Great Job, I wish I had your energy. I seem to spent more time planing then doing. For some reason the planing seems a lot easier.

 

Oh i hear ya 100%! Sittin here playin on the computer looking at all the other projects and surfing the parts suppilers keeps gettin me thinking of alot more stuff I wanna do. I keep having to hide my credit card so i don't go an order a buch of stuff i can't afford!! I need to order a firewall cover of some sorts as mine was trashed (the one on the inside) so i can re-install the heater assembly and start on the wiring. And since I've invested so much into the stock suspension setup, and it not sittin as low as i'd like it to in the front found me looking at dropped I-beams lately too. Ouch those are spendy! Gonna have to wait on that. Had I'd done my research earlier and more in-depth, i would have just put in an IFS, but who knows maybe later on. I just want to DRIVE IT! Need to save up more $$ or sell one of my other projects so i can get the cash to get started on the body and paint. Probably be a while for that to happen. Getting the column installed, new exhaust, and tackling the wiring, I think, are about the last major hurdles I have left. Everything else is small potatoes at this point. Weather starts turning here in about a month, so if at nothing else, i should have this thing running and driving easily by next spring. Gearhead1952 set me up with pieces to fix my rear shock situation, so those are on the way in the mail. (Thanks man!) So yeah... definately gettin antsy to get back to it and get a maiden voyage in before the weather turns to crap!

 

Looks like a SOLID project. Just the right amount of 'patina'

I dig the chromed door access panels too.


I'll be watchin' this one...

 

Nice job so far. Keep up the good work.

 

Well got back fromt he ortho doc to go over my MRI.... nothing... not a d**n thing they could find wrong with my joint at all. (i suppose should be a good thing tho!) So now they are saying that its some kind of disease within my knee forming these cysts that are, in turn, producing fluid which is jaming up my knee and wreaking havoc with my leg muscles. Sooooo back to the hospital i go for 10-12 vials of blood drawn to be tested or anything and everything. Will know the results of the blood tests next thurs. In the meantime they gave me a cortizone shot in the knee. It took about a day and today (fri) i was feeling pretty good and the knee seemed halfway normal. So i'm thinkin I'm gonna sneak out to the shop and see what kinda mischeif I can cause if the knee is still holdin up.

Back to the real topic... I got some parts delivered today!!

Got the heavy duty tie rod, new tie rod ends, and jam nuts from Mid-Fifty yesterday!!!


And dad brought me over a suitable replacement motor for the heater blower motor. He said he had to drill out the squirel cage a bit as he couldn't find one with the proper shaft size. Ain't that prettty?? Good man for the job.


So today I was feelin decent i decided to tear down the Holley carb, a 600 cfm vac. secondary, and dunk it in the dip tank.


Pulled it out after a few hours and it cleaned up real nice.


However some of the zinc coating came off of the front float bowl and the metering block. Anybody know where and how i can refinish this? The rest of the carb came out great, but now the front bowl (not pictured) and the metering block are silver. I saw that Eastwood has a zinc refinishing kit (basically 3 cans of paint) but it's a little spendy and besides I'd like to get this assembled quickly so I can fire off the 390, maybe this weekend. Anyone have any ideas of anything I can pickup locally?

 

LMAO. I hope you're not serious.... Yeah they came with the truck along with a chrome ash tray, and chrome glovebox door too.

The truck is pretty solid, little bit of rust bubblin in the rear cab corners and one of the fronts. Lots of bubbles all over in the paint. i suspect water in the paint as it looked like a cheap-o re-squirt. It was originally that Meadow Green or something like that. The green is all over the truck, can easily say that it looks like all the original sheetmetal on the whole truck as all the green matches. I'll roll the blue just the way it is, it's a tad bit faded but does have that patina'd look to it. I like it. Eventually will get repainted, same blue though. The doors had funky aftermarket mirrors on there at one time, that for some reason, required beating up the door to install them. I'll end up fixing that and attempting to cut the holes for the proper stock mirrors. The stockers just look awesome. So there may be some primer spots on the doors.... oh well, its a project!

 

Got my rear axle/shock mounting plates today! Thanks Jeff!! (gearhead1952)




Little bead blasting and paint and will be good to go. Also need to round up the u-bolts/hardware and the straps that sit atop the springs.

 

nice work so far .

 

Looks great Dano ! I have been thinking hard about buying one of those column from Ebay. What are your overall thoughts about it. Would you recommend it or should I spend the extra for a name brand?

 

Dano! looks great! I'm sort of glad you had to rest that knee! gives you some time to show off your hard work! Hope your knee issue gets better though...nice work!

 

I'm glad to see this post is still alive... I missed it when it was first out... Looks great keep up the work and hope things work out with the knees...

 

Nice build thread, thanks for sharing. Your doing a great job.

 

Thanks guys, for all the kind words. Makes a guy feel like he's doin something right! I did kinda bombard the forums, didn't I? But I'm glad you guys enjoy it. I like to share ideas and stuff, as well as take it in too. Its what the hobby is all about. Well the cortizone shot is really doing wonders! I feel really good and have been back out to the shop a bit. So hopefully this is a good sign. How long do these shots last? This was just a temporary thing till they could figure out what's really wrong, so hopefully I won't be livivng on that stuff.


Was skeptical at first, figuring it was more china garbage. It's not a bad column, nice chrome job, tilt works good, levers almost identical to Flamming Rivers', removable/clockable shift lever at base of column, stock style turn sig. switch- much like a re-pop unit you'd typicaly get, very very similiar construction (if not exact) if Flaming Rivers' column, Tube fits nice and tightly into column drops like it should, wiring neatly ran inside of column, stock style indicator and pointer, takes same steerign wheel adapter as all others (67-72 GM), stock GM wiring connectors, overall a nice unit for the price. The shift lever/collar area is a bit noisy. Has kinda a metal on metal sound. I'm gonna remove the shifter lever and try putting some grease in there on the the lever and see if that quiets it up. The other thing is that the shift gate is not real positive. Park is very much there and locks in, but the other detents are really hard to feel. You can find the detend between reverse and neutral going up but you don't really notice it comming down. Stuff like that. You can kinda feel a little cheapness to it and the metal does feel lighter duty than say a stock column. I'd like to run it for at least a year and see how it holds up before I say it's a bad deal. IMO at this point, i think it's a great deal, especially if you are on a tight budget. If you were to set this column next to a real F-R, you'd be hard pressed to find a single difference. Now once you pick them both up, you my be able to distunguish the cheaper one. For me I am budget concerned as I'm a single dad of two, so wherever I can save a buck or two counts. So far, am happy with the column, especially for what I paid for it. I would definately like to see more options available for the shift lever at the base of the column, for any of the manufacturers. I'm gonna have to get creative and modify mine a bit. Will post pics on that one later.

 

Nice work Dano .... keep the pics coming!!

 

Well a little progress has been made. Here's some pics of last weekends endevors.

Here's a pic of the rear X-member. Someone had asked about that a while back. Here it is. A Trans-Dapt unit, also same as the one sold through Dennis Carpenter, CPP, Summit Racing and possibly MF too.



Now onto the fabbin. Well in order to get the coulmn shift to work properly I had to do a little modifying to the bolt-on lever. Had to make the-center on-center or radius sweep of the shift arm match that of the tranny's shift lever. One of the members on here also suggested spacing the linkage tward the engine to create clearance with the brake pedal (thanks to whoever that was) so I did that by creating more 'drop' to the lever aswell as lengthening the lever to match the radius sweep.
Here's what I started with. 2" CoC and 1/2" drop.



Shooting from the hip, i decided to add 3" of drop, changed the radius sweep to 3.25" to match the shift lever on the tranny. Tacked it for testing. Just cut off old tab and built a new one out of 1/8"x1" strap.




Don't have a pic showing it, but that was too much drop! Whoops! Lever hit the head at about neutral! Ok so cut it off, shorten a bit more. Now I'm at 2" drop, same radius sweep. Now it works much better!



Finished product, welded and ready to put back on the column for the last time. Could have ground the weld down, but thought it'd be stronger the way it is.




With that done, onto the shift lever. I had a pile of levers laying around and didn't feel like droping $80 on a Lokar setup. Happened to have about 5 or 6 shift levers out of 73-79 Fseries trucks with autos. I figured destroying 1 won't hurt anyone. So i just started heating/bending and lo and behold, it worked out pretty good! Not bad for a $5 lever.
The one on the top is in stock form, what I started with, the one on the bottom is the one I bent up.



The finished product...


Here's the piece that secures the lever into the shift column lever. Had to turn this down to 5/16" to get it to fit into the bushing within the rubber grommet.


Now here's the linkage installed!




Works like a dream. It's a little close to the brake pedal while in Park, but not too bad at all. Otherwise, it clears by miles in all other gear selections.

Also installing the beefed up tie rod from Mid-Fifty. You can see quite a difference between them here. Stock one is above the MF one.