Making the best of the old work truck I have to work with / Project creep commencing (Same as it ever was)

[Road Trip]

Greetings all,

For the past year or so I've been lurking in this forum thanks to
a great problem to have -- I needed to sort out a righteous old
no-nonsense '99 C2500 that was more worn-in than worn-out.

The Beast:

It's a RCLB 454/4L80-E/8-lug 8600 GVW/14-bolt FF/4:10/G80
with 220K miles on it...and the beast runs & drives way nicer than
it has any right to. I have scant info on it's history during the
first 23 years of it's existence here in upstate NY, but in July '22
I became it's 3rd owner. The 2nd owner was a roofing contractor,
and I'm inferring from everything I've worked on to date that he
treated it as more of a business investment instead of a
disposable appliance. (Yes!)

NOTE: The price of admission was $3000, due to the fact that
it looked like a truck that had been worked for a living, 2WD,
and last but not least the fact that when I bought it gas had
just spiked to the far side of $4.00/gallon.

The Owner:

I've been in the car hobby a long time. Long enough that
back in the late '70s I worked my way through school working
afternoons in a 1 1/2 man garage, performing tune ups, carburetor
rebuilds, timing chain replacements, etc. The guy I worked for had
earned a well-deserved reputation in the Kansas City area for
troubleshooting & fixing the unfixable.

He was a big believer in cheating with test equipment in order to win,
and so had the good taste to invest in a full-house Sun 1115 engine
analyzer, complete with a 2-gas analyzer (HC & CO) ...plus of course
the large CRT display showing "The Parade of Sparks".

Back in the '79-'80 time frame, this was the cutting edge of engine
misfire troubleshooting and dialing in your tune ups. In English,
I got to the point where I was rebuilding anywhere from 5-8+ carburetors
a week. Everything from sidedrafts on Datsun 240-Zs to many Rochester
Quadrajets, Motorcraft 2V/4Vs, Carters, Holleys, and everything inbetween.

At the time I thought that my civilian career was going to be an auto
mechanic. Meanwhile, as a Reservist in the Air Force my specialty was
flightline Avionics. Thanks to my civilian career as a Field Service engineer
in a company where names like PDP-11 & VAX were constantly heard, I
moved around enough that I got to work on C-130s in St. Joe (MO),
then the F-106 interceptors on Cape Cod, and finally the F-16s in
Burlington, VT.

Now that I'm approaching retirement age, I need to join the 21st
century in terms of being able to take my old school troubleshooting
chops & learn what I need in order to be as comfortable with the
ECM under the hood of Big Blue as I was with the analog FLCS in
the F-16s of yore. :0)

The Plan:

A year ago the plan was simply to make the truck mechanically reliable,
not worry about the aesthetics, & use it purely to support other
projects. Thanks to a gentle wet-sanding of the original clear coat,
followed by machine polishing using the Meguiar's Mirror Glaze
product set, the truck's Indigo Blue Metallic came back much nicer
than I had anticipated. (I went into this thinking it was simply too
far gone, making it purely a 'free practice' vehicle where I could
try some new {to me} paint correction strategies.)

Now I want to make the best of what I have to work with --
hopefully a chore truck that spends more time
supporting other projects than being a project itself. (If that
makes sense.) Famous last words -- project creep is the
bane of my existence. :0)

Q: Why am I here?

A: I've spent my entire career performing analytic troubleshooting
on complex systems...and after scouring the internet for the
folks that have the real skinny on the GMT400 trucks, I kept
coming back to this website & finding the best solid info. (!)
IMHO, here there is a great confluence of freely-shared hard-won
knowledge, combined with disciplined troubleshooting on display.

Simply put, I can't afford to load up the parts cannon every time
the old gal needs a little help in order to get where we're going.
Besides, there are few things worse than realizing the new
parts made of chinesium not only didn't fix the problem, but
they are also simply not held up to the same specification as the
original GM parts...that just got dumped into the back of the
community trash truck. :-(

****

If anyone is still reading this, apologies for the length, but I
wanted to thank you guys for making my learning curve as
quick/steep as possible on my new pride & joy. I'm taking the
long-term view -- no doubt the beast will outlast me...as
it should be.

Cheers --

 

[HotWheelsBurban]

Welcome to the forum, from Houston, Texas!

 

[pressureangle]

Welcome.
I get every part I can from the pick-n-pull. For example, the genuine GM lock cylinder wouldn't stay put in my new Dorman door handle, so...genuine GM and a little spray paint.
I just finished rehabilitating a '94 K2500 6.5 turbodiesel with 485k miles on it. No regrets.

 

[Road Trip]

Thank you HotWheelsBurban!

It feels good to go from quietly taking info (lurking) to
(hopefully) paying it back via sharing what it takes to keep
my truck from disappearing in a cloud of orange dust up
here in the Rust Belt.

BTW, although I'm currently living in upstate NY, if you were to
set Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine to the beginning I was
born in Ft. Worth, and spent my earliest years in a funky house
on a hill just off of Jacksboro Highway that was purportedly a
Speakeasy during Prohibition. I still remember watching the
giant rotating clock on top of the (then) CNB tower in the evening
from my swing set.

So, although it almost never comes up in daily conversation,
I am a native Texan who's finds himself currently living in a
strange land, indeed. :0)

Thanks again -- cheers!

 

[xXxPARAGONxXx]

Welcome to the forum! Nice truck!

 

[RichLo]

Welcome! Sounds like we are lucky to have you join!

 

[Road Trip]

Welcome! Sounds like we are lucky to have you join!

____________________________________________

Thanks for the kind words, sir. It's my sincere hope
that when it comes to sharing my perspective I
Underpromise & Overdeliver, instead of getting it
backwards. (been there, hated that -- 20/20 hindsight
can be both a great error-correction feedback loop
and at the same time a deeply humbling thing. :0)

****

To me, the strength of this forum is that when I've
reached the limits of what I can bring to the old gal about
how to fix a specific widget, I can spend an evening
researching in here, and end up with not just one approach,
but several real-world, 1st-person, hands-on solutions
from several different vectors.

Of course, you then have to settle on what's the best
way to proceed in your driveway...but IMHO having almost too
much information is way preferable to too little.
(One truism I've learned the hard way is that 'There's Nothing
More Expensive Than a Lack of Knowledge.' :0)

Given the above, my hope is simply to add yet another
data point to the discussion if a situation comes up where
I've already traversed that troubleshooting garden path
...& can still remember what the punchline was. (!)

Nice to make your acquaintance. Cheers --

 

[Pinger]

..and after scouring the internet for the
folks that have the real skinny on the GMT400 trucks, I kept
coming back to this website & finding the best solid info. (!)
IMHO, here there is a great confluence of freely-shared hard-won
knowledge, combined with disciplined troubleshooting on display.

Yep, all true. I've benefitted massively.

It feels good to go from quietly taking info (lurking) to
(hopefully) paying it back via sharing what it takes to keep
my truck from disappearing in a cloud of orange dust up
here in the Rust Belt.

You're quids in already just posting photos of your truck. I love the look of that truck.
''the truck just exuded a quiet, heavy duty minimalism...the zen of a proper work truck.'' Bang on!

 

[Moparmat2000]

Welcome from Abilene Texas. Just like you I was a transplant, only from the other direction. Went from northeast N.J. to Texas almost 30 years ago. You are right it's a strange land back that direction, but upstate N.Y. is nice. N.Y.C. is kind of a pit. Dittos for northeast N.J. IMHO because I spent 25 years living there. I kinda prefer it here in my adopted state. I love Texas!! I wasnt born here, but I got here as fast as I could lol. As far as the rust goes, store it away in a dry garage in the winter before first snowfall, take it out after the spring rains wash the road salt away, and that will help a lot in keeping it from turning into that pile of dust and rust jerky. Moth balls sprinkled under it while in storage, and packed in a sock set on the air cleaner while in storage will deter the mice from making a tenement home out of it.

 

[Road Trip]

While I was trying to figure out how to best go about joining this forum,
I felt like getting my username right would be like having the right handshake --
you know, the whole 'don't get a 2nd chance to make a good first impression'.

For awhile I really thought that it was going to be Big Blockhead, given my
deep appreciation of all things BBC. At the same time I was concerned that this
might create unnecessary confusion. Is this guy a big fan of one of the
Bonanza characters? Or would they correctly get the tip of the hat to some
stop motion cartoon characters on the Gumby show that made me laugh out
loud when I was a kid? (blockheads)

Sure enough, the correct answer came to me when I was least expecting
it. I was pondering the 5 Levels of Vehicular Reliability that I had developed
to properly categorize the members of my cheap fleet.
It's like so, from least to most desirable:

* Never runs (Auto Art Installation / Yard sculpture)
* Surprised when it runs (majority of recent additions to the fleet)
* Pure 50/50 - coin flip if it makes it back home when you leave the driveway
* Surprised when it doesn't run (normal DD status)
* Always runs (*Road Trip Ready*)

If you enjoy a cross-country road trip as much as I do, you get it.
If you don't understand, I can't explain it.

Anyway, for years this was my fellow Road Warrior on these 'get to do' trips:

The Hula Girl -- the Queen of Vibration Analysis (video of a hula girl in action)

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'89 Honda Civic 4-spd hatchback augmented w/MOOG Cargo Coils out back - best haulage ever was complete, assembled 400ci SBC long block {w/intake, no exhaust manifolds} @30mpg

Road Trip ready. It's my highest rating for any vehicle. Just having a car
or truck at this level of reliability in the driveway gives you a sense of
unbridled freedom that few other things can.

Surreal vista while on a long distance road trip. Had to stop & grab a shot for all the times I don't get to indulge in this pursuit of happiness. (!)

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There is something about traveling just about anywhere in the Mountain Time Zone that simply sooths the soul. Highly recommended.

Thanks for stopping in. Safe travels --