter is.
I also will attempt to adjust my shifter cable some more, take up the dead zone and maybe get rid of that hard pull in and out of Park.
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SOUNDS like you have more than enough project for all this hot weather, I got my dakota Done except it needs fans and gauges for the gasifier, other than that it is drivable on petro, no char pun in the burn tube till i get the fans installed, and i bought a 22 r toyota motor home years ago that i cut the frame off behind the rear wheels, it looks about 8 foot bed now- i just need to de-rust the frame and add a few tubes to make it a flat bed,while leaving a place for a gasifier behind the cab, after i get the back of the cab closed back in with door or window.FUN-FUN FUN- 1985- the emission wont be problem. I might go with charco unit to keep it all lighter with 4 cyl.it might be low on power.And the frame looks a little to light to install a 318 motor.
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Got 4 out of the 6 bed bolts taken out. Didn’t want to crawl in the mud up to the front two, tarp didn’t reach that far and the mosquitos were eating me alive.
I absolutely love this Bauer corded impact gun and I’m glad I got it a few years ago. When you can get it to a nut or bolt it WILL come off and it’s only an 8.5 amp tool so it’ll run on household voltage.
Impact gun reached two of the nuts with a swivel head, other two I had to use a ratchet and a 3 foot long pipe for a cheater bar. Luckily none of the carriage bolts spun out. Fingers crossed it will be the same for the front two.
My spare tire crossmember looks a little yoke shaped, I hope it will work with a suburban tank. You’re supposed to flip the crossmember and it allegedly will work at bracing the top of the tank. We’ll see about that.
I think for fuel lines I’ll just order some 6AN or 8AN lines, they’re cheap nowadays and worked pretty good for my transmission cooler lines. If they can handle transmission fluid pressures they’ll handle a little mechanical pump suction.
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HI Cody,i am getting tired and over heated around here,this has to be the hottest heat wave in years, or i am fading into old age/ I have not had a AC unit for several years, though the last3 weeks i wished i had one, dont over work yourself in this heat, the weather will soon be much cooler.Are them 6/8 an lines braided lines- i woundered if them braided lines would be high enough psi for brake lines.I got a milwalky 1/2 impact about 5 years ago, its got good power, though i still have to use breaker bar on the harder to loose bolts. They sure are nice to have, i like my 1/4 drive millwalki cordless as well,real handy, would not want to work with out them either.
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Thats a nice looking old chevy truck you have there, its worth putting gasifier, and work intoo.
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Edit: apparently there is an acceptable AN tube for flex lines in brakes, 3AN is 3/16" diameter tube. For AN hose the number is 16ths of an inch OD of the PTFE so 3AN is 3/16, 4AN is 1/4, 6AN is 3/8, 8AN is 1/2".
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Thanks Kevin. I’m honestly amazed at where the rust is, and where the rust isn’t at. Normally the cab corners are toast by now but all I’ve got is some thin fender corners and floors. Wish I knew what made the floorboard rust so bad. I’m wondering if it was the bad exhaust it had. Exhaust was pointing right at the driver’s floor.
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Forgot this long bed has 8 mounting bolts, but I got the last ones out. Only one carriage bolt spun out so I ground it down and punched it out with my air hammer.
I have the fuel fill hose detached from the bed, and the tail lights are unhooked. Just need to empty the bed and try to hoist it out with my boom crane. I may re-use this bed as a trailer body. It’s mostly sound, I could always skin the floor with some diamond plate.
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While I was taking the bed bolts out I noticed my passenger side was sagging compared to the driver’s side. Looks like it’s the leaf springs. Passenger springs look more compressed. Would this just be from the gas tank? I was contemplating putting a new set of springs all around, an old coworker said he would do my control arm bushings so I could replace my front coils and my rear leafs while I wait.
Maybe one of the leaves on the spring has broken? The frame doesn’t look bent.
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Actually super common with the short box half ton trucks, hard acceleration dips the passenger rear under torque and the springs don’t like it. The common hot rod fix is 3/4 ton springs to get the aggressive rake look
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Funny, since this is the long box. Maybe the extra weight of the longer frame and bed makes it worse.
I should definitely get the 3/4 ton springs since Passenger side is gonna have a permanent ~300 pounds tacked on. Thanks for the tip!
Edit: Apparently I’ll need to relocate the shackle mount, supposedly half tons had both the 52" and 56" mounting holes.
I’ll see if I can just find a heavier spec 52" spring first.
Edit 2: I found some heavier rated half ton springs, 1950lb over the average 1250lb springs and they’re still 52".
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Got bored and looked up my engine suffix code again. TYC, means I have a 145 horsepower 350sbc. 145 horsepower is a real punch in the gut, as if the low compression heads weren’t enough of an indicator. My 2011 4.3l has 50 more horsepower and about the same torque.
Now, maybe since I advanced the timing to 12 BTDC and use Manifold vs the 8 BTDC and Port advance, maybe I’m in the higher ballpark?
I’d do a cam but then I’d have to pull the engine and that opens another can of worms.
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One indicator this engine has been worked on a little is the fact it no longer has the 2 barrel intake. My Emissions sticker in the engine bay says it should have a 2bbl, but I have a dual plane Quadrajet 4bbl intake. Also used to be a 3 on the tree and has a TH400 in it. Someone has pulled this motor out at some point.
Perhaps someone has already replaced the cam at least once. It would be a No-Brainer if you’re already swapping to a 4bbl to change the cam.
Edit:
I FINALLY found out why my shifter is sticking in and out of Park. I got to talking to someone who knew a lot more about TH400s than I will, and described the issue exactly. I still have full range of gears and the actual shifting is fine, engine braking is fine, park pawl is fine, it is just physically difficult to get in and out of Park. They asked me to take pictures of the pan because I couldn’t remember if it was damaged or not. Well my pan is a little dented and they told me it could be interfering ever so slightly with the rooster comb’s travel. Told me to either replace the pan or try and flatten it back out.
So tomorrow I get to go spend more money to fix my issue, yay. I’ll try my best to extract the still barely used transmission fluid in the pan and buy a gallon to cover my bases just in case. Hopefully with a hammer and my little anvil I can flatten the bottom of the pan back out and not warp it.
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Hey Cody, strain your fluid through an auto paint strainer, I do that a lot, too expensive to waste. 
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Yeah that’s the plan, I bought a gallon of Dex/Merc just to be safe though. Fluid extractor can’t get all of it and my drain pan is nasty!
So I was partially correct about the pan interfering with the shift shaft travel. It’s pushing the fluid filter up too high and the filter is what’s keeping the shift shaft from effortlessly turning.
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Got the pan flattened back out on the bottom. The dent was right at the filter and was pushing it up a good 4 to 6mm.
I degreased it and saw a bit of surface rust so I cleaned it as much as I could with some scotchbrite and spraying two coats of rustoleum converter sealer.
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Problem solved, now to recalibrate my shift cable.
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