Project: Salty

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Hutcheh

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Hey guys,

I bought a Chevy Silverado k2500 350 Vortec with 85,000 miles on it (138,000km). Only paid $400CAD, which is about $300USD. The truck was owned by a contracting company which plowed and salted parking lots. Body on it is quite rusty but the frame is surprisingly solid.

I'm doing a frame off restoration. So far I scratched the surface with this truck. The box is off of it, scrapped, and the cab is ready to come off as well, going to scrap, just waiting on a few parts here and there. Im going to take the cab off of my c1500 Sierra and put it on this truck. the rockers need to be done, but it's pretty solid otherwise. Bought a new box for it, just needs some paint.

Other things I have aquired for the truck:

Stainless Steel Brake lines from Inline Tube
Fenders
Holset HE351CW from a Dodge Cummins 5.9L 6000 miles

I really want to turbo this truck, but I am very inexperienced when it comes to boost. Will be asking lots of questions about this and hopefully a few guys with experience can help me out.

Here is the link to that thread:

http://www.gmt400.com/threads/boosting-a-350-vortec.35662/

I'm going to put a stainless steel 3" exhaust with 3" Flowmaster Outlaws and High Flow Cats, they are law in Ontario.

A new intake is also something I would like to install.

Here's what she looked like before I ripped the front end apart

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Hutcheh

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Been waiting patiently for my buddy to finish his old Datsun before I throw my truck in the shop to pull the cab off and clean the frame. In the meantime I bought new mufflers and high flow cats. welded them up, waiting on my Magnaflow Tru-X Crossover pipe to come in. for now here is some pics of the exhaust.

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Headers 3" out, came off my Camaro, got stainless ones for it. Going to paint them with ceramic paint.

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Flowmaster Outlaw 3" mufflers, test the waters to see how cool my neighbors really are ;)

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Flowmaster 223 3" high flow cats

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Started cleaning up my turbo as well. There is like dried up, caked, burnt oil on the side of the compressor so I let just the compressor housing soak overnight in Dasco Kleen. I made sure to mark the nuts and the turbines before disassembly. my guess as to why it ended up like this is the v band clamp was not installed correctly.
 

Hutcheh

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Update, the truck has entered the shop! Now the real fun begins. First thing I did was make sure the cab was fully disconnected from the frame, Engine, and tranny. Then I removed the body mounts. They sure are crusty, will have to order up new ones. Then up came the cab!

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To make the truck a bit easier to roll around, I disconnected the front and rear driveshafts. I would of had to of taken them out at some point anyways because I'm getting the tranny rebuilt. Upon doing so I found out that I need u joints all around. This truck is pretty beat, but what can you expect for $400.

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Disconnected the wiring from the t case and tranny. Getting it all ready to pull. So much easier to get at the hardware with the cab up in the air. On my GMC, I put in three 4L60E transmissions, I know how much of a pain that top bolt can be. The transmission in this truck is the 4L80E, but they are almost identical on the outside.

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I used "Mitchell On Demand" to figure out that Mickey mouse red wire that you can see on the tcase. It is the "Channel C" wire, and it runs into the module up close to the steering column. I'm going to route it back through the bus plug properly.

Tomorrow is another day, happy to be getting so much work done on the truck finally.

Here is the Datsun that was dubbed the "Green *******". That project was started in April and just finished it last week. Customer is happy to see it running. Did a rebuild of the engine, plus loads of other various work that needed to be done. I'm happy it's gone so I can finally work on my truck.

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Started up a thread if you have questions or feedback for me - http://www.gmt400.com/index.php?threads/36227
 
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Hutcheh

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Lots of work done since last month, what was once a simple frame clean up turned into a full frame resto. Frame is going in for sandblasting in the next couple of weeks. Transmission is getting rebuilt and a shift kit. A buddy of mine that works at the transmission place told me that the problem with 4L80-E's are that they build up too much pressure and blow seals within and a shift kit will help greatly. He also said if I'm going to turbo it like I am, I am going to need a tougher torque converter. A torque converter is something I can look at later because I'm not turbo charging it for a while. Cab was finally moved out of the shop, really opened up the work space. Motor is ready to be pulled. Almost down to a rolling chassis. I was researching the motor a little bit and found that you could either have a 2 or 4 bolt main in the L31. There is no straight answer unless you pull the oil pan but generally the half ton has a 2 bolt main and the 3/4 and 1 ton have a 4 bolt, which is good news for me.

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Hutcheh

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Hey guys, another update, hard to stay up to date on the forum because I'm in school for my millwright apprenticeship. Motor has been pulled and continued tearing down until I was almost at just the frame.

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I wanted to keep it a rolling chassis just to make it a bit easier to move around. Tore the frame down until I was left with the upper and lower control arms, hubs, rear diff and leafs.

To make the sandblasting cheaper to do, I used a needle scaler and knocked off all of the heavy rust and cleaned all of the oils that were left on the frame with brake clean.

After descaling and cleaning the whole frame, I decided that the horns needed to be reworked. The truck was used as a plow truck before I got my hands on it and they must have hit something pretty solid to tear away and deform the frame in the front end like they did. Used a zip cut wheel and cut out the section of the frame that they attempted at repairing.

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They used flat bar, angle iron and a washer. Almost as if they pulled whatever they could find out of their scrap bin. After building the truck, I have 2 projects to do next, repair my car trailer and overhaul my Jeep. Luckily for me I have already acquired some 5"x3" square tubing for my trailer. I cut about a 6" section out, and cut off one of the 5" sides. I was surprised how well it fit onto the frame.

I want to mount the tow hooks on to the frame again as well so for the base I used 1/4" plate and welded it into the base to add strength.

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A friend of mine told me that because there is such a high kick up for the box of the truck, the frame is prone to cracking where the kick up starts. As a precaution, I reinforced this section of the frame by boxing it in.

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I got as far as I could with the frame before I could send it out for sandblasting so I started taking all of the accessories so I could begin to clean up the block.

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I wire wheeled and wire brushed the block until it was ready for paint. I used VHT Engine Paint "Grey Primer" and "Chevrolet Orange".

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Contacted many places to find a reasonable price for sandblasting. First place I called was $1500, second place was $1000, and third time's the charm $400. I was talking the the third guy "A1 Sandblasting" and he told me he uses a media blast that is unrecoverable and cheap. Mostly used on farm silos and other applications where the sand can't be recycled. The other places were going to use a glass bead. Yes, you do get a nicer finish with glass bead, but it is way more expensive and it does not remove material as quickly. I figured that since I am layering rocker guard on to the frame, I'm not worried about the finish. I dropped the frame off at 10:00a.m. and A1 called me back at 12:30pm that he had finished.

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He did a great job. He set the frame up on saw horses, removed the wheels and went to town. I am happy with the way it turned out. The past few days I have been focusing on resealing the frame. I went through 10 rattle cans of red primer to coat the whole surface of the frame, and 9 cans of grey paint and I'm still not done.

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I think 3 more cans of paint should seal the rest of the frame off to protect it. After I'm going to start prepping the new cab, sort out wiring, etc.

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Hutcheh

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Got the motor back together lookin good. The aluminum brackets I cleaned using a steel shot wheelabrator. Valve covers were sandblasted as well as the oil pan. Everything was thoroughly cleaned after and then painted. While the oil pan was off, I flipped the block upside down to inspect the cylinder walls and check for wear or bites. The cylinders still look like they were honed yesterday.

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I didnt get any pictures of the rear end but I took it apart, put new seals and bearings into the axle tubes.

This next part was a little experiment, I bought a can of Chassis Saver from Magnet Paints and watched a little tutorial on how it should be applied. One guy said try MEK to clean the frame before applying.

I learned that MEK actually strips whatever you have, off. It melted away the paint that was already on the frame.

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After fully cleaning the frame I applied the paint and it turned out very well. Quite happy with it as of right now.

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If you are wondering why I taped the lid shut, it's because I could not get the lid off. I tried quite literally everything to get it off. The paint bonds to steel. I guess during shipping it bonded the lid to the can. I ended up drilling 2 holes in the can and taping it shut.
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The square tubing on the frame is a 1 1/2" body lift. I ran the square tubing across because a regular body lift just uses pucks. If something heavy goes into the bed, it could cave it in. This way, I have support all the way across. Pucks are going to be made up for the cab.

Also I installed 3" lift blocks and keys. The torsion keys were a pain to get out but after about 10 hours of beating they gave in.

Installed the front diff and started running brake lines that I could put on and would be out of the way. The diagram from Inline Tube was a bit off and added some confusion but I figured out which lines were incorrectly labelled on the diagram and put them in the proper place.

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I made up a new stainless bracket for my rear flex line because the other one was in bad shape. Fit perfectly.

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Can you spot my mistake in the next photo?

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The backing plates are on the wrong sides. The hole for the e brake cable is supposed to be at the front, not coming out of the back. Had to pull the rear end apart again carefully so I didn't damage the axle seals.

Just fitted the truck with new hub bearings, rotors and installed the CV shafts. We're heading in the right direction again.

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Next is the steering. I'm going to clean up the power steering box and paint it. I started grabbing the tie rods and holy there is a lot of play. I'm surprised I didn't feel it while I test drove the truck. The steering stabilizer shock is also cooked.

Here is my buddy's Dodge Ram 1500. I rent the shop with him. He has been working on it for over a year now and he has done an awesome job with it.

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He threw in one ton Dodge suspension and it jacked his truck way up.

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