Larry's 1978 K10

[1stDeuce]

Larry definitely needs another truck...

Chilli, no pictures till it's mine.

The glove box sticker shows that it was originally a 250 straight six truck with A/C (that's rare!) and that it was silver, with a blue interior. (It's blue/blue now, and the interior is pretty ugly.) Factory options were a chrome front bumper, gages, windshield antenna, tinted glass, stepside, and big battery.
No dual tanks, which means it only has a pass side 16 gal tank. (What were they thinking??)

It's pretty rough around the edges, but all fenders and doors are solid, and only a little dented.
If I do get it, I doubt I'll make it a 250 again, or even a 292. Been there, done that, and a nice TBI 350 sounds so much nicer to me now... Since the NP465 is falling out of 3rd, it might be a candidate for a NV4500, but then I'd have to find a 32 spline 205 too... Just what I needed, another project truck.

 

[bdp1978]

Yeah, nothing lasts in Michigan. Even plastic will rust there. I lived in the Detroit burbs for 6 years and what a great place to leave.

Youch.....HARSH!!!! I'm a Michigan boy who actually moved to New Mexico for a year. I hated it, so that road goes both ways! Missed the green, the trees, and the waters.

 

[1stDeuce]

NM is tough... I don't really care for the political scene here, but the state has a lot to offer in terms of recreation. Still, I'm looking forward to moving up to Mancos, CO in a few months.
And I don't miss S/E MI at all. Not even a little. I miss the UP every day though.

Been staring at pictures all afternoon. Guess I have to call tomorrow and see what kind of deal we can come to.

Larry, thanks for letting me hijack your thread! I promise I'll start my own if I get it. On CK5 perhaps? Any better site for the old square bodies??

 

[bdp1978]

NM is tough... I don't really care for the political scene here, but the state has a lot to offer in terms of recreation. Still, I'm looking forward to moving up to Mancos, CO in a few months.
And I don't miss S/E MI at all. Not even a little. I miss the UP every day though.

Yeah, I lived in Albuquerque near the Tram, just wasnt my thing. I'll agree on SE MI, I live here because of the job but I'm from NW Michigan on the coast. 2 totally different worlds. If I could I would just be a ski bum doing maintenance in Telluride, CO though! But thats life.

 

[Larry]

Larry definitely needs another truck...

Yes, yes I do. Always need another truck :elkgrin:

Youch.....HARSH!!!! I'm a Michigan boy who actually moved to New Mexico for a year. I hated it, so that road goes both ways! Missed the green, the trees, and the waters.

Yeah, unfortunately I never got any further North of Frankenmuth so I missed all the best parts of Michigan so I hear. What I didn't care for in the Detroit (we lived in Rochester Hills) area was people crawling over each other like ants. Not a fan of largely populated places and the roadsalt is absurd plus at that time there was no way a young couple with good jobs could afford to buy a house there. Although it was fun living right in the middle of the automotive industry mecca. I still get out that way quite often for meetings but it is still a nice place to leave at the end of the week. I will say summers in Michigan are absolutely beautiful! We left in 2001 before the economy tanked.

NM is tough... I don't really care for the political scene here, but the state has a lot to offer in terms of recreation. Still, I'm looking forward to moving up to Mancos, CO in a few months.
And I don't miss S/E MI at all. Not even a little. I miss the UP every day though.

Been staring at pictures all afternoon. Guess I have to call tomorrow and see what kind of deal we can come to.

Larry, thanks for letting me hijack your thread! I promise I'll start my own if I get it. On CK5 perhaps? Any better site for the old square bodies??

Yeah, if you still have that 6 banger intake I'd be interested although I am in no hurry as I got plenty of projects lined up until I do something with this 292. Been looking at Offenhauser, Clifford and other intakes but man, are they pricey for what they are. Hehe, yeah…..I got a good story about ABQ and spending a night in the pokey there. They don't call it the Land of Entrapment for nothing. Probably CK5 is the best place around for old GM 4x4 thread discussions. A lot of good ideas and information exchanged there.




So actually, I do have an update on the ole K10. As many of you have read, I've been chasing an odd issue with my 10.5 14 bolt in the K10 for the past few years where it likes to purge oil after a few hours of driving on the Interstate at 75 to 85 MPH. When driven on state highways at slower speeds or off-road there has been no issues with oil purge…only at high speeds. About a year ago, I ripped it down and inspected and replaced every bearing, race, seal, and verified and driveline angles and back lash. There was no smoking gun, no signs of overheat and only found one bearing (wheel bearing) that had a loose case. Hardly a culprit.

We took off on Desert Trip 2016 and sure enough, a few hours of Interstate driving it started belching oil again. I had a cheap Hazard Freight inferred thermometer with me where the rear diff covers between the K10 and Suburban were within a few degrees of each other (the rear axles in the K10 and Polar Bear Suburban are identical, minus the fact the Burb has an open diff). Again, proving that it is not an overheat issue in the K10. The popular opinion is there is nothing wrong with the axle at all, just a stack up of tolerances between the 4:56 thick gears, Detroit locker, heavy truck, tall tires and high road speed.

The answer would be to slow the hell down on the Interstate, which I am not going to do. I want to be able to keep up with traffic and even pass traffic but without using my James Bond oil hose squirting everybody as I pass them. Being I am sick and tired of the Detroit Locker antics of click bang!, the truck darting one direction under heavy throttle then darting the other direction when letting off I decided it was time for a selectable locker. I also wanted to go to a little wider axle housing to even up the track so I followed Mosesburbs recipe with a 70” wide (hub to hub) G-Van axle to more even up the track to the front Dana 60 at 69” wide. As a comparison to the 67” side C20 axle I've had in it for 20 years.

With that, a fresh rear is in process for the K10….

Hopefully, the butt wiping when the purge bottle over flows will be over now. Talk about a sticky mess all over the back of the camper and trasheroo.

This is the axle donor. A very nice and clean 1995 G-30. Not even sure why it was in the salvage yard. Originally a BBC/4L80E van too

After some power washing, which it didn't need much as it was so clean already

The tear down began

After a quick call to the nice guys at ORD a new ARB RB114, ring gear bolt set, spring perches and 4:56 gear set appeared. My buddy Bill has a lot more experience with gear set ups than I so he did the fine tuning. Like a dog, you must keep him motivated with food. See if you can find the hidden Oreo cookie. Oh, and cutting off the old spring perches where the two worst days of my life!

Truck porn!

The Quality Control team said it passed inspection

As many of you also know, I am not a fan of rear disk brake conversions. I don't have a problem with factory rear disk axles like 2001 and later GM HD trucks but still not enough to go buy one of those axles for this swap. That said, I had to change the backing plates as the G-van axle had the later push in type brake cables whereas my K10 requires the bolt in for easier hook up to the original brake cable set up.

The first order was to rip the backing plates off my old axle and sand blast them then weld up the show wear marks in the backing plates. I've come to notice trucks (usually manual trans rigs where the park brake constantly gets used) have major wear marks in the backing plates whereas automatic rigs do not. I recently welded up the wear marks on the Polar Bear Suburban's backing plates and found a HUGE difference in park brake performance. It holds like it is drilled into the ground now. Fixing the K10's backing plates should help it as well.

Weld'er up!

After

Another thing I experimented with on the Polar Bear Burb a while ago when doing its brake job, was moving to the larger DRW wheel cylinders with the larger 1 3/16 bore side (Napa 37337). The SRW wheel cylinder has a 1 1/16 bore (Napa 37290). Moving to the larger wheel cylinders also made a noticeable difference in how the Burb stops however, I wouldn't recommend the large wheel cylinders on a lighter Blazer or truck as the rear brakes can become pretty aggressive especially with hydroboost. The DRW cylinder is on the right.

Treated the backing plates to some fresh shoes and hardware

And this is how she sits at the moment until I get some work travel out of the way.

At the moment it is in the middle of frame clean up, cutting off some old exhaust and spare tire mounting brackets that are easy to get to with the axle out then roll the axle under the truck to set up the pinion angle and burn in the spring perches. After that, comes the new shock layout and ARB compressor / Viair tank mounting. Got to get her ready for Desert Trip 2017!

 

[chilliwak]

Wow:Wow1:Larry what a huge amount of improvments on your old chevy! Good to hear that you found the solution to your rear axel gear fluid problems. I am interested to hear what your new axel is like. That old Chevy van that the axel came out of looked like it was in great shape. Do you see lots of rust free vehicles like that in your area? I always wanted to do a 4by4 van conversion on a big block 1 ton GM van. Thanks for posting up with the play by play of your repairs/upgrades. Cheers, Chilli..

 

[snekvasil]

Wow, Larry. Always fun and inspirational to see your work. We just got relocated to Tennessee...I still have a goal of driving my '68 with your '78 some day! I guess we're a little closer at least now.

I'm hoping on getting a winch stuffed under my front bumper and then hope to put an ARB in the back like yours. Nice work!

 

[Larry]

Wow:Wow1:Larry what a huge amount of improvments on your old chevy! Good to hear that you found the solution to your rear axel gear fluid problems. I am interested to hear what your new axel is like. That old Chevy van that the axel came out of looked like it was in great shape. Do you see lots of rust free vehicles like that in your area? I always wanted to do a 4by4 van conversion on a big block 1 ton GM van. Thanks for posting up with the play by play of your repairs/upgrades. Cheers, Chilli..

We'll see! These should be improvements but I must admit, I am a bit worried about the horror stories of ARB seal housing O-ring air leaks and line leaks I keep reading about. Already got off to a bad start with ARB as the two ARB exclusive square O-rings were missing straight out of a brand new box. When I called them the first guys was like “How could the O-rings be missing from a brand new box??” in a sarcastic tone. He passed me on to Customer Service who also made it sound like I was trying to get over on them. Finally he said he would send them via 2 day mail. A week goes by and no O-rings. I called back again and the next guy said he showed no record of my calling nor sending out any of these RD114 O-rings for warranty in over 2 years. I'm thinking geeze….all this BS over $2 worth of O-rings. If I was trying to pull a fast one on them I would have picked something better to claim than $2 O-rings! Given that, I am thinking the front Dana 60 may end up with an Eaton E-Locker instead of ARB. Would have rather gone with an E-Locker in the rear as well but Eaton doesn't make them for the most popular swapped in 4x4 rear axle in the world…the GM 10.5” 14 bolt. Ridiculous.

Time will tell but I guess that will give me something new to b itch about. Yeah, clean rust free vehicles roam here like buffalo 100 years ago. Something to be said for living in a place where straight roadsalt is not used. That van was a Pueblo native sold by the local Chevy store in April 1995. The paper work was still in the console. Sad, such a nice van.

Wow, Larry. Always fun and inspirational to see your work. We just got relocated to Tennessee...I still have a goal of driving my '68 with your '78 some day! I guess we're a little closer at least now.

I'm hoping on getting a winch stuffed under my front bumper and then hope to put an ARB in the back like yours. Nice work!

Cool! TN sounds like a much better place to love than MI/IN where you were before. Hope you are finding some nice TN woods to play in.

 

[1stDeuce]

So are you using a "thin" ring gear and proper carrier this time? It sounds like the thick gear is the suspected reason for your oil puking axle?

I'm sure the reason there's no Eaton E-locker for the 14 bolt FF is because the carrier in that axle has to be pretty small on one side to make room for the 3rd bearing. Just not much packaging room for all the junk in the E-locker. You could have stepped up to a 11.5, then you can get an E-locker... I wonder what the ground clearance difference is...

They make a TrueTrac for your D60... I'd give that some consideration if I were in your shoes... I'm running a Rubicon locker in the back of my TJ, and a Truetrac in front. (Which more or less means truetrac's front and rear, till I lock the rear...) I pretty much never lock it unless I'm all-out rock crawling. Mostly, when the going gets tough, I just ride the brakes a bit and it crawls right through. No noise, no wires, no worries about breaking stuff.

Thanks for posting your build and mod info here too, it's very helpful to see what works for others, and you knowledge of vintage GM trucks is much appreciated!!
Heading up Friday to pick up my '79 K10...

You heading to Overland Expo this year?

 

[Larry]

So are you using a "thin" ring gear and proper carrier this time? It sounds like the thick gear is the suspected reason for your oil puking axle?

I'm sure the reason there's no Eaton E-locker for the 14 bolt FF is because the carrier in that axle has to be pretty small on one side to make room for the 3rd bearing. Just not much packaging room for all the junk in the E-locker. You could have stepped up to a 11.5, then you can get an E-locker... I wonder what the ground clearance difference is...

They make a TrueTrac for your D60... I'd give that some consideration if I were in your shoes... I'm running a Rubicon locker in the back of my TJ, and a Truetrac in front. (Which more or less means truetrac's front and rear, till I lock the rear...) I pretty much never lock it unless I'm all-out rock crawling. Mostly, when the going gets tough, I just ride the brakes a bit and it crawls right through. No noise, no wires, no worries about breaking stuff.

Thanks for posting your build and mod info here too, it's very helpful to see what works for others, and you knowledge of vintage GM trucks is much appreciated!!
Heading up Friday to pick up my '79 K10...

You heading to Overland Expo this year?

Nope, 4:56 only come in Thick Gears for 10.5” axles as I’ve been told by ORD. Even the ARB carrier requires the use of Thick Gears when using 4:56 cogs. As I mentioned, the popular opinion as to why the old axle liked to barf oil out the vent tube was just a stack up of tolerances between the gears, locker, heavy weight and high road speed. High road speed more than anything. Come to think if it the axle didn’t start purging oil until it gained a lot of weight.

I thought about an AAM 11.5” for about a half minute but didn’t care for the cost of admission or the fact they are HUGE. The G-van 14 bolt was a couple hundred bucks whereas the GMT800 11.5" is two to four times as much (I sold the old Detroited 10.5 axle for $750 to help fund some of these upgrades ). My Silverado HD has the 11.5” in it and the center section is considerably bigger than the 10.5”. Same complaints the Power Wagon guys have once the PW went to the 11.5" rear axle last year.

Ah, I love TruTracs! I used to have one in this K10 when it had a Dana 44 front axle and I liked it. That TrueTrac’d Dana 44 axle is now in the Polar Bear Suburban when the K10 gained a Dana 60 a few years ago. While I like the TrueTrac, I want more in the K10 as I don’t want to have to slip or spin a tire to engauge it. I want either all or nothing on this truck so a selectable is the ticket. That said, event eventually I want to add a TruTrac to the rear of the Suburban as well. The K10 truck is just too heavy to be slipping and spinning tires to get it to lock.

 

[1stDeuce]

That's right, I forgot about that axle going into the 'burb. FYI, Truetrac's don't require slip to work... The more torque you put through, the more they "bind", whether they're "differentiating" or not... That's why riding the brakes before you're spinning tires works well to keep you from spinning... Once you're spinning, adding the brakes will help to lock it up, but I find it works much better if I keep it loaded in the first place.
Of course as tires get bigger, the bias ratio seems to be less and less effective, and a locker becomes ideal... So I see your point about wanting to be "all in" for the K10.

I was just looking to see what I could get for the 12 bolt in this '79. Looks like Truetrac, Auburn, and some sort of lame eaton clutch type LSD... I had an EZ Locker in the last one, and it worked great, but like your experience with the Detroit, I got tire of it banging and skipping and pushing the truck left and right as you got on the throttle. Might be OK for an auto, but NFG with a manual, so no thanks there...

What of Overland Expo? I see it's not at Mormon Lake this year... It's at some park that I can't find in Flagstaff... ???

 

[toddz69]

I see it's not at Mormon Lake this year... It's at some park that I can't find in Flagstaff... ???

Look up Fort Tuthill. It's the county fairgrounds and just a few miles south of Flagstaff proper along I-17. Should be a nice venue for the event. Lots of pines and probably a good spot for camping too.

Todd Z.

 

[Larry]

Heading up Friday to pick up my '79 K10...

You heading to Overland Expo this year?

Whoops! I missed the last part of your post…..Nope, not planning on OX this year. We went last year so we’ll probably hit it up next year. Pretty far drive to go every year. Anxious to see your new toy

Look up Fort Tuthill. It's the county fairgrounds and just a few miles south of Flagstaff proper along I-17. Should be a nice venue for the event. Lots of pines and probably a good spot for camping too.

Todd Z.

Yeah, the new place looks great. It looks like it is basically on the opposite side of the highway and on the other side of Flag. I had a little run in with the cantankerous old camp host at Mormon Lake last year while trying to park in my RESERVED spot where Roseanne had to get involved and put the guy in his place. It was pretty obvious the relationship between the OX team and Mormon Lake peeps was on a downhill slope. No surprise to see the venue move. I bet that decision was made before OX16 was even over.

 

[1stDeuce]

Well, I counted my chickens before they hatched... No stepside for me...
I always assume things are rougher than pictures show or the seller says, but in this case, it was JUNK. After getting some fairly poor pictures (of the least damaged parts of the truck, it turns out...) I decided to drive up Sunday to check it out. (With cash and trailer, of course, since it's three hours one way from here...)

Upon closer inspection, someone beat the crap out of this truck, then added about twenty pounds of bondo and paint not long before this guy bought it. Most of that bondo is now separating. Frame cracked and repaired at steering box, frame cracked about half way through just in front of the trans crossmember (not seen that before, but that bolt was loose, so possibly cause...) Front of box smashed into back of cab, cab pushed in ~3", front of box junk, cab junk too. Pass side front body mount rotted out near the sill, floor rotted through both sides at the sill, cab corners probably rotted then covered with bondo, same for doors. Whatever wasn't bondo'd rust was a bondo'd dent. I decided that with it needing a new cab and frame, and probably doors, fenders and hood, and tailgate, and front of box, I'll just find another truck.

Larry, it would make a decent mountain beater project, but the guy said he won't go less than $1500... He also won't sell it, as it's worth about $500 IMO. Could make him a standing offer... Might get lucky. On Western Slope CL if anyone is interested, look for "1978 Chevrolet stepside pickup 4x4m". (The "m" is not my typo...)

I'll just keep looking and hoping I find something some day.
Until then, I'll get my fix by checking back here to see Larry's glorious truck.

 

[chilliwak]

Its always better to wait for the right vehicle 1stDuece. My old 79 is saved from the graveyard but was not as bad as the vehicle you described. Another one will turn up. Cheers, Chilli..