gstubbz's trucks

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gstubbz

Hi I'm Gavin and I have an OBSession
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Ah! This weekend. Sometimes I don’t remember half the things I did so I have to look back at the photos on my phone and this weekend was one of those times!


Friday:

I looked at the cone truck and I wanted to see if I could make the cone conveyor work, so I started looking around trying to trace wires, and under the truck the only wires were running to the brake lights. So I continued to look around, and looked in the little side boxes of the truck and discovered that the belt is moved via this little hydraulic thing. However someone took the actual pump so it won’t work. I’m not going to put any effort into making it work mainly because it’s just throwing money at something that won’t do me any good. I Tried selling the bed off the truck for $200 just to see if anyone was interested, with zero interest so it appears that I will be taking it to scrap.

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Saturday:

Nothing crazy – ended up putting Tyler’s 06 Mazda 3 back together since we did a clutch in it.

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Sunday:

This is what I’m excited about! I went to go “look” at that 94 c2500 RCLB 6.5/nv4500 and well, like usual, I bought it. For $350. I paid for it but I still need to get a car trailer and go get it at some point this week. It’s an ex Q&D Construction truck with… 398K on the odometer! Pretty insane. I didn’t even try messing with it really, just because I wanted to pay for it since he didn’t know what he had (nv4500). This truck is decked out with all the Sierra SLE options for the year too. Also has a gooseneck hitch which I thought was sweet. Hopefully all it needs is a turbo so I can throw one on it and drive it!

The truck is kind of clean for 400k. The front fenders are both trash though. I originally wanted the truck just for that transmission but everyone is pushing me to leave it as it is, and because it was a former company truck (Q&D) and my friend Tyler works for them, our joke is to make this thing run and he would drive it to work once just to see how his coworkers would react to Q&D finally giving him a company truck. Also has a turnover gooseneck hitch, kind of nice!

I’m starting to have a hard time identifying trucks these days, I have enough to start numbering them and calling it a fleet. I still do not know what it is with me and 1994 model trucks with a 6.5 like I don’t ever end up with any other year of truck. I don’t even try it’s just what I end up with for cheap and this 94 6.5 is truck number 5.

This truck combo is kind of a rare one - decked out SLE RCLB C2500. According to compnine there were 1,661 trucks with a 6.5 for 1994, and 3,078 trucks with a 5 speed in RCLB C2500 fashion.

Also tried messing with the transmission limp mode issue on the white ex cab 6.5 with no luck. Dang it lol

So that’s it for now. Need my car trailer :)

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gstubbz

Hi I'm Gavin and I have an OBSession
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Update! Sold the 94 ExCab K2500 6.5 for a grand as it sits, the guy wants me to throw the silverado grille back on which is fine with me. I'll deliver it to him probably on Sunday.

And had to make a late night trip to go get the Q&D truck last night. I talked to the owner yesterday and he told me that he would be gone Friday and all weekend so I had to do some quick planning and go get it last night when I wanted to do all that tonight.

So I grabbed the car trailer, picked up Joe in Reno, and we jetted for Mound House, NV (like 6 miles east of Carson City, shockingly the Bunny Ranch brothel was like within half a mile of this guys house which was funny). The guy runs a landscape business and we used his bobcat to load it on the trailer, went much easier than I was expecting.

Now here is where we get to the good stuff. We stop at the Maverick in Carson City right off of Hwy 50 and I put gas in the Dodge, and brought a gas can with me to put diesel in it for the 6.5. Well I brought a good battery with me and Joe put it in, and sure as **** this thing fired right up almost immediately, and it had been sitting for a while!

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Here are the few snapchat videos from last night:

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Now I don't know if you caught that chick in the background with the one gallon gas can, but she was going to each pump trying to get the fuel out of the hose since I'm assuming she had no money. I caught it but Joe didn't.

We also saw this lowered c3500, I just now noticed looking at the photo it has NNBS mirrors on it for whatever reason. 95+ gasser truck

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Now when I was dropping Joe off we decided to check if it had blowby, and it literally has none (that clip of the video is with the rest above). I have never seen that so I'm under the impression that the 6.5 in this truck is extremely healthy. The truck indeed has a brand new starter, flywheel, and clutch. It runs good, like too good! Needs the turbo for sure though, I'll be borrowing the one from the HD for the meantime on this thing.

The amount of people wanting to buy this thing from me is insane, I'm guessing it's all the fact that it is a 6.5/nv4500 combo but I'm set on keeping it now. Reminds me of the 93 c1500 4.3/5spd truck I had this time last year, but this c2500 is better with more power :)

I'm going to grab a slave cylinder (line is held in with roll pins on this truck) from Napa in a bit, and get to working on this truck tonight! The tires on it are even in good shape!
 
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GarrettGmc

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(like 6 miles east of Carson City, shockingly the Mustang Ranch brothel was like within half a mile of this guys house which was funny).
!

Haha I've got some shot glasses an the wife has a coffee mug of there. I'll get some pics.

Damn you an always getting cheap trucks an makin money. Only cheap truck I've seen is 72 with no eng or trans or glass with rust for 250.
 

DirtBag

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Nice score Gavin! Keep the updates coming, some of us are living vicariously thru you! LOL
 

gstubbz

Hi I'm Gavin and I have an OBSession
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I had quite the weekend! This damn 6.5 has been up and down with fixing one thing and breaking another almost immediately after!!

So I started out by spending $49 on a new slave cylinder at NAPA. I had it installed late Friday night and drove the truck around, it was fairly slow but it drives! I've never messed with one held in with roll pins but it wasn't really any different from the threaded hardline slave cylinder. I did bench bleed it before installing, and installed it. I didn't even bleed from the pedal to the slave, so I was lucky this time.

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I like this photo, I took it when I took the truck for a 14 mile drive early Saturday morning.

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So later on Saturday morning! This truck has a problem with the starter not being properly aligned, and what causes this is when you tighten up the two bolts for the starter it tightens it down and angles the starter slightly which makes it rarely catch the teeth of the flywheel (or flexplate on an automatic) to start the truck. This is solved by installing the starter reinforcement bracket, which is a little piece that bolts into the side of the block. The starter may have a stud already or you may need to find a bolt that threads in so you can put a nut on the other side to use this bracket. Once you install this bracket tighten it down evenly with the other two main bolts and the starter should now be aligned straight.

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Now that the truck starts properly, next on my list is the turbo replacement. The turbo that was currently on this truck was definitely toast, the truck would blow black smoke literally the entire time until you hit your desired speed. So fortunately, since I have a Cone Truck that is currently not operable it can become my parts truck for a bit. I stole it's turbo that was in good shape and didn't take me crazy long to pull it, which was good since I had never pulled a turbo before.

This is how it looked for a minute with the trucks, I kind of wanted to line up all of the GMT400s in a row for a photo being that there are currently six on the property (and another 3 that are wrecked/parts only), 5 of those 6 actually run and drive although some not great but they'll do it! If you notice the light may seem weird and that's all due to the Carr Fire smoke. Another funny side note, all three trucks in this photo are trucks I pulled out of Nevada.

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So later that night I started to pull the turbo off the Q&D truck, and of course three of the bolts holding the turbo to the manifold came out easy enough, but the one in the very back corner was a massive pain and eventually I was able to remove it and ended up removing the entire stud out of the old turbo. I pretty much stopped around 1am when I got the new turbo fitted into place.

Old worn out GM4 turbo:

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So on Sunday morning I finished the turbo installation. I drove it and the truck felt like a new truck, acceleration was insanely better and it actually felt drivable at that point, so I decided to drive it around and ended up putting about 40 miles on it on Sunday throughout the day. However, I ran into some problems. After the first drive of the truck actually making boost, the check engine light came on almost immediately. I pulled Code 78 for the Wastegate Solenoid Fault. I couldn't see what was wrong because the vacuum pump seemed to be working and the plastic lines going to the pump, wastegate, and solenoid were all okay so I decided to grab a new solenoid I had sitting on a shelf. Drove the truck around for a little bit and it was making boost, then all of a sudden no boost and check engine light came back on for the same code.

Well I looked at the connector this time and noticed that the blue wire had broke, so when I got back to the house I cut off another connector with 5" of wire from another harness, spliced it in, and the truck was now building boost constantly and no more problems with that.

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Next problem! All of a sudden the vacuum pump for the wastegate started making loud noises, and I asked some 6.5 friends and they told me the pump is going out so either ditch it or replace it. It's so loud I could hear it over the engine 150 yards away. My plan is to delete it, I have a belt for a 93 I just need to get a boost gauge and find a way to make a manual wastegate. I didn't worry about it though because it was starting to get late and Tyler and I were going to a friends house down the road for dinner.

Doesn't end there!!

I start driving down to where we were having dinner Sunday night, and make it almost to her driveway and the damn truck dies. Flat out dies. As I was still rolling I tried to bump start it in gear, with no luck. Pull over, and open the hood and then the air box and I see white smoke everywhere, coming out of everything. I think it was unburnt diesel. Tyler and I hauled it back to his house behind my dodge and it sat until I got back from dinner.

I think it was probably the PMD, I didn't relocate it quite yet but it was in my plans to do so when I was going to pull the intake to fix the fuel leak next weekend, however somehow I was able to get it hot enough to die (I think) which is crazy, the truck somehow made it 398k with the PMD still on the side of the injection pump. After we returned from dinner I tried to start it after I plugged in a new PMD, truck was acting like it didn't have enough power to crank over. I gave up and ended up heading home. I may try messing with it tomorrow if I head out there.

It died literally 1/2 a mile further down the road from where the 93 c1500 blew it's first 5LM60 transmission everywhere. Is there a trend with me and c-series RCLB trucks?? I hope not.

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So besides the up and downs of this weekend, what do I think of the truck?

I actually love it - when it runs right for the five minutes that it does. It's a blast to drive, not nearly as fast as my dodge at all, and I think my old 98 5.7 vortec K1500 would stomp it in a race, but it's fun to drive. Hearing the turbo whistle and shifting gears makes this truck. For having 400k on the original transmission, it's in immaculate shape it seems, no grinding going into any gear or anything like that.

It's on my "to keep" list unless someone gives me a favorable amount of money for it. I don't know what is going to happen with this truck, I kind of want to do a rear end swap to 3.42s or 3.73s as 4.10s are too steep for it IMO especially if I made it a daily because 2500rpm at 70mph is not enjoyable. What is neat about the 4.10 is at low speeds you don't even need to give it any throttle input while letting the clutch out because the truck just wants to go.

I have some other little 6.5 mods I want to do but maybe it'll turn into a race truck 2500 since I wanted to do that with the 93 c1500 RCLB 4.3/nv3500 truck I had this time last year. I still have a set of hood pins I planned to use in the 93 but I can use them with the 94. The NV3500 shifter from the 93 is now in the 94 (I swapped it before the turbo swap), and I'll see if I can salvage the steering wheel from the 93 for this truck. Something about diesel bumpers, crappy white paint trucks, and GMC grilles I swear.

Race Truck 2500. Tempting! I also gave it the nickname Q&D truck for Quick & Dirty (in the future, definitely not this second lol). Prerunner 2500? I really want a fast truck for the desert. And a fast truck for the street. I'm all over the place with my ideas.

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I don't even know what's wrong with me. I was tagged in this by good ol' Mr. Tyler @Sampuppy1 an hour ago and I laughed, because this is so me! Ended up with the cone truck HD - because it's different. Ended up with Q&D because I wanted a nv4500. All true!!

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gstubbz

Hi I'm Gavin and I have an OBSession
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Haha I've got some shot glasses an the wife has a coffee mug of there. I'll get some pics.

Damn you an always getting cheap trucks an makin money. Only cheap truck I've seen is 72 with no eng or trans or glass with rust for 250.

Ha! That's great! I always like weird memorabilia like that. Or street signs and stuff like that!

I keep my eye out, most I want to pay for a old ran down truck is $500, unless I want something nice then I can justify spending more lol

Nice score Gavin! Keep the updates coming, some of us are living vicariously thru you! LOL

Thank you!! You put a smile on my face! I have a problem, at least I get to share my problem with the world :D
 

GarrettGmc

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Ya next time ur over ull have to check out my shot glasses, over 60 haha.

Sounds like an eventful weekend. Duh that sounds like u. U need one of every model. Theres a 3500hd flatbed for abt 6k up 299 towards Alturas, hint hint. Runs an drives too. Your gunna need to invest in a lift sometime or at least a pad to work on with how many trucks u go through an work on.
When do you find out more info from the recruiter abt training?
 

gstubbz

Hi I'm Gavin and I have an OBSession
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This weekend was full of all kinds of crazy and interesting stuff. I even stayed out there through Monday to try finishing taking care of some things. This weekend was full of ups, downs, and all-nighters since I’m crazy!

Where I left off is I towed the Q&D truck back to its home and it sat for almost a week. I made it out there around 11pm Friday night and tried to get the truck to run, but no dice. By the time I gave up around 2am I went up to the shop and did some minor organizing and watched the sun rise. Not too eventful by any means!

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Around 7am I finally was able to get the truck running. Then the vacuum pump looked like it was slipping on the belt, so I decided to remove it since (I thought) it was making noises and I had a 93 belt on the shelf. The truck did also randomly die on me when I was looking at it.

So 8am rolls by, I delete the pump, fire the truck up, and the noise is still there. It was at this moment I realized it was an engine knock not a vacuum pump…

The truck then shut down again. I got it to fire back up (although it was getting harder) and then it died again.

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I finally got it to run, hopped in it, and headed for the shop and about halfway up the driveway, the engine let go. I wasn’t being hard on it either since I just wanted to get it into the shop. I almost make it to the shop, and then the truck dies. Luckily I was able to get it to fire back up one last time to pull the truck in the garage the rest of the way.

So what I’m thinking was that this truck originally needed more than just a turbo. What I found out in the middle of the week was that this Reviva engine was remanufactured in May of 2004, and who knows what the mileage was on the truck when that was replaced. So what happened to me last weekend and every other time it died was due to the engine getting warm and seizing up.

I honestly don’t believe I did anything to make it all of a sudden have rod knock in the 82 miles I drove it (all fluids where they should be, no coolant in oil, oil cooler lines good, etc) but I do know when we first fired it up the oil pressure was low and had been ever since I started driving it around.

Here’s the carnage. The connecting rod for cylinder 7 punched a hole in the side of the oil pan near the dipstick tube.

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Around 11am I started preparing to remove the engine and did that all Saturday, nothing else to report on there! But I did fall asleep extremely early, my friends wanted to go out drinking but I was passed out sleeping by 7pm.

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Wooo! Sunday Funday.

So while I’m at it, I figured I might as well take a decent interior photo before the truck no longer had a shifter.

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What is also interesting for those that don’t know, not all NV4500s have a shifter held on with screws, the earlier ones are fixed, similar to an SM465 making it a massive pain to remove the engine and transmission all in one shot because you have to angle the transmission down extremely steep to remove it.

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My plan was to just pull the engine out of the truck, however it seemed as if someone used red Loctite on the bellhousing bolts as I was only able to remove one and gave up fighting after an hour.

So later Sunday night, it’s out! Look at the oh so glorious NV4500! I also found out that this is yet another 599 block that all these 6.5 enthusiasts look at like it’s gold, but my luck with 6.5 liters is such trash anyways so it doesn’t matter what block number it is to me apparently.

I didn’t take a pic of the hole in the oil pan, but the first thing you see is the crank where the connecting rod is no longer attached! So that gives me hope that the 7th cylinder seized up but the crank, head, and block are still salvageable.

I need some parts off this 6.5 block to throw on my cone truck, so I’m glad I have a parts engine available to me now. Definitely need the turbo to put back on the HD, and Tyler wants the exhaust manifolds so he can mount a turbo to his 6.2 K5 blazer. Outside of that I don’t really think there is anything else I needed.

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Now my plan for the Q&D truck this weekend was actually to do a tune up on it and fix some things like the fuel leak under the intake, relocate the PMD, delete the vacuum pump, etc to make it a better running and driving truck but that was cut short when it started knocking very bad. My weekend plans immediately changed at that point but at least it’s out now.

Here is what I call “White Truck Death Row” where all the trucks have problems and it’s where they sit! Would have been more fitting if the cone truck was in the same image as well.

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Onto the next project! So immediately after rolling the Q&D truck out I wanted to pull in the cone truck so I could start putting some time into that now that the Q&D truck will be sitting for a good while, and also did this on Sunday night. Because the HD has no form of brakes I had to use the green truck as a big tire chalk essentially until I was able to properly chalk the tires. That’s what is nice about older trucks that are already beat is that you can do things like this to them and not be concerned. The bed is getting cut up anyway so I didn’t care much about putting new dents in the back of it.

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I stayed up until 3am or so Sunday night slowly working away at this thing, and the bolts holding the side tubs on were insane, 1-1/8” bolts and out of the six per side I was only able to get two off with a huge 3/4 ratchet. The impact gun would not do it either! I just didn’t have enough leverage under the truck to take the rest of them off. I also removed the conveyor belt which will make a good mat for the workshop table!

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Monday! Since I don’t work on Mondays this gave me another day to make some progress. I broke out the sawzall with the plan to hack the bed up into chunks, but that was not going to happen.

I noticed I had an easy way I could access all of the bolts I needed, and that was where the rollers were for the belt. I used the sawzall and cut off the little rod on each side of the roller and was able to pop them out. I think I removed 40 or so in total, and this freed up all kinds of room to access the bolts going through the framerail.

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I eventually was able to remove all of the bolts holding the driver side tub on, and was able to remove it now that I had room from up top to get a bigger amount of leverage on the bolts. I removed 5 of the six bolts holding the other tub on but I won’t remove that until I get the truck out of the shop.

I also have the bed unbolted 95% of the way, minus one last bolt holding it on that I cannot remove until the passenger side tub is removed.

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So then Tyler thought of something, why not hack the rest of the cone bed off, but keep the framework so I can weld C-channel or square tubing out and then build a deck on top for a flatbed which I think is a spectacular idea so that’s what I’m going to do once I remove the rest of the metal around the tires, etc.

The cone bed is currently 7.7ft wide and 11ft long. My plan for this flatbed is to make it 11ft, but make it 7ft wide so it’s about in line with the tires with not much overlap. I need to buy cutting wheels and more sawzall blades before I strip this bed down the rest of the way since I don’t have a torch or plasma cutter!

Also considering mounting this lift gate when I start on the flatbed, but I don't know yet. I kind of want to be able to haul goosenecks with this truck as well.

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Next on my list was to load up the 94 ex cab 6.5 I sold, so I loaded it up on the trailer and put the trailer behind the green truck since I was not going to be hauling it until the weekend. The green truck literally sagged down to the bump stops, so that is one heavy truck! Good thing I’m not hauling it with that as there is zero suspension travel. The dodge fortunately is built better for towing IMO as it doesn’t sag nearly as much and still has room for suspension travel.

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So there is my weekend update! I loaded up some scrap metal in the Dodge and got home about 2:25am last night. My plan is to start getting serious taking things to scrap with all the metal on the property and junking vehicles that we have titles for and cutting up others into many pieces if we don’t have a title, and finally making a bed trailer out of one of the trucks.

Hope you all enjoyed this crazy update! It’s personally crazy to me to think so much happened this weekend and how I felt that I did not have enough time to finish everything I wanted.

More to come!

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Side bonus, I bought this cherry picker in either January or February of 2017 in a snowstorm, here is the victim list so far. I thought it was a neat idea when I first bought the thing, notice how the list is mostly Chevys in everything c/k1500 to c/k2500 and a k3500. No HDs or c3500s have been on the list quite yet!

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gstubbz

Hi I'm Gavin and I have an OBSession
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Ya next time ur over ull have to check out my shot glasses, over 60 haha.

Sounds like an eventful weekend. Duh that sounds like u. U need one of every model. Theres a 3500hd flatbed for abt 6k up 299 towards Alturas, hint hint. Runs an drives too. Your gunna need to invest in a lift sometime or at least a pad to work on with how many trucks u go through an work on.
When do you find out more info from the recruiter abt training?

I still have some on my "to own" list like a 2 door blazer or Tahoe and possibly a Suburban 2500! But I'm definitely in a 3500HD mood at the moment!

If I had a lift my life would be so much easier. And better welding tools and other tools to cut vehicles up. My life would be made at that point!

Was supposed to do testing in Sac last week but that was all delayed due to the CARR fire so I'll probably do the MEPs testing in Sac within the next two months.
 

GarrettGmc

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Damn u been busy. Sucks abt throwing the rod. If you weren't couple hours away I'd lend ya a hand. Neat idea abt the victim list haha
 
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