Restorations

So I saw a deal on a fully working, complete power tailgate for $60 on craigslist. I thought this would just be a good source for parts (linkages, switches, etc) for the tailgate I purchased a while back, but it turned out to be MUCH better than I expected!! This tailgate is near perfect! There are only a few spots where the torsion springs rubbed chipped the paint loose, but no rust at all!! And original GM sheetmetal to boot!!

Here are some pictures:

Sorry for the lack of updates. I have been doing a lot of work with the fire department lately and the forum also takes up a bit of time.

I have been driving the K5 whenever I remember it’s there, which isn’t too often. I drove it in to work today and plan on driving it tomorrow to fire training. It still drives very nice! Runs great!

I am planning to drop the L05 TBI motor in starting in June. During that little project, the doors, dash, wiring harness, and A/C will be swapped over from the ‘90 ‘burb. That will be the next big undertaking for the K5.

Found a few more items on Craigslist for my truck

1 – Brand new, never installed, purchased 20 years ago Bestop swing arm style rear tire carrier – $35

2 – Used aftermarket fuel tank from a 1990 Blazer with TBI engine complete with sending unit & pump – $35

The tank is a little rusty, but it is exactly what I need for the conversion to the TBI motor from my ‘90 donor ‘burb.  The tank that is in the ‘burb is a 40 gallon tank and it will not fit without substantial modifications in the back of the truck.

I already have a swing arm style rear tire carrier, but it is bent up a bit and has a crease in one of the tubes.  This was too good of a deal to pass up!

So I took the longest trip yet with the K5.  120 miles round trip to Webster and back.  Not a lot, I’ll give you that, but up until this trip, all I have driven it is 15 miles at a shot around town, etc.  The purpose of this trip was to pickup a rust free tailgate I located on Craigslist.  Paid $45 for the tailgate and the seller threw in a replacement floor pan for the passenger side and some miscellaneous trim I didn’t even know I was missing.  Another $20 and I had a fully rebuilt front driveshaft in hand.  All in all, it was a very worth while trip!

The trip up to Webster went quite well.  It held 65mph just fine cruising down rte 104.  The oil pressure was fine while cruising down the road.  When I finally pulled off of 104, it dropped a bit low and I could hear a slight noise (I hesitate to call it a knock) from the motor that I did not recall hearing before.  This kind of troubled me… 

I stopped at my destination where I was for about an hour and then started on my return trip.  On the way back home, the temperature started to creep up.  It wasn’t getting too high, but still high enough to worry me.  Every other trip that I had taken never resulted in the temperature rising this high.  I turned on the heat (it was a bit chilly out anyway) and dropped the windows.  I used the heat to gauge whether I was loosing any coolant.  While driving down the highway, the heat stayed steady on the high side of the factory gauge.  Every time that I would drive through a small town, it would drop down…  I think I know what’s going on..!  I’ll elaborate when I get time to dig into it.

Changed the oil yesterday. All went fairly well except for the oil out of the filter that had the consistency of cold maple syrup. NICE! Well… Not so much…

I flushed out the crank case with some fresh oil, installed the drain plug, installed a new filter, and filled it up. Started it up and the oil pressure rose up to around 45psi with a cold engine. Took my kids for a spin and it dropped to around 15 while cruising down the road at probably 2200RPM. Hot idle, stopped in gear is down around 7psi. Hot idle in park is about 10psi.

There are no noises (lifter tap, etc) to warn of the pressure being too low so I currently am going on the assumption that it is ok and that the factory gauge is just not that accurate. Heck, it only has 6 lines on it with only the last one being marked at 60psi. The other lines are 0, 15, 30, and 45… I have a 3 gauge cluster that I have been toying with installing. It came out of my Chevelle and has a mechanical oil pressure, mechanical temperature, and a volt gauge. I could steal the tachometer out of my Chevelle as well.

Since I have another motor, I am not too worried about it. If this one dies, it will just step up the time table on my 90 TBI motor swap which is currently scheduled to start in the spring.

I had the chance to purchase a set of used 4.10 gears off of ColoradoK5.com. $100 delivered to my door for a 45:11 Dana 44 gear set and a 41:10 14BFF gearset. Not too shabby and the gears look excellent. The wear is almost undetectable to the naked eye.

So the future drivetrain will be a D44 / 14BFF combination with 4.10’s. Just need to get some of the parts broken down and cleaned up and then installed on my 2nd Dana 44 axle and my 14BFF!

Well this weekend I tackled the job of pulling the dash apart to replace the bulbs for the gauges.  While I was at it, I removed the clear bezel, wet sanded it to remove the discoloration, then polished it back up.

Surprisingly, now that I have the problem with my hands/forearms, my hands do not cramp up like they used to when working in tight areas or with repetitive motions.  Good thing!

Put it all back together and found that the fuel gauge and temp gauge did not work.  Removed it and traced out the lines.  Found a bad connection to the temp gauge and fixed that with a short strand of copper and a little bit of solder.  Removed all of the gauges and cleaned them while I was in there.  Put it all back together and still nothing…  Checked the fuses and the 3A cluster fuse was blown.  A quick run to Autozone for some fuses (all I had was the mini blade fuses) and it was back to working great.

While I was at autozone I bought a new headlight pull rod/knob to replace the broken one that was there.  So that was done.

I also picked up a new window crank handle for the passenger side.  Put it on and noticed why the previous owner had removed the old one…  The window track was broken making it almost impossible to roll the window up once it was down.  I had another rear window track from a pickup that I was able to cut off the truck upper bracket and weld on the bracket for my cut down doors (73-75 full convertibles had a different upper bracket).  Put that in and tried it again…  The window still jumped off…  A bit more inspection showed that the window regulator was bent up to the point that it was pulling the window out of its channels.  One of the doors out in my shed had a good manual window regulator so I removed that and dropped it into my door then dropped the window back in.  ALL IS WELL!!  It was a bit of a hassle to get the window back on the regulator, but now that it is in, it works as good as new!

Now that my roof is done, my next purchase will be that 74 Jimmy to cut up!  The first thing I am planning on doing is skinning the doors to get the additional supports out of them.  Then I will be converting my extra set of doors over to full convertible use. 

After my earlier QuadraJet episode, I still had the hard start issue with a few more problems to boot. Seems that one of the little arms on the passenger side of the carb was mispositioned and jammed the secondaries shut. Not only that, but I was still having the hard start problem. I tried a ton of things to no avail so I decided to pull the distributor and the carb (the last two things I messed around with) for a thorough check.

While I was in the distributor, I removed and cleaned everything, installing new springs and bushings for the mechanical advance.  On reassembly, I noticed that the bracket for the vacuum advance dashpot was bent on the distributor so I replaced that before dropping it back in.

I went through everything on the carb all over again. I found that the float valve had fallen off of the float, but was still in its proper location so it would have still worked. I took everything else apart and inspected it all over again. When I reinstalled the fuel inlet seat into the carb, I noticed that I was able to thread it down in deeper this time. Looking at it more closely, the small seal that had come in the kit had not properly fell down into the bore that it was supposed to go into and was not properly sealing off the fuel inlet when the float commanded. This allowed the fuel bowl to over flow basically all of the time. It was not a gusher, but just enough to flood the engine after it would sit for a little bit.

Now, it idles great, runs like a raped ape, and best of all, starts beautifully when hot!!

I have located a VERY poor condition Jimmy that I am currently negotiating a price with the current owner.  This truck has not title with it so it would be a parts truck only.  The body is rusted quite badly, but the frame and running gear looks pretty good.  12-bolt rear and Dana-44 front.  I am unsure of the gear ratios yet, but the truck has the straight 6 engine with a 3-on-the-tree manual gear box.  Behind the manual transmission is a NP205 transfer case!  Hopefully I will be taking possession of this in the next couple of weeks. 

I will be using it primarily for the frame and plan to completely detail the frame then install my 3/4 ton running gear under it.  The doors will be gutted for their inner supports and other miscellaneous brackets/trim required to convert the pickup, suburban, and later model doors for use on a full convertible.  This will save me from having to cut apart my current doors.  This truck also has a rough set of low back bucket seats in it.  The plastic trim still looks to be in good condition so I may restore those seats and use them in my truck instead of the high back buckets I currently have installed.

All in all, I should be taking this home for between $150 and $200 depending on current vehicle scrap prices.  I’ll be going down there with cash in hand and the flat bed in tow…

I swapped out the old points style distributor for the HEI distributor that I temporarily robbed from my Chevelle. Everything went quite smooth with the swap and it starts and runs MUCH better now.

New problem from last weekend was that it would start VERY hard after it would sit for a little bit. I pulled the carb tonight to find that the well plugs in the bottom of the QuadraJet had started to leak again.  The secondary metering port well plugs are sealed up very well, but it was the well plugs for the primary metering ports. This time I was determined to fix it permanently. A 10-32 tap and cutting down some 10-32 cap screws to only 0.1875" long should solve that problem once and for all!