Chevy 3600 into a daily driver

End of another weekend. Today was a shop cleaning day, but I did end up getting all the painted suspension parts back on Henry, as well as get the motor and tranny back into place.

I never did show a picture of the painted column support.



Bolted the headers on while air out......which brought up another obstacle.



Looks like I will need to get creative with the exhaust. I had plans if running right below the frame and exiting out wither the running board or the fender in front of the rear wheel.



Plan right now is to get a 2-1/2" dia ,mandrel bent 45 degree and cut the flange off the collector. If I can get it that welded in parallel to the ground and pointing towards the inside of the truck slightly I should be able to make it work.

 

Lots of work there.

 

Shoot, cut the flange off and run it like that! Neighbors might get mad but.....

 

It would be fun for awhile.......

 

Nice work! doing a 48 Suburban, doing a Sid's dropped axle, going for a stance like you had with the dropped axle. Looked at most of your posts, good stuff. IFS looks like tons of work! I'll keep watching this build.

 

Busy day....but no photo's to show for it.

• All air lines ran
• rear brakes lines ran
• CPP Brake Booster and MC mounted

 

Kind of feels like the movie "Ground Hogs Day" with Bill Murray. Seems like I work on it every weekend....but the list never gets smaller......

 

Not a huge amount of progress this weekend, but I did have the camera out for some other stuff so I snapped some pictures.

The CPP mounted up great. Pretty happy with the quality after I got it in. I tried to put it in without removing the gauges, but it was a big struggle. Took the gauges out and 15 minutes later it was in place with 5 minutes worth of help from my oldest son.



I thought the unit would come with a brake switch. It did not......so I am debating on making a bracket for a stock brake light switch (Which is brand new) or spending the cash on a pressure switch.

I am not sure why.....but I really hate bending, cutting, reaming......flaring brake lines..........I guess I just really hate doing brakes......



Motor is slowly going together. Maybe a start up in the next week.



Having a heck of a time with one of the rear knuckles/ hubs on the IRS set up. Once torqued the bearing has a ton of drag. After pulling it and reinstalling it a couple times and having the same result, I swapped it with the other side today to make sure the problem was the bearing. Same result on the other side. New bearing is junk. I need to pick one up and reinstall.





That is it for today.



Hopefully this week I can get the bed on since the brake lines and air line are ran.

 

Busy night in the garage.

I had some help and we got the bed sides cut out for the wheel and UCA clearance and got the bed mounted.

I did not anticipate removing so much material. The bedsides clear the tires now but just barely. I will probably take out a bit more to have some clearance. I will also have to remove some of the fender flange.

 

Spent a couple hours tonight finishing up the bed sides and mounting the rear fenders. Loving what I am seeing!!

 

That is so fn cool.....

 

Thanks man!!

 

Not much photo worthy to report. Getting everything wired up. Battery will be in an old Hamm's cooler in the box. Running battery cables, etc.

Relays for my compressors are under the seat with my stereo stuff.

Chasing some leaks in the air system. So far I have a couple in the fittings in the air tank,

 

looks like wheel spacers would of saved you a lot of work

 

It's IRS, so I assume that it's tucked in at the top at full dump. A spacer may have him pushed too far out at ride height or at full lift because of the range of travel of the IRS.

One of my favorite threads to follow. Your photography is top notch, which makes the thread extra leet! I have a 54 on deck waiting for my workshop to go up. You are causing me much agony over which way to go on my chassis.

 

Spacers might have worked. I have close to 1.5" of clearance from the tire to the outside of the fender at ride height.

Regardless I still would have had to provided clearance for the UCA's at air out. Decided to bite the bullet and open it all up now in case I decide to put wide rubber on the back at some point.

 

Thanks for the props. I am sure having fun building and documenting it!!

 

WE HAVE PRESSURE!!

Fired up the compressors tonight. Quieter than I had thought they would be. Hit 140 PSI in about 2 min roughly.

 

Shop time has been few and far between lately. Grass is growing like crazy which means yard work.

Both of my boy are aspiring to be motocross stars, so we have been spending a lot of time at the track. I can't complain........sure is fun watching them learn.





Crazy kids.....



I have been doing a little tinkering as time allows. I got my fuel pressure regulator mounted to the firewall and got all the lines ran.



Yesterday I spent a little time rigging up a temporary radiator support and we fired up the SBC for the first time in the updated chassis.



Click the picture below to hear it run.

 

Sounds good man! Yea I did the motocross thing for years. Started on a 50cc and ended on a 250 when I broke both wrists at the same time. Its a little harder to justify when you have to pay your own bills and are out of work for 4 months. I told my wife I wanted to get my boy into it and she literally said "Over my dead body". Oh well, still have old cars, whioch she wont let him ride in....dammit....

 

I raced for about 25 years.....quit in 2010. I was pretty burned out and it was nice to walk away. All three of my kids ride but never showed a real desire to race. Now the younger two are all gung ho. At first I was totally against it, surprisingly my wife was all for it. Now after spending some time at the track I can easily see getting back into it at a more relaxed level.

I doubt I would even race. If I am going to be at the track a couple nights a week, I might as well get some exercise.

 

Sweet...yea I rode for a another year or so after healing up but ended up selling my bike in 2002. I just couldnt justify potentially putting us in another financial hole like I did before. And as you know, getting hurt is just part of the deal. One of the last times out my riding buddy had just bought a brand new Honda 4 stroker 400 when they first started gaining popularity and took it for a few laps, man that thing had some power.

 

It has been a busy couple of weeks. I had mentioned spending a bunch of time at the MX track with my boys. Well sitting and watching was driving me nuts.

I bought my old race bike back from my brother in law and started riding again!





Good times......

Despite that I was able to spend 5 hours in the shop this afternoon. I decided to tackle the exhaust. I had my local repair shop bend a couple 30 degree kicks on the ends of some pipe.

I cut the flange off the headers and cut them at a slight angle and was able to piece it all together. It was a slow process. Cut, mock up, measure, etc. Cut again.........took me about 3 hours for the first side. Less than an hour on the second side. Overall I am happy with the results.

 

Impressed as always....

 

Thanks!!!

 

Spent some time hacking away at the punch list last night. Nothing photo worthy. Threw the battery in the battery box which is located inside the Hamm's cooler in the bed.

Pulled apart the drivers side hub to pack the bearings and assemble the brake caliper. Also doing the final tightening on the ball joints and inserting cotter pins.

I also took a quick video of the exhaust. I already shared it on Facebook.....but figured I would post it here as well.

ttps://kustomcreations.smugmug.com/Other/Henry-20/i-bBSvHCZ/A

I tried to install my driveshaft. I had this driveshaft made when I installed the SBC. Turn out is about an 1" shorter than I feel comfortable with. Just not enough yoke inside the tranny tail shaft. Trying to decide to have another driveshaft made, or just order a longer TH350 yoke.

 

Still plugging away. I get a lot of questions from friends, co-workers asking when Henry will be on the road. Last week I told a guy "A couple good long days and he will be on the road". Either I am a crappy estimator or a crappy mechanic.

Probably about 10 hour into the truck the last two days.

Brake lines done and ready for fluid!!



Rear shock mounts built and painted.





Punch list is getting smaller. Local car show in two weeks. Trying to decide if I make the commitment to get it done!!

 

One step forward.....two steps backs. Ha, seems to be a reoccurring theme.

Some steps forward last night. Pulled the tail off the TH350 and replaced the seals in it. Button that all back up and bolted on my driveshaft. I also pulled my pan on the TH350 ad replaced the filter.

After that there was a step backwards. I filled the tranny and started the motor to check the tranny fluid level. All seems fine. For kicks I checked the engine oil. Oil was really milky. DAMN.

When I did my initial start up I had a couple bolt on the passenger side rear of the intake that were weeping. I am guessing I forgot to do the second pass of the 25ft/lb torque for them. I tightened them up, the weeping stopped and I continued on with the start up. I am wondering if that leak also weeped inside......or do I have another problem?

I dumped the startup oil. I did not have a fresh filter, but I topped it off with fresh oil and let it run for 15 minutes and dumped it again. Still milky, but not near as bad.

Picked up a couple new filters this morning on the way to work.

Not sure if this is all residual water from the initial leak or if I should start digging into finding another leak.

Any advice??

 

pressure test the cooling system dont waste any more oil if you dont have to

 

good call.