It has been quite a while without any updates. Life has changed a lot while I have been away. From starting a new job, in a better career, to moving back to my home state, and closer to the truck project. I have been both a lot more busy, but also making more frequent progress on things as I am closer to the project again.

the first update is the fabrication around the power steering box. The frame has been fully boxed in, with adding in the inner frame spacer from a ’78 F-250 frame, with a plate closing off the inner side of the frame’s C channel to fully box in the frame where the steering box mounts to the frame. This has been done to strengthen the frame and provide a solid anchoring point for the push/pull of the steering with anticipated larger tires, moving at slow speed while crawling.

After that, we started working on the drivetrain. We are using a 73 Ford 460 engine with a C6 automatic transmission, mated to a married transfer case. The engine needed to be rebuilt. It had about 350,000 miles on it. This was all of it at it’s starting point, being used to set the engine mounts and crossmembers.

The engine had thrown a main bearing, and during tear down it was discovered that it was going to need machining work. We sent it out to Action Machine Shop in Shoreline Washington. The block was bored to .060 over, and once the machining was complete we built the engine up.

Unfortunately, we didn’t keep up with pictures throughout the engine build. We finished the short block, and rebuilt the heads. On the exhaust ports we ground down the Thermactor exhaust port bumps to improve airflow, and completed the engine assembly.

The transmission has also been rebuilt with new clutch disks and seals and a new torque converter. The transmission has a manual valve body and a shift kit in it, and in all the vehicles I have ever driven with an automatic, this transmission is the only one that i didn’t wish was a stick. If your not familiar with a shift kit, I would really recommend looking into them.

For the transfer case, I decided to go with the married NP-205 running a dual stick configuration. This will allow setting H-L-N on each axle independently, making the truck FWD, RWD, or 4WD on demand, as well as selecting Hi or Low range without engaging both axles. The transfer case has been modified with the shift rail kit, as well as cleaned, inspected, and all seals replaced.

This was shortly before the heads were finished. I will need to add more images soon. We have almost finished the accessory devices, and are also moving onto rebuilding the front axle currently. More updates to follow.

This August I was able to finally go up and visit my folks and spend some time working on the truck project again. The first order of business was removing the bed from the green truck to allow us to better see how fuel and brake lines were being routed, and setup for dual tanks.

 

 

 

 

 

We recently purchased the tail housing and output shaft for a C6 transmission that allows bolting the married transfer case directly to the transmission. It was bought sight unseen, and we were glad that the shaft is correct, and splines into the input of the transfer case.

We were able to pull out the transfer case from the orange truck as well as remove two of the cross members from it to mount things correctly in the new build. pulling out the cross members was much more time consuming than expected. Drilling out rivets is not as simple as you may imagine. They will need to be cleaned, and painted and re mounted, but for now we are going for test fittings. making sure everything lines up correctly, and mounts in the new frame right. As the truck originally had a smaller engine, a manual transmission and divorced transfer case, some drilling was required.

 

 

 

 

With the engine, transmission, adapter and transfer case in, you can see it goes from just behind the radiator, to back just short of the rear cab mounts, and is all connected as one piece. eventually things will need to come back out to be rebuilt but this allows us to measure for fuel tanks, run brake lines, setup steering and a ton of other things.

 

 

 

 

 

We had a custom built gas tank created, that will fit between the frame rails at the end of the bed. It will hold 20 gallons once done. We still need to add in the fill neck, and fuel line outputs and float. We will also be building a side tank that will hold between 20 – 22 gallons once done, and upgrading from the manual fuel tank switch to an electric solenoid switch.

 

 

 

 

 

While hard to see in this picture (try clicking it so its bigger) you can see the beginnings of new brake lines on the axle, and new brake and fuel lines in the left side frame rail. Its getting all new brake and fuel lines (as well as new or rebuilt more or less everything)