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 --
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 --
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