92 K2500 Revival

[Komet]

PTFE heatshrink is a PITA. It barely shrinks, and the cheapest heat gun at harbor freight barely works for it. I ended up using a combination of the heat gun and a lighter to get what seems like a good seal:

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Triple checked all my wiring for continuity, using stock layout for everything. Repaired damaged harness areas, confirmed I can depin the existing weatherpack connector on the truck and slide in the FiTech fuel pump wire right there. It's unlikely this pump will pull 15a, and the connector is rated to 20a so that should be good. Reinstalled fuel pump. Forgot fuel sock. Uninstalled fuel pump. Installed fuel sock. Re-reinstalled fuel pump. Tank is now ready for reinstallation. I kinda don't want to crush the plastic box more, might need a more gentle lifting method.

Flaring lines on the truck is super convenient since they have built in bendy hoses and I made a table out of a cinder block to help with getting everything aligned:

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I may need to redo the 3/8 line, I think it slipped back on operation 1 and I didn't get enough flare lip. It seems a little loose in the adapter when hand tight. We'll see, plenty of room here to snip off a flare and try again. Here's what it looks like with the adapters on:

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After I get this tank in, I guess it's time to turn my attention to green truck disassembly. Do I bother to hear it run first? My buddy sent me a video of it running already so I know it does, but I'll probably waste time fiddling with it just to get on with the disassembly. I dunno if there's real insights to be gained in person. Exhaust leaks maybe?

 

[Komet]

The battery in the green truck was dead dead, smart charger wouldn't pick it up. But, it was new in 2019 and we know this truck hasn't seen a lot of action since then so I reckoned we could revivalate on it with a vicarious trickle charge operation like so:

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After 20 minutes or so, the smart charger could recognize the dead one so I hooked it up solo and let it charge all day. It never got full but it did take a decent charge that lasted overnight. I plopped it in the green truck this morning and she fired right up.

No check engine light. No smoke, no leaks, no ticks or rattles. Alternator is charging. Oil pressure at 60ish psi. No misses or otherwise weirdness. It looks bone stock under the hood and runs excellent. Truly the speed gods have blessed us on this day.

Couldn't hear the clutch engage when I hit the A/C button so that system may be down. I shut it down after 2 minutes or so, I figured that was all I really needed to hear.

Picknpull will give me $25 more if there's no trash in the truck so I cleaned out the big items. Nothing remarkable, somebody liked smoking weed in the truck and there were nasty gym shorts in the bed.

Noticed the input shaft on the driveshaft was completely rusted, that seems bad. Pretty sure it'll need a new u joint to connect up to the 14 bolt in the black truck. Weather report says rain likely for a week.

 

[Komet]

My buddy is coming down to help with the extraction operation, so I got busy disassembling the front end. It was very apparent the front end was cobbled back together by amateurs, basically this truck should have never hit the road again. Mismatched hardware, everything all bent out of shape, very junky. They reused the trans cooler, condenser, and all the hardlines from the original truck and they're all bent up badly. No way they were flowing correctly. A/C system didn't have any pressure in it. Crazy how the pipe dope didn't work on fittings that aren't supposed to be doped.

The front crossmember is aftermarket, seems thinner gauge and some of the welded nuts broke loose. I had a real problem with the crossmember to fender bolt:

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And then I didn't have a problem.

So this is where I ended for today:

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The eagle eyed observer will notice the passenger side frame rail has become bluetooth:

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Mmmhmm. They certainly knew a guy who could do it cheaper. Good news is the radiator is new and is quite large. It had a whole bunch of lines going to it, must be oil and trans with additional external trans cooler. Was that a factory arrangement? Seems factory the way the lines were.

 

[Komet]

I woke up early today and went after it, unhooking everything attached to the engine. In retrospect I should have done the under-vehicle connections first before it started raining, but laying on the gravel in a muddy puddle wrenching on greasy old junk really enabled me to embrace the suck in its full capacity.

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All told it was about 7 hours start to finish with my buddy showing up halfway in. There were many challenges, if had wished for one thing to go differently, I would've liked to know that the fuel lines were still stuck in a metal bracket on the back of the block after they were disconnected from the fuel rail. We discovered this after pulling hard enough to rip the soft sections of the hardlines out. It's not a problem, I have my own lines, but we wasted half an hour being confused on what was hung up.

I missed 2 or 3 electrical connections and ended up cutting the wires to get the motor out. That's all we damaged though, no broken bolts or crushed parts.

The absolute worst part was trying to pull the hoist over the plywood. The wheels crushed in and it wasn't centered so one side liked to fall off and dig into the gravel. We fixed this by jacking the hoist legs and scooting it back over.

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Of course, the moment we set the block down, it dumps a quart of coolant on the floor and weeps a pint of oil from the cooler line. The whole garage is a total mess, dirty parts everywhere.

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But we got it done, in my tiny shop with my tools, and had an excellent barbecue afterwards.

 

[Komet]

A torn abdominal muscle has been slowing me down, but I'm still extracting goodness from the green truck. I did a hood swap, unfortunately this one is crunched and doesn't fit well, but on the plus side there's no hole over the distributor area:

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Took off one motor mount, there's some cracks in the rubber. Don't know if I should invest in new ones or just run these. I should have the full z71 package skidplates now. I think I want to extract the harness so I have spare wire of factory quality in a bunch of colors. I want to swap wiper motors and see if delay wipe is possible, I think I'll snag the throttle cable just in case, same for heater hoses. Here's what the green truck is looking like:

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Starting to fill up the black truck with the good stuff:

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Radiator is big and new, that's a nice score.

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I won't be able to use the push button transfer case, so I'll need to find a linkage one. Also having the drivetrain on the floor isn't working for me, need to make a Harbor Freight run and get an engine stand and some mover dollies for the trans and transfer case.

Still haven't swapped the wheels or filler neck yet. Exhaust unbolting has defeated my impact driver, I was thinking about getting a y-pipe from jegs that eliminates the cats and bolting the cat back from the green truck to that since it's a post-2016 addition. Very homemade sewer pipe looking, but free is quite the price. Might need a big boy impact.

I'm deep in it at this point, sorta going in a million different directions but I'm focusing on extracting what I need from the green truck to get it out of here.

Oh, the L31 is looking really good inside:

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Very stoked to see that.

 

[Komet]

Still pulling parts off the green truck. Finally got around to swapping the wheels, which was more work than I anticipated only having one jack I had to heft it from truck to truck for each lift operation. Gravel still sucks for everything all the time. I also scrubbed the heavy brake dust off the rears, they look alright now but the clearcoat needs polishing to truly bring them back. Wheels can be a big time waster so this will have to suffice for now, but it doesn't look worse than the rest of the truck:

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Swapped over:

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You can really see the narrower 2wd rear axle now. Green truck has Ranchos in the front, other shocks with black boots in the rear:

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Also noticed the upper ball joints have nuts on top in the green truck. The rivets look like a real nightmare, maybe I should swap those arms over too? Should I really be acquiring front suspension gear from a crashed truck, or is it all new good stuff because they had to fix it to get 40k miles out of it? A dilemma.

I've looted the interior bits now, and pressure washed the gunk off the front diff. I'm down to exhaust, shocks, front diff, wiper motor, wiring harness, a/c condensalizer can thing, heater hoses for length reference, and my buddy wants the wiper linkage and gauge cluster. Maybe some other stuff from the interior, I'm letting that be his problem.

High torque impact wrench arrives on Friday. Harbor freight was out of engine stands a couple days ago, will try again soon.

The front diff is a 3.73. I have a 14 bolt sf 2wd 3.42 rear in the black truck. Kinda thinking I should just get a 14 bolt sf 4wd 3.73 and keep this front diff. Man I hope this front diff works in the older truck, haven't investigated that compatibility yet.

 

[Komet]

High torque impact is great, I've broken about 25% of the bolts I've tried to remove but mostly that's been ok.

Got the spare tire off the green truck with no jack tool by taking the bumper off. There's flat sections on the outside of the hex socket thing you can put a wrench on.

Encountered a pretty big bummer about the black truck; somebody chopped out the spare tire frame that's riveted on to the truck. Not sure I can even get the other frame off the green truck without taking the bed off. Would probably need a full size grinder as well.

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Got the rear shocks installed though, they're Monroe Reflex monotubes and still in good shape. They were a little rusty so I sent them off to Dupli-Color for a full rebuild.

Also took the catback off:

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Turns out you can't slip that in with the truck on the ground, but you can get gravel scooped in it while trying.

 

[Komet]

Getting down to the last few bits of the green truck. The lower passenger motor mount bolt hole has been sliced out of the black truck:

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That's ok though I reckon you don't need that one. Also the ear off the back of the lower drivers side diff mount has been sliced off. I do kinda want that one back, might need to get a friend with a welder to fix that. Theoretically I could bolt the diff in fine without it and at least get it out of the way.

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Had to take the actuator off to get the diff out. It shot parts directly into the gravel while I was getting it out but I think I found them all. Check that drivers wheel sitting precariously on the edge of my wheel stands. Shake hands with danger moment.

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Things are starting to look pretty bare for the green truck. Still need the axles, shocks, and I'm considering upper control arms still. Everything from the firewall back has been looted.

Turns out this 4L60E is a cable shift and the black truck is a linkage shift. Also the linkage is some horrendous rod weld custom job for the Dodge trans. Don't exactly know how we're gonna be shifting this 4L60E at the moment.

Harbor Freight had engine stands restocked so I got one. Haven't put it together yet, rain is supposed to be coming tomorrow so I might get busy separating stuff in the garage while the weather is happening.

After further analysis, I have determined all I need to mount the spare is a beam to hang the two bolts from the winch off of. Might use a strategically sized wooden beam, should be sturdy enough to hold a spare tire.

 

[Kens1990K2500]

It's not supposed to freeze for a week so I busted out the pressure washer. Things are cleanerish under the hood:

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Some of the black paint was peeling off, clearly a no prep rattle can job. Got a substantial amount to flake off on the sides and in the bed:

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I'm tempted to leave the black parts that have survived and just prep and prime the fallen off areas. Or I could spend a thousand hours removing the black and see what truly lies beneath.

Nice IROC-Z. Those were one of the most desirable cars for the cool kids when I was in high school in the mid-1980s.

 

[Kens1990K2500]

I took inventory of the junk in the truck, it's mostly garbage but there were level 3 sparkalators and a wee 11mm wrench in there:

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Anybody know if these plugs would work well for my application? I'm thinking about running them.

I found normal lugnuts in the bed, and splined locking nuts on the fronts with no key. Tried the rocketsocket and it started twisting a lug. Turns out a 19mm 6pt deep socket took all the rest off fine, and I was left with the final boss:

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I hammered the 19mm on, it spun. Twisted worse, using the right key is now off the menu. This is now an extraction operation.

I tried every trick I had; penetrating oil, heat, and I hammered the rocketsocket on. I could see the nut flexing, and then it finally broke free with a snap.

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Whew.

Those special sockets for rounded bolts are awesome. Worked great when I removed my exhaust manifolds, those bolts were rusted, withered nubs.