Chevy 3600 into a daily driver

I worked on air bags the last couple evenings. Straight cups, angles cups, moving the top plate, moving the upper mounting bracket.

It was an endless fight and I never seem completely satisfied with the outcome. Seems like I could get it to look good at air out, or at ride height, but definitely not both.

I was really unsure since I had never done this before. I reached out to a couple guys who had done it before and combined there advise with what I had learned already and came to a solution tonight.

The biggest problem I had was the bag was rolling down at air out. I was worried it would wear a hole over time.



With this set up the bag looked GREAT at ride height and at max air.





After pulling my hair out for a bit I decided if I increased the diameter of the top of the cup it would be able to support the bag and protect it from damage.

For a quick test I drilled a hole in the center of my other top bag bracket and installed it between the bag and bag cup.

I am going to call it a success.

 

Not a whole lot of forward progress this weekend. The honey do list was long.

I took my boys to a small local car show. Kind of neat. This '72 was super clean, LS on air.





After fighting with the bags with what seems like forever I was able to final weld the upper back bracket. Overbuilt to the max........but better than the alternative!!





Bent a couple pieces of flat strap and built by tank mount.





I spent a bunch of time going over the crappy factory welds on the Ford Cross Member. 90% of the factory welds look horrible.






Next step is to pull the rear end out of the cross member and flip the frame. Final weld the bottom side and then ready for paint.

 

I had about an hour to kill last night between hauling kids around, etc.

I still had the upper ball joint binding issue, so I was curious what it would take to get the running boards on the ground. Seemed like I had three options:

1. Super travel ball joints
2. drop spindles
3. pie cut the UCA

Since pie cutting the UCA was free, and I had spare UCA's in case I screwed up, it was chosen.

A quick Google search and I found a link on a S-10 site.

http://www.s10forum.com/forum/f125/pie-cutting-upper-control-arms-393969/

20 minutes later my running boards are within a 1/8" of the ground.




This morning I nipped the bump stops off and now it is sitting on the ground.







Tonight I will give them a really good tack, and then remove them to final weld them.

 

I had a great day in the shop. I took the day off work and helped out the wife with some stuff in the AM, and spent some quality shop time with my youngest. He was a great help!!



I needed to remove the rear end and control arms to get a good weld on the bottom wide of the cross member and frame. Every bolt was rusty and it fought me EVERY step of the way. Last night I could not move most of the bolts with a 18" breaker bar. I soaked everything down with PB blaster and hoped for the best. This morning I picked up a 24" breaker bar and was able to get everything loose. Only broke one bolt.

 

Cleaning out the old dif fluid in the 8.8. Dirty but the rest looks great!!



Finally all removed from the cross member.



Stripped and flipped......





Notch caps going in...

 

Need to get out the hot wrench to loosen those bolts

 

Another solid weekend........

Bottom of Thunderbird IRS cross member and Danforth cross member final welded and cleaned up ready for paint.



I pulled the cover of the 8.8 and gave it a thorough once over. The fluid was stinky and dirty.....but it looks clean and solid.



I had about 1/4 of can of KBS coatings that I wanted to use on the rear end. The can was a couple years old so I destroyed the cover when trying to get it open. I painted my front UCA's, rear LCA's and center section of the 8.8 as well as a bunch of the frame before the can was empty.

 

Wow man, that was a lot of work, and came out killer!! I keep daydreaming about buying another stock frame and building it up and swapping it out....maybe when my boy gets a little older so he can help...anyway, that is going to be a bad ass ride for sure. And the blue wheels would look pretty sweet, but man those smooth black ones with white walls look just about perfect...

 

Thanks. A 4 link would definitely been a quicker and cheaper install, but I love the fact that the factory bed height will remain.

If I had to do it again, I would likely find a factory frame and do all the work ahead of time and then just swap it all over.

I am really torn on the wheel color........even at this point I cannot decided.

 

Took a couple week break to take care of some other stuff and recharge my batteries!!

Frame is finally painted 100%. There will be some touch ups, because I still have some misc welding to do. Shock mounts, mounting the rack and pinion, etc.



I had some rubber belting, so I whipped up some cab mount rubbers with a hole saw. Cheap and quick.



Air Compressors are mounted, also got the rear LCA's mounted and the center section of the dif.







Starting to look at air line routes. Since I am running a full manual system I need to get a single 3/8" air line, and 4, 1/4" air lines into the cab. Looking for ideas on that. 80% sure my gauges and switches will be behind the speaker grill which will have a hinge installed.

 

Progress has slowed, partially because of other obligations, lack of motivation, etc!

I truly do not know how you guys do these long projects. I have been building some furniture to break it up a bit.





The back of the truck is wired. Brake, Taillight and Blinker Wires run in the 1/2 NM conduit (grey). Compressor wires and wires to my pressure switch run in the fabric loom to under the seat where I will be build a control panel for my air ride set up.



Manual Air Ride switches are mounted as well as my 3 gauges.



Next big thing to tackle is the motor. Picked up a set of reworked heads. 2000-2200 Torq Converter is on the way.....

 

About ready to embark in the steering adventure.....

 

Not much new to report. Waiting on my rear knuckles to come back from the machinest and some fab parts from my local fab shop. Those parts should allow me to be back to a roller and finish air ride install.

Picked up a set of reworked heads from a local auto repair shop that had done some work for me in the past.

They are 601 heads totally reworked. Deshrouded, fully ported, SS valves, whole nine yards. Price was right so I snagged them. Should wake up the SBC a bit.

 

Finally got my parts from my local fab guy. He works cheap.....and the quality is top notch, but speed is not his forte. :lol:

The parts allowed me to complete my dehumping of the stock S-10 lower control arms. Got one done last night. Pretty straight forward project.





After these are done I can mock up the front bags and make my upper bag cup.

I received my tracking number for my rear knuckles. Scheduled to arrive Friday. With any luck I will be back to a roller this weekend!!

1. Finish LCA's
2. mockup front bags
3. install rear knuckles
4. install rear bags
5. Temp air lines for air ride!!!
6. install SBC and mock up Rack and Pinion
7. SBC back out, install heads, paint etc!!

 

Nice, cant wait to see more..

 

Spent a couple hours in the shop. I almost got the drivers side LCA done.

While waiting for the welds to cool I started mocking up the passenger side bag. Went together pretty easy so far.

The way the Danforth crossmember is made, I did not really need a cup to support the bag at the top. Just a plate.











Not sure how I am going to my air lines yet. The center of the spring cup has a small tube in it to hold a coil spring. Somehow I need to either remove all of it or some of it. You can see it in the picture below.

 

Super busy day.

We now have a roller. Such a great feeling.

My Knuckles showed up from IRS Machining today. They look great!! That allowed me to assemble the rear suspension.



I am about 1/2" to 3/4" higher in the rear than during mockup, which I found out to be the difference in the stock T-bird wheels and my Cragars and WW. Looks like I could easily take 3/4" out of my lower cups to get lower. Now sure if I will or not. The only part that really bothers me is the running boards are not parallel with the ground at air out. Kind of a pet peeve of mine. The back either needs to come down, or I need a bumpstop to raise the front 1/2" at air out.



The front is all loose mocked up. Just enough to roll.

 

Happy to get him rolled out of the garage and get it all cleaned up.





I spun spun him around and put the 350/350 combo in to the rack and pinion mocked up.

 

Still plugging away on this install.

Threw the motor in to mock up the rack and pinion set up.



The mounting on this rack was offset to the drivers side which makes mounting a bit more troublesome. I picked up some 4" x 4" x 3/16" tubing to make some mounts out of.

Scott suggests a 3" notch to clear the rack. This WILL NOT work with a Ford rack. I had to open up my notch to almost 6" to clear the Ford rack. Frustrating to cut apart something that was finished.



I had to remove some material on the passenger side of the crossmember to clear the rack. I got a little overzealous with the skinny wheel and sawzall.



mock up





Making brackets





Tacked in



Fit test. I did end up opening up the notch after this.



Both side welded in and the relief boxed in. I just need to rebox the bottom of the notch!!

 

I found this thread a couple of weeks ago, admire your determination and drive. Any updates to speak of?

 

Still just pluggin away a little at a time. Hope to have the motor in place in the next 7-10 days and then finishing it up!!

 

Frame is painted and the rack is in.





I screwed the tie rod ends on until they bottomed out and checked the toe in. Looks like I am about 1-1/2 too wide in the front.

I need to verify again tomorrow, but looks like I will need to trim the rack a bit.

 

Still pluggin away. Motor is now buttoned up. New set of reworked 601 heads installed.



I threw a fresh coat of Chevy Orange on the motor and tossed it back in the chassis. First thing on the agenda is steering.

 

Hi. My avatar shows the 235 engine I installed in my 46 Chevy Coupe. From the start I have been building it as a daily driver that would cruise at today's Hwy speeds. I run the stock 3 on the tree transmission with vacuum shift bypassed due to high lift cam not making enough vacuum. It has original closed drive line & rear end but I installed an aftermarket 3:55-1 ring & pinion. Got the ring & opinion a couple of years ago from Patricks & they offered the 3:55 made for both 37-54 car & half ton trucks but noted it was not the same set for both car & trucks. They offer a 3:38-1 for 55-62 half ton trucks also. They do not stock these sets but were made to order & took 4-6 weeks. In addition to the new ring & pinion when I purchased my Coker bias look alike radials I got 600/r16 for front and 700/r16 for rear.
With this set up it cruises like 70 MPH is nothing. Just purrs down the road with the other traffic.

NOW I WILL OFFER A NOTE & DISCLAIMER ABOUT PATRICKS -
I purchased a lot of stuff (over $2,000) from late 2013 thru summer of 2014 from Patrick's & everything was great. Then around early summer 2014 they quit shipping for whatever reason & I lost some money there. They still give me promises but absolutely NO results. Because of this I definitely cannot recommend them anymore. I still use their paper catalog for reference as it has lots of great info on stuff for the Chevy & GMC inline six cars & trucks.
Jimmie

 

Busy weekend with family and kid obligations, but I did manage a couple hours in the garage.

I was pretty nervous about the steering set up before I even started. The input shaft of the rack was aimed right at my drivers side motor mount.



The headers I am running gave me a couple good sized openings to get through.



When it was all said and done it was not as big of a deal as I had dreaded in the first place. I modified the motor mount a bit so the bolt hole was closer to the block. This required extending the mount a couple inches and cutting the biscuit. Once I did this it allowed the clearance I needed.







I mocked it up with a piece of dowl rod and it works great. Now I am going to pull the motor and weld up the modified motor mount and paint the area. Once that is done hopefully the motor will go in to stay.

New parts are arriving daily.

New rear calipers for the Ford 8.8.



CPP Firewall mounted Brake Booster.

 

My header really melted out the original grease in my Borgeson joint that is beside it. I put a bunch of high temp red grease on it and it fixed it. Never has been a problem since.
Don't know if you'll have that problem. Mine is manual steering and it had a catch in the steering when the grease melted out.

 

Thanks for the heads up. Maybe a little header wrap in that area will help.

 

I had a breakthrough couple hours in the shop and ended on a positive note.

Spent the night trying to figure out front shock mounting. I kept thinking about straightening out the shock a bit, rather than leaning it back towards the frame. I took some 2" flat and bent it up and put a quick gusset on side to brace it and tacked it on the frame.





First I bolted the shock to the side of the LCA but I was not happy with the minimal clearance. I then made a quick mounting tab and tack it to the LCA and that gives me almost 2" of clearance when the spindle is on the stop. I might bump the bottom of the shock out towards the ball joint another inch or so.



I plan to gusset the other side of the mount as well as build another mounting tab on the LCA.

 

Quite Saturday, which almost happens.

Wife went to an auction with our youngest, and the oldest was away at some training for work. That only left me and my 12 year old at home and he was preoccupied with some homework. Only dad in the garage.......PERFECT!!

Picked up some steel and went to work.

The beginning of a column support.....



20 minutes later



I did not think the dowel rod was going to hold up long term....so it was replaced with some 3/4" rolled steel bar.



Pinned with roll pins and started welding.



Motor back out and the modified motor mount was final welded, as well as the shock mounts.



After all that.........it got a coat of paint.....

 

Very nice, and some good progress!