Joe's 68' C-10 Project

The 454 in its final resting place

Tubular motor mounts

Body Work Begins at DJ Customs

My newly acquired cab has been lounging in the back of my garage while I focus on getting the engine and tranny in place. Rather than wait to finish, I contacted Jason at DJ Customs in Cedar Park to start on the body work. Jason has years of experience doing custom paint and body along with bagged suspensions.

With the help of my brother Roger, the cab was trailered to DJ Customs. The plan was to have the cab soda blasted to remove any rust, dirt and paint. Jason would then begin the repairs. The inside cab floor and outside bottom would be sprayed with POR15. The rest of the interior with expoxy primer. The outside cab would have all dents removed then get sprayed with expoxy primer.

Here are pics midway thru the work

Before soda blasting

After soda blasting. Amazing results!

From

Soda blasted firewall

Blasted firewall

Interior of cab with floor coated and interior primered

Going Full Roller!!

From the very beginning I knew I wanted a roller cam motor. When I purchased the 454 it already came with a nice 292 flat tappet cam. There was no need to change it so I decided to keep it. Once I realized I had to flycut the pistons, I decided to go whole-hog and go full roller. I pulled the Comp 292H cam and replaced it with a very stout Comp 304HR roller cam. The diferrence in duration at .o5o was nominal but the lift in the roller was .612 versus .550 in the 292H. Going roller meant getting roller lifters and a roller timing chain with thrust washer. All Comp Cam products. This added quite a bit more to the cost but got me what I always wanted :)

Comp Ultra Pro Magnum Rockers and Roller Lifters

Comp 304HR Roller Cam

Swapping out Cabs

Several posts back I documented the rusts repairs to my 68' cab. I completed most of the passenger side and still had the driver side and firewall to repair. At that time I chose to focus on the suspension and engine work. As I prepared to startup work on the cab, I came across a rust free 70' cab for sale in Waco which is 1 1/2hrs north of Austin. The cab was being offered with the doors and a very nice cab dolley. I knew getting that cab would save me tons of time so I contacted the owner and made a deal. It would be a couple days before I could leave to pick it up. In the meantime I sold my current cab to my friend Calvin. He also took my original long bed. The sale made purchasing the new cab a no-brainer!

Pics of the new cab

Here you can see the ventilation holes were blocked to smoot the firewall

Cab corner had been replaced. Nicely done.

Flycutting Time!!

I will begin by saying I didn't take any pics during the flycutting process. Mainly because it was a very labor intensive process. In hindsight I hate that I failed to document the work. I'm sure others would have benefitted from my experience.

Total time from start to end took a good 9 hrs. The first piston took the longest. From there you have a bench mark for completing the others. I got a little faster with each piston. On piston number 6 I bent the cutting shaft and nearly trashed a piston. I called Dave and he promptly send out a new shaft free of charge.

A week later I was back to cutting pistons. It didn't take me long to cut the final 3 pistons. Boy was I happy that was over!! Here is a pic of a finished piston.

Cutting edges were hit with sandpaper to remove sharp edges and prevent stress risers

Lindy Tools In-Head Piston Cutter

Now that I have decided to flycut the pistons I had to get the proper tools to do the job. I needed a cutting tool that can be used while the pistons were still in the block. I heard Isky Cams made such a cutter so I gave them a call. I was suprised to hear they were 3 months on back order! I then turned to Lindy Tools in Waukegan, IL. They produce an in-head cutter that creates both dept and radial clearance and is superior to the Isky cutter.

When I called Lindy I was suprised the owner, Dave, answered the phone. I explained what I needed and he assured me he had the proper cutter. He also gave me some history around the Isky cutter and why they were not available. At the time I was unsure but felt I had no other choice. I ordered his cutter for half the price of the Isky one.

The Lindy cutters are made to order so it took two weeks to arrive. When it came in I was impressed with the quality of the cutter. Happy with my purchase I started laying out plans to cut the pistons. The process would take over eight hours to complete so I wanted to have everthing right.

Lindy Tools Cutter Size 2.375

Checking Piston/Valve Clearance..We got issues!

A popular method of checking piston/valve clearance is to use modeling clay. It's a simple test but requires the correct parts/tools to get it done right. Details of how to perform the test can be found here: Piston/Valve Check

The results of my test(s) showed I had plenty of depth clearance but my radial clearance was little tight. Too tight for comfort. That left me two options. Replace the pistons or have them flycut open up the valve reliefs. New pistons are expensive and require a lot of work to install. I opted for the flycut. Details of the process will be posted.

A photo of the intake relief with clay

Another after rotating the engine. As you can see the clay was scraped down to the metal.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Engine Update: 396 to 454

Finally an engine update! For starters, the original 396 engine was sold on Craigslist. In its place was a rebuilt shortblock 396 that I found in Dallas. After much thought I decided the 396 was not going to be enough so it was also sold on Craigslist. I then picked up a very nice rebuilt shortblock 454. This block came bored .030 over with Speed-Pro pistons and Comp Cams 292H camshaft.

Rebuilt 396 on the left and 454 on the right.

For cylinder heads I chose Edelbrock's Aluminum Performer RPM Marine heads. They come with large 2.25 intake valves and 1.89 exhaust valves. The heads came bare and were later fitted with Comp Cam 924-16 valve springs. All work was performed by Austin Performance.

The head/piston combo gives me a compression ratio of 10:1 which was my target. Next step was checking piston/valve clearance.

45 Days of Brakes!!

Brakes are supposed to be easy. That statement is mostly true if you have all the correct parts. I did not.

Since there was no way I was going to put dirty brake lines on my refished chassis, I opted for a preformed kit from Inlinebrakes.com. The replacement lines are stainless steel and look trick. I ordered their 68' conversion kit for a shortbed truck.

When I tried to lay the lines I found they sent me a longbed kit. The front to rear line was way too long. The rear differential lines were also different.

Here you can see the line goes past the connection

In this photo you can see the lines don't bend forward to the t-block.

It literally took weeks of back and forth emailing and returning of products to get all the issues worked out. Not all the problems where the fault of Inlinetube. My local autoparts gave me one wrong brake caliper. It was in the correct box but was the wrong product. It fit great but the lines didn't fit. By this time I had already painted it red! They allowed me to return the red caliper in exchange for a correct replacement. Overall it took a good 45 days to work out all the issues.
The corrected rear lines:

Correct front-to-rear line. Crossmember was not complete in this photo

Finally got the wheels back on