I've wanted a cool car for as long as I can remember. At one point I bought a 1957 Chevy Pickup truck and I had all sorts of grand dreams of how it would be when I finished and she's sitting out in the driveway in 40,000 pieces and worse off than when I started. My high school auto shop teacher specifically said "don't take it all apart..." and I did.
About a month ago, I received my tax refund and decided I was tired of driving this Mercury Sable that my wife bought in a DEA auction. I thought a Silverado SS would be cool but when I checked Ebay they were going for way more money than I wanted to pay. Oddly I found an 89 1 Ton Cheyenne with a 454 / TH400 / Full floating rear on Craigslist for about $1200.
I drove up to take a look at the rig. The body was pretty solid. She was leaking transmission fluid and one of the rotors or wheel bearings was doing a THUMP, THUMP, THUMP as I took her around the block. I asked the seller to fix the couple of items so that I could drive her 80 miles back to my house...I threw some money down on the truck and came back a week later to pick her up.
That day it was raining like hell and I quickly found out that the windshield was leaking. Despite my anxiety of driving a truck with 255,000 miles on it, untested through Boston traffic, she did just fine and I got her home. The next day I noticed the transmission lines were still leaking and I set out to fix that. Replaced the modulator as well as the vacuum line to the modulator.
The ignition wires looked like they had seen better days so I decided to do the plugs, wires, rotor and cap...I was up until about 2AM trying to get the plug out of cylinder number 7, but eventually I did and it was good. I've had the plugs in and out of the heads now several times and it's a real easy job. I shiver to think how long those damn plugs were sitting in there.
Even with 255,000 miles on the motor, she still had a little giddy-up. If I stomped the pedal around a corner or if the ground is a little wet, she rips the tires...even with that ginormous rear-end. But it's not enough for what I want...
Many years ago I bought a 1979 Cheyenne because it had a 454 in it. I ripped the motor out and I planned to drop it into the 57...but that hasn't ever happened. Just by a stroke of luck, the heads that were sitting on that motor were 049 castings, which are one of the two most desireable stock castings for big blocks. I sent them to my high school auto teacher who happens to run a machine shop in the evening hours. He punched them out for bigger valves and did his magic on them...and they've been sitting around collecting dust (and waiting to be paid off...hahahaha).
Well, the time has come. We're starting with a block that is .100 over...I will have 2 other blocks on hand in the event that I need to do a rebuild. The 79 is punched out to .030 right now and the 89 doesn't have a bore on it (I'm betting). The heads are 122CC combustion chambers so we're going to have to go with domed pistons, probably some cheap Keith Blacks, roller cam. We're looking at something around 450 hp when all is said and done but it's supposed to be a torque monster. I will be taking him a crank and rods in a couple of weeks when I visit Western New York. He'll bring the motor back to me in Massachusetts in August or September.
In the meantime, I installed a set of headers on this thing...broke a couple of exhaust manifold bolts off in the heads and said "screw it", I'm not going to waste my time trying to extract those right now. Yeah, I'm not proud of it but I just don't really give a **** at this point. The OEM exhaust didn't match up so she went to Lou's Custom Exhaust in Plymouth and got true dual exhaust, magnaflow muffler, no cats...and the crazy guys there even tossed those stainless tips on the ends...lol, I didn't ask for them.
She was smelling like gas and people at my work were worried it was going to blow up and burn their nice luxury cars down so I decided to drop the tank. I discovered rot-out on the top of the tank towards the front. I cleaned it up with some phosphoric acid, a wire brush and some epoxy...rustoleum etc...replaced all of the hard lines...even did a nice job with it. Usually I'm in a really pissed off mood having to crawl around and install new steel lines that I don't bother trying to match them up to the frame or anything, just fast bends etc. But nooooo, not this time...I'm matching the bends as much as I can, even primed and painted the lines figuring that I shouldn't ever have to replace them for as long as I have this guy.
In the process of the whole gas tank being dropped adventure, one of the tank straps broke and I managed to screw up the ground wire going into the sending unit. With the plan being to rip this motor out and replace it with a carburated beast, I decided that I don't want to even mess around with this stupid in-tank fuel pump any longer. I ordered one of those Holley Competition Blue fuel pumps with regulator and it should be here tomorrow (5/8/2010). My research has shown that I should be able to use the existing wiring to take advantage of the 3-second relay and the oil pressure shutoff action...should be an easy job.
I'm hoping to hit the junk yard this weekend to yank a rear-end out of a 1/2 ton...I think it's 6 lug standard ratio but it should be much lighter than the full floater that I'm towing around currently. I will also probably snag a fuel tank if there's one that's in better shape, along with the sending unit etc because I still want the gas guage to work. I found a place in maine that has the 8 lug semi-floater in a 3.73...it measures out to 47" middle to middle of leaf spring mounts...$300. That might be the better bet, but if the 6 lug matches up for now, I will go with that and worry about the 8 lug later...besides the 6 lug and the gas tank will be free.
I don't want to get too ambitious...just want something cool to cruise around. I will post up some pictures of my misadventures in the near future.
About a month ago, I received my tax refund and decided I was tired of driving this Mercury Sable that my wife bought in a DEA auction. I thought a Silverado SS would be cool but when I checked Ebay they were going for way more money than I wanted to pay. Oddly I found an 89 1 Ton Cheyenne with a 454 / TH400 / Full floating rear on Craigslist for about $1200.
I drove up to take a look at the rig. The body was pretty solid. She was leaking transmission fluid and one of the rotors or wheel bearings was doing a THUMP, THUMP, THUMP as I took her around the block. I asked the seller to fix the couple of items so that I could drive her 80 miles back to my house...I threw some money down on the truck and came back a week later to pick her up.
That day it was raining like hell and I quickly found out that the windshield was leaking. Despite my anxiety of driving a truck with 255,000 miles on it, untested through Boston traffic, she did just fine and I got her home. The next day I noticed the transmission lines were still leaking and I set out to fix that. Replaced the modulator as well as the vacuum line to the modulator.
The ignition wires looked like they had seen better days so I decided to do the plugs, wires, rotor and cap...I was up until about 2AM trying to get the plug out of cylinder number 7, but eventually I did and it was good. I've had the plugs in and out of the heads now several times and it's a real easy job. I shiver to think how long those damn plugs were sitting in there.
Even with 255,000 miles on the motor, she still had a little giddy-up. If I stomped the pedal around a corner or if the ground is a little wet, she rips the tires...even with that ginormous rear-end. But it's not enough for what I want...
Many years ago I bought a 1979 Cheyenne because it had a 454 in it. I ripped the motor out and I planned to drop it into the 57...but that hasn't ever happened. Just by a stroke of luck, the heads that were sitting on that motor were 049 castings, which are one of the two most desireable stock castings for big blocks. I sent them to my high school auto teacher who happens to run a machine shop in the evening hours. He punched them out for bigger valves and did his magic on them...and they've been sitting around collecting dust (and waiting to be paid off...hahahaha).
Well, the time has come. We're starting with a block that is .100 over...I will have 2 other blocks on hand in the event that I need to do a rebuild. The 79 is punched out to .030 right now and the 89 doesn't have a bore on it (I'm betting). The heads are 122CC combustion chambers so we're going to have to go with domed pistons, probably some cheap Keith Blacks, roller cam. We're looking at something around 450 hp when all is said and done but it's supposed to be a torque monster. I will be taking him a crank and rods in a couple of weeks when I visit Western New York. He'll bring the motor back to me in Massachusetts in August or September.
In the meantime, I installed a set of headers on this thing...broke a couple of exhaust manifold bolts off in the heads and said "screw it", I'm not going to waste my time trying to extract those right now. Yeah, I'm not proud of it but I just don't really give a **** at this point. The OEM exhaust didn't match up so she went to Lou's Custom Exhaust in Plymouth and got true dual exhaust, magnaflow muffler, no cats...and the crazy guys there even tossed those stainless tips on the ends...lol, I didn't ask for them.
She was smelling like gas and people at my work were worried it was going to blow up and burn their nice luxury cars down so I decided to drop the tank. I discovered rot-out on the top of the tank towards the front. I cleaned it up with some phosphoric acid, a wire brush and some epoxy...rustoleum etc...replaced all of the hard lines...even did a nice job with it. Usually I'm in a really pissed off mood having to crawl around and install new steel lines that I don't bother trying to match them up to the frame or anything, just fast bends etc. But nooooo, not this time...I'm matching the bends as much as I can, even primed and painted the lines figuring that I shouldn't ever have to replace them for as long as I have this guy.
In the process of the whole gas tank being dropped adventure, one of the tank straps broke and I managed to screw up the ground wire going into the sending unit. With the plan being to rip this motor out and replace it with a carburated beast, I decided that I don't want to even mess around with this stupid in-tank fuel pump any longer. I ordered one of those Holley Competition Blue fuel pumps with regulator and it should be here tomorrow (5/8/2010). My research has shown that I should be able to use the existing wiring to take advantage of the 3-second relay and the oil pressure shutoff action...should be an easy job.
I'm hoping to hit the junk yard this weekend to yank a rear-end out of a 1/2 ton...I think it's 6 lug standard ratio but it should be much lighter than the full floater that I'm towing around currently. I will also probably snag a fuel tank if there's one that's in better shape, along with the sending unit etc because I still want the gas guage to work. I found a place in maine that has the 8 lug semi-floater in a 3.73...it measures out to 47" middle to middle of leaf spring mounts...$300. That might be the better bet, but if the 6 lug matches up for now, I will go with that and worry about the 8 lug later...besides the 6 lug and the gas tank will be free.
I don't want to get too ambitious...just want something cool to cruise around. I will post up some pictures of my misadventures in the near future.
