gstubbz's trucks

Hey look at that, you are still alive!. I was asking Z71Hobbs recently if he knew where you disappeared to. Glad to see you checking in.

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Bout time! Whats yo snap?

I wondered what had happened to you as well, definitely missed reading about your adventures!

Ya man uve been pretty quiet till u came to redding. You kno I've got parking spots for the Hd if u need haha. Glad to see some updates.

Z71Hobbs said:

You really need to get that 3500hd home before something happens...

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I know there is a slight chance I may end up with another regular cab HD project here soon (I'll elaborate in the next post, good chance I may get it) and it will need the transmission from the crew cab. Then I'm forced to go get it!

884x4310ci said:

Nice truck. Love the front bumper. I would like to get something similar for mine.

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Thank you! It's certainly beef, my only complaint is when you hit stuff hard enough (like minivans) it actually pushes the bumper up no matter how tight the bolts are. That's my only problem with it!

Cokeman95 said:

Hey look at that, you are still alive!. I was asking Z71Hobbs recently if he knew where you disappeared to. Glad to see you checking in. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

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I'm alive, I'm tough to kill

I'm glad to see that people still wonder what happens to me, that genuinely makes me feel better!!

Biggershaft96 said:

Bout time! Whats yo snap?

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My snap is gs2009, add me so I can add you to the group chat! There are currently 15 of us!!

89RCLB said:

I wondered what had happened to you as well, definitely missed reading about your adventures!

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The problem was not doing enough with GMT400s in my life But I will continue to have adventures to share!!

GarrettGmc said:

Ya man uve been pretty quiet till u came to redding. You kno I've got parking spots for the Hd if u need haha. Glad to see some updates.

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Had to check up on the closest forum member I'll text you and keep you informed with what's going on!

My good ol’ weekend updates return!

I went out Friday after work and pulled my 6.5 into the shop after firing it up, and unfortunately something is still messed up with the glow plug system as it will still only start on ether. I can let it idle for half an hour and it still will not start right back up without the glow plugs, so it is definitely on my list of items to fix.

Then yesterday I fought for a long time trying to replace a melted injector return line for cylinder number six and eight, which was a massive pain as the little clips are tiny and there is a heat shield in the way. Fortunately I was able to go to the parts truck and found the injector rubber return hoses still on one of the heads laying in the bed of the truck, which saved me! Just like the crank sensor this old engine block has saved me. No longer does this truck leak diesel! This was all I accomplished on the truck for the weekend unfortunately.




I also found out yesterday from Joe that Pick N Pull was 50% off this weekend, so I went today and honestly the trucks out there were the same ones out there on Memorial Day weekend at the last half day sale so each vehicle was mostly stripped. There was a 98 Crew Cab K3500 SRW in there too, that was sad to see.

But this one was interesting, a 98 two door Tahoe in Cheyenne trim. Sad to also see this there, but I did take it’s clean Cheyenne grille. Fortunately nobody wants these grilles and I like them, so it’s a win for me! It was so cheap I was expecting it to be $40+ even on half day because they charge a ton, as well as charge for every tiny lens on them but today I got lucky.

The grille on the 94 6.5 is cracked pretty bad although you can’t see it in photos. Also since 80% of the headlight harness is ruined thanks to mice, everything must come out anyway. I now have everything to put the Cheyenne grille on this truck. The truck will look more like a “work truck” which is what I like. I’ll mount it all up the next time I’m out there messing with the trucks.




This vehicle was a double taker, I was taking back roads over near Renown hospital and found this, I actually drove by the first time kind of fast so I made a second loop to take a photo. It’s a 97-99 K2500 suburban limo, and you can tell they split it, stretched it, and only painted the middle section since all of the other GM black paint has started to fade. Neat to see this thing nonetheless!



Now here is another truck up in the air but it may work out and go one of two ways. He seems like he needs it out of his rental house in Reno by the 19th because the HOA is bitching about it being a “Work Truck” and is not currently registered. I offered to trade my 94 K2500 ECLB 6.5 diesel that I’ve been working on for it, and it’s not perfect by any means either. But the guy said he is open to trades and other trucks that are not perfect. I also could just buy it, but I need to come up with some quick cash by Thursday including money to feed my truck, get the car trailer, yada yada.

The problem with the HD is that it needs a transmission. That’s it. It was being parted when the guy picked it up so the transmission was sold. Truck has 177k, runs good, just needs the trans. He could not find one, so here is where it benefits me. My crew cab HD has the transmission still sitting in it, which still has the 4L80e in it. I don’t need the trans anyway since I plan on going with the Cummins and a manual transmission, so it’s a win win. And doing this will force me to get the crew cab HD out to Doyle as well finally.

Don’t know if this will work out, but I will keep y’all posted!



That HD would have been a cone truck like this, and the truck was originally painted orange. I wish it still was lol



If you are curious how these work, here is a video from TruckSite in Sacramento CA that resells ex-govt vehicles. There is a conveyor belt in the middle to push cones forward or backward.


So that’s it for this update!

Little midweek update!

Figured I'd show you what I do at work, not necessarily GMT400 related but that's okay I felt it was worth sharing lol

We cut up this 1986 International truck with a Cummins LTA10-270hp engine. I saved two things from it though, the mount for the smoke stack (for future use with my crew HD possibly) and the Holset H2C turbo which shockingly wasn't locked up. Cut the thing up into pieces with a torch and used the forklift to move it all around after that. This truck was an old local delivery truck used to take milk around Susanville, and I guarantee milk I had in grade school was delivered using this exact truck, it was parked in 2008.



Then I also pick up engine/trans combos and drain the oil out before throwing them into the scrap piles. Did a few today including a huge gas engine from a M816 1953 5 ton military truck. I feel bad now, but it is a 9.9L Continental R6602 inline-6 gasoline engine.



That's it for work related stuff. Figured I'd show something different and someone will find it interesting!

As far as actual GMT400 stuff, I'm trading the first 350tbi I put in my green truck (has rod knock now, originally out of a 91 K5), a 2wd 5LM60 transmission, and that Holset H2C turbo from that international for this 94 HD. I am picking it up on Friday night so this will hopefully go smooth. I couldn't tell you what I would do with a cone truck but I can say if it gets kept I want to either toss a flatbed or a wrecker bed on. He is happy with the deal since I'm the only one interested in his HD in the first place and he doesn't want to quite give it away which I understand!

Still slightly concerned since I'm starting the air force gig and I won't be able to work on GMT400s anymore (unless I'm on vacation or get some base super close to home).

Side note, this is neat:

So did u already have the meeting with the recruiter over here? Yea throw a flatbed on the cone truck

I can finally write about my disastrous weekend! Friday night and Saturday were horrendous and we had so much going on and so many problems also at the same time. Sunday actually went pretty decent.

Friday after getting off work early at 2pm, I went to go grab a car trailer from a friend’s house, then headed out to Doyle so I could grab the items I was trading the guy for this HD. Tyler and I were able to load everything unto the car trailer, he also wanted a rear axle so we gave him a ten bolt 6 lug axle from a 70s K10.

We left Doyle right after 7pm, and next on our list was to haul a Honda CRX on the trailer from my friend’s old house in Reno next to UNR to Stead, NV which is like 10 miles or so away. Side note, this is the same friend who bought that Jaguar I towed, he sold it for more than he paid for it and all of the expenses, and bought the Honda instead. Hauled it to the new place with no problems.




Now here is where we start the HD stuff, I call Ben (the former owner) Mr. Kentucky because the license plate on his BMW is from there! So we head up to Spanish Springs to drop off the truck parts, and his friend Josh had this really neat 40s or 50s four door Chevy car, with seats in it from a casino that were removed in 1987. They swivel too! I thought this car was super neat and it’s what they are putting my old 350/nv3500 into.

So with an empty trailer, we decide to go load the HD in Lockwood, NV (four miles past Scheels in Sparks up I-80), and the HD was sitting at a coworker’s of Mr. Kentucky’s so I brought two come alongs, got it most of the way on the trailer, and broke them both. So Kentucky and I went to a 24hr Walmart up in Spanish Springs and I buy the two come alongs they had in stock at midnight, go back, and have the HD on the trailer at 1:24am.




We say cool and start to leave, so far so good, get on I80, and I immediately notice smoke coming off a tire. Find a spot to pull over, and try to figure out what to do. The inner portion of the rear trailer tire was about gone. Joe and I pushed the HD off the trailer in the median of I80, went back up to the exit, dropped the trailer off, went back and used a chain to pull the HD to the same spot and then pick the car trailer back up and head home. I got to Doyle around 3am, and I had four other people with me, and two of them had work at 6:30am/7am so I felt super bad for wrecking their night, we all expected to be back by 1am. I made the call to leave the HD there overnight and come back for it tomorrow night.

So I wake up kind of late on Saturday, and it felt almost as if I had a hangover, but I never drank so I’m assuming it was from stress. I was up around 11am, and half an hour later I get a snapchat from my friend Joe, and his car was totaled. The neighbor was moving his friends Tundra to get his car out of the driveway, and ended up slamming into Joe’s Honda extremely hard and shoved it back 5-6 feet. So I showed up at 1:30pm or so and towed the Honda back to his parents’ house back in Susanville. I also drop off their car trailer too since I now have no use for it.




I meet my friend Kyle at Joe’s house and both of us drove out to Doyle later that night in preparation for rescuing the HD. We were both very tired and left around 1am. We figured the best time to tow this was around 3am as that is when there is minimal traffic and minimal police enforcement. We show up at the HD right after 2am and now we needed to make the truck have some form of working lights so nobody hit us, and we made some lights work after tossing in some batteries and connected the tow strap to my truck and began our journey at 2:50am or so.




We had to travel 54 miles to Doyle towing this truck with a strap, and this little trip went so much better than both of us expected. With no traffic or anything we were able to go the speed we wanted (60/65mph) and had no problems with anyone. Did not see an entire cop and made it through the CA bug station without trouble. We made it to Doyle right before 4am.

For your entertainment, I made these little snapchat update videos that I sent to friends showing our journey, everyone liked them!


Believe it or not, I was actually fairly nervous about this flat towing thing, and what feared me the most was the fact that if we were stopped by CHP or whatever, we were flat towing a vehicle that was currently not registered nor insured. We were joking with all of our friends in snapchat saying that this may be the last time you hear from us because we will be arrested or killed.

We had so so many doubters, and people calling us stupid, and this and that. But we made it. One guy said “why didn’t you put it on a trailer” and I said “I tried playing nice with it for hours and loading it on a trailer and that failed significantly” then got asked “why didn’t you just drive it” so I had to say “it literally does not have a transmission, when you look under all you see is the flex plate” and then I decided to stop answering his questions.

But guess what! We made it bitches. Tow companies wanted anywhere from $350-500 to tow this truck that same distance, personally I was cool with just towing it behind my truck. Spent money on fuel and Monster Maxx, we were set!

I’ll make a new post here in a few minutes all about the HD and its past now that we have it home. @BowtieBrody said what I’m doing is very Roadkill like, and if I had my own TV show I’d call it Shenanigans because **** like this is perfect for that!

So now that we made it back, here is everything I know about this HD and my plans for it.

When Kyle and I got back, we were both sitting in the ConeTruck and the sun was starting to rise just after 4am. We were both so tired we passed out, and Tyler saw us and took this photo at 6:21am. I was the tard in the passenger seat passed out with my “Truck Legends” hat on!



Well when we were both woken up we both went into the house and I crashed on the couch until 9am or so. When I woke up again I was so dang tired and still felt as if I had a hangover.

History of the truck. Well it started out life as a Caltrans cone truck, and around 2010 or so I’m assuming this “Road Safety Services” purchased the truck and used it up until they went out of business on 10/29/2015. It arrived at Pick N Pull in Sparks, NV on 1-31-2018 and at the time, Mr. Kentucky was working at Pick N Pull and was able to purchase the truck. When he bought it things were already missing, including the 4L80e transmission. The HOA where he lives told him to get rid of it and that is how I ended up with it.

Kentucky put a lot of new stuff into this truck (Power steering pump and pulley, crankshaft position sensor, good running injection pump, new PMD, etc), and the truck I think mechanically was good as the engine was replaced (although a Jasper), had good brake pads, and other little things that made it look like it was somewhat cared for. It has 177k on the odometer.





Anyway, here are all the glorious photos I took of the HD in the daylight, my first time seeing the truck in the daylight as well!







The driver door/fender is destroyed because Pick N Pull used their forklifts to move it when Mr. Kentucky told them not to jack it up. The front filler piece and bumper are also thrashed. I had a GMC SL grille that I put on that was in better shape than the chevy one and the truck is also a true GMC. That was pretty much all I did with it yesterday, I helped Tyler put a clutch in his Mazda so that kept me busy instead. I tried to make it run but didn’t have much luck.

What are my plans with this thing?

Well I would absolutely live to take this thing to the Oregon Gambler 500 just because it’s impractical and neat, but more than likely I am going to put a transmission in it, make it run and drive, make the interior a little nicer, replace the doors, mount some K2XX tows, and an 11/12 foot flatbed with a gooseneck hitch. Good utility truck in my opinion and can do other stuff like haul wood or whatever when we need to.

I now need to get the HD Crew out here and put its transmission into this thing!!

Also, I started to mount that Cheyenne grille on the 94 k2500 but didn’t get too far!



So there is my crazy weekend story, and I now have this HD that I also love a ton, I like it! Tyler also likes it too, I’m apparently not the only oddball that likes “commercial trucks”