Hi all, thought I'd start one of these.

I got this truck after the timing chain had eaten a hole in the cover and mixed the coolant in with the oil. It did that, then sat for 6 months or so, so it wound up looking kind of ugly in there


well I bought the cover, a chain set, a headgasket, and oil pump and water pump and put them on



after that I changed the oil a couple of times to get all the coolant out, and she was running like a top. cleaned her up a little



picked up some mustang 17s with tires for $150--can't beat that!


put them on


lost the rusty bent bumper


now its time to get low. ordered djm control arms and beefed taco rear drop kit. The control arms came in last week, and I couldn't wait to see what it would look like so I went ahead and put them on yesterday




got it raked out pretty good! I went ahead and did a b/j flip while I was there too, so it should be about 4" lower in the front. I got 4" blocks coming. Brian at streetacos said he was a little backed up, so i'll rock the rake for a week or two. I kind of like it!

I plan to paint it and do a center console with some kind of bucket seats in the future. Also going to do the interior in black I think. May do a weber too. I would like to eventually put a chevy 350 or possibly a 4.3 v6 in it one day.

Thanks for looking and let me know what you think!

 

Looking awesome so far man! Crazy rust issue inside the motor. I would have scrapped it seeing how bad that was. Cool that you rebuilt it. tough little motors.

Im diggin the mustang wheels on it too.

Also what color are you thinking of painting? I like the white you have on there myself.

 

Thanks man!

I think the white could look good with some touch ups, but I've always been a sucker for black. I'm thinking gloss black with some cool pinstriping--maybe a little lime green down the sides.

I never even took the oil pan off, so I have no idea what it looked like in the bottom end, but it started right up and doesn't knock or anything so I assume the bearings are ok lol. I've put over 1k miles on it since I got it running again, so I hope it will last. If not, I guess I'm in the market for a chevy motor...

 

Nice summary post. I saw the one before on it. Looks good. Get the back dropped and it will be a fun little truck. Do all your body mods before you paint it. Or you'll be kickin yourself lol

 

Chevy 4.3 would fly in these trucks that's a stout motor .. There probably a dime a dozen to around here

 

yeah I know the 4.3s are everywhere around here. I've heard of people doing that too. I think it would be a pretty decent truck to drive on the street with that motor with a s10 5 speed behind it.

Thanks yall!

 

Thats actually kinda bad you havent taken the oil pan off. I would highly recommend it! If you have had timechain issues I will bed money on it you have broken pieces of build rail and chain and chain cover sitting in the bottom of your pan. Its not a hard thing to do. Will take a few hours to drop, clean and then reinstall.

 

You definitely should take the pan off! Big chance you have crap clogging the pickup tube screen making it hard to pump oil through it

 

I know the pieces of the guide rail are down there somewhere. the chain didn't break though, just wore a hole through the cover, so I don't think there are any metal parts in there. The oil comes out really clear, and it has been fairly well kept up with oil changes so I don't think there is much in the way of sludge. I might do it one day but its running good right now so I'll probably leave it alone for now. besides, if it blows up, its just an excuse to go ahead with the 4.3!

 

an update:

refinished my door panels and the top part of my dash. used SEM gloss black plastic/vinyl paint with bulldog adhesion promoter. seemed to work better on the vinyl than the plastic but it came out pretty good I think. Had a buddy of mine help me out with it because I can't paint worth a crap lol

pics:




dash pad still has a crack in it. I didn't have any vinyl to try rewrapping it with, so I figured black would at least match the other dash piece so I painted it anyway