Thanks for the chart Orich. I'll add a compression test onto my engine to do list...

Drove the truck to work a couple days this week. Mostly 45-55 MPH back roads. Averaged about 11.5 mpg which I'm happy with. After a proper tune up coupled with more conservative driving I should be able to eek out a few more MPG's

 

Put the truck up on jack stands to finally do the brakes, all four hubs were old FOMOCO hubs. I'd like to reuse them but I think they're too far turned out...looks like I'll be buying 4 new drums

My old brakes were pretty bad, lots of grooving...






And one as she sits now shoeless lol

 

Yeah beyond bad. From time to time, I see oem ones on eBay.

But they sell for that same weight as gold.
Most of the time but, I saw some for $90 each.
Orich

 

The rear drums aren't too bad priced, but those front drums sure command a premium.

 

Do they come with the hubs also if so then yeah i'd guess they would
Orich.

 

I wasn't looking hard enough, I found some online that weren't too bad lol.


Broke open the piggy bank and ordered:
- New Drums/shoes front and back
- Soft brake lines
- Wheel seals
- Heater core
- Tie rod
- Duraspark II stuff
- exhaust donuts for my newly discovered leak

Everything should be here before next weekend. With the brakes redone, the defroster working, and the tie rod I'll probably start using it as my daily.

Still on the fence about when I'm going to do the DSII conversion. Probably after I've had to adjust the points a couple times I'll get fed up and just switch it over lol.

I had my wheel hubs cleaned up in a parts tank at work and painted them. Nothing fancy. Figured since I had time to kill, why not?
I made buddies with one of the powder coaters at work and almost had them powder coated, but I was too lazy to knock the races out so spray paint it was

 

Busted my hump and made a lot of progress on the truck today.

- New shoes, drums, and wheel cylinders all around.
- New soft brake lines up front
- New heater core installed and got the blower motor functioning
- New inner and outer tie rods
- Fixed passenger side exhaust leak at manifold (didnt break any studs!)
- replaced passenger side mirror and added round mirror

I bled the brakes and took 'er down some dirt roads. Tie Rods seem dialed in and the brakes functioned great. No pulling to one side or the other and no more (or should I say a lot less lol) wandering steering.

Cleaned up the hubs on all four corners...


Here's my routing for the heat with an engine block heater spliced in. Don't need it in SC, but it was there when I got it and I didn't feel like taking it out. Sorry for the crappy pic, but I'm not sure if I have the hoses backwards or not, I've seen conflicting diagrams...




For the immediate future I'll need to get a new passenger side front tire, fix the backup light, and patch some of the exhaust out by the muffler. Then I'll be ripping out my hack job passenger side floor fix and doing it right. It also seems as if the kingpins are on their way out. So that'll be a fun project

As she sits now with the grill guard on ready to roll

 

Where is that hose going to as it looks like it's going down in the picture and not back into the water pump. This is the lay out.
And if you have done the the carb base plate it just goes back into the return inlet on the pump.
The hose nipple on the intake manifold is the outlet and the pump nipple is the inlet.
Orich

 

Thanks for the digram Orich. It's hard to see in the pic but I do have it hooked up like in the diagram. The hose that is going down is my spliced in line to the block heater. Although I think now that I was supposed to splice it into the "water pump" hose and not the "nipple" hose.
This block heater connects to the bottom of the engine in one of what I believe is a freeze plug hole.

 

I'd hope you replace all those other old looking hoses.

The way you have the hoses routed looks ok out of the intake manifold and back into the block circulates the coolant.

Orich

 

I had to go pick up more hose/fresh coolant so that I could switch out the bad hoses and put in fresh fluid.

 

What's with is hose arrangement do? Been scratching around looking

 

I'll take a better pic of how I have my hoses routed with the engine block heater in place.

Well my muffler patch job turned into a new muffler and tailpipe job. The truck had an old glass pack with no tailpipe and that thing was LOUD. I went back to stock exhaust setup.

I used the walker pre bent tailpipe. For a muffler I did some searching around, and found a universal type muffler that was almost identical to the stock one, and $40 cheaper than the "correct" muffler! The truck is so much quieter now, and there's hardly any engine noise inside the cab.

It seems like I'm a bit of an oddball wanting to make my truck "quiet" or going back to the stock exhaust, but if anyone is interested here are the part numbers:
- pre bent tailpipe: walker part#46326
- muffler walker part#17893

I've been driving my truck everyday for the last 3 weeks. I just turned over 71k miles and have been averaging 12 MPG with my stock setup. Not too shabby

 

Never got around to taking pics of the setup yet, but I dont have the carb heater on mine.

Got my timing light, dwell meter, and vac gauge out. Dialed everything in as best I could.

RPM at idle 750
Dwell - 29
Vac - steady 18
Timing - 10 BTDC

 

Made some good progress this past weekend. Got a leaking freeze plug swapped out and finally tackled the kingpins.

The freeze plug between my starter and engine mount developed a pin hole. Luckily it was easily accessible. I punched the old plug in side ways, then pulled it out with pliers. I couldn't believe all the rusty crud hiding in there behind it! Put some sealant around the new one and tapped it back in.

50yr old plug vs New



New freeze plug in all its glory. Orich; that's where my block heater hose is (left of freeze plug). The top of the heater Tees into the coolant line. The driver's side of the block also had a nipple, but is capped off.



My first kingpin job went pretty smoothly. I decided to go with the nylon bushings. I couldn't find a reamer and didn't feel like messing around with going to a machine shop.
Fortunately for me someone had already installed nylon bushings installed in my truck. Switching out the old kingpins/bushings and installing the new ones took me about 2 1/2 hrs. It would've taken less time, but one kingpin was quite stubborn.
Once the kingpins were out I could tap the old nylon bushings out with a screw driver.

Then I put the new bushing in...



And tapped it down...



Too simple. Put the new pins in, set the retaining bolt, and they were good to go

Up next is replacing my dry rotted passenger front tire and tweaking my tuning a little bit. I set my timing to 8 and it seems to be running without spark knock....