It was a high of 52* today so I'm in the garage taking advantage of that.
Exhaust is on thanks to a big brain move of drilling an access hole for the rearmost driver's side header bolt. That single bolt is no longer a 10-15 minute ordeal of cussing myself out for being a E36 M3 engineer.
I'm making some progress on the rest of it but a lot of parts are out in the storage unit because I needed garage space for house projects. Truck needs to go live at the in-laws lake house so the wife can park in the garage this winter. Insurance is up on it on Sunday and this Saturday is looking like a pretty decent day so time to thrash.
Good for you, dude. One of the great things about (good) marriage is that you can embarrass yourself regularly in front of your spouse for years on end. More importantly, you are young and you realize that embarrassment is a thing, so this puts you far ahead of much of the crowd.
Bummer that there is such a thing as hotrod winter. We are slightly wet but still very much T-shirt weather in ATL metro.
As for that access hole, research what people had to do to change spark plugs on big block Mustangs in the late 1960s . . .
In reply to rustomatic :
Good info, I'll have to do some googles about big block mustangs.
I wish hotrod winter wasn't a thing but that's the reality of Wisconsin. We've thought about moving south (ATL and Greenville,SC) but we have some really great friends that are keeping us grounded here. The snow isn't so bad but the salt and the nasty, bitter cold really makes winter miserable up here. We'll see if the wife changes her mind about Milwaukee when we are sitting in a pool in Gulf Shores over Thanksgiving 
The sad panda saga continues with the truck. The 4.8 insisted on expelling ridiculous amounts of coolant out of it heads gaskets. Either the block is dickered or the heads are the early 862 heads with the notch in them that require a special gasket which I did not use. Either way it drove onto a trailer and went to go sleep in a garage an hour away for the winter. It'll be nice to have it out of the garage for a while.
East bound and down!!!!
Stop number 1 somewhere in Illinois. Another 11i-sh hours to go to South Carolina.
Had to stop in the middle of Kentucky to take a nap around 3:30am but we made it to our new house in South Carolina safely.
Very nice! Looks like a good sized garage 
Awesome! Is that a 2 car attached and 2 car detached, or is your nieghbors house the main one showing here?
In reply to classicJackets (FS) :
2 car attached with a detached 24x30 that has a full apartment above it
RacetruckRon said:
In reply to classicJackets (FS) :
2 car attached with a detached 24x30 that has a full apartment above it
That sounds just about perfect. Congrats!
RacetruckRon said:
In reply to classicJackets (FS) :
2 car attached with a detached 24x30 that has a full apartment above it
I tried to upvote that twice. I knew it wouldn't work, but I felt it was important enough to try anyway.
Duuuude!. So much for Hot Rod Winters. Congrats!
In reply to wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) (Forum Supporter) :
Hot rod winter no more! Talked to a couple friends this morning, Milwaukee got north of 8" of snow last night. It's 45* and drizzly today, that's a decent April day in the Midwest.
I have garage and warm weather envy! It's 19* in CT at the moment and we're getting 8-12" snown tomorrow.
Congrats on the new place!
Some things rattled loose along the 900 mile drive to SC. The headlights are on no matter what if the main breaker is switched on (they were on a switched relay). And I'm sure there's a few other electrical gremlins hiding in wait for me. I think it's time to refresh the electrical system of the truck since I kinda cobbled it together last summer as I was learning how to do wiring and made a lot of important things very hard to service. I've been looking for a good compact OEM style solution instead of doing a racecar relay and fuse panel that takes up a ton of space.
I found this Eaton vehicle electrical system that uses GM metripack connectors and relays on eBay for $70. Seems like a decent solution to replace the rats nest of 6 relays I have now. But I need to see how easy it will be to source all of the connectors.
Congrats on the move and new car storage/sleeping space! There's a lot going on in this part of the country. On that note, I moved from CA to GA about a year ago (not for the weather, but for everything else), and things have only improved since . . .
New house, new state, new job has been crazy for the last couple weeks. Finally getting up to speed at work and caught up on house projects. I still need to set the 3d printers up, I have a couple projects waiting on them. I got some time this weekend to hang up a set of GRM's favorite Barina LEDs and they really transformed the shop. I might have to get a set for the wife's garage too.
Before:
After a 10pk of 4ft Barinas:
I still have a lot of organizing to do. I'm also going to pull the 4.8 back out, I need to change the head gaskets from the MLS style to the composite style since I have notched heads and I don't think that's a job that's feasible with the engine in the truck. I think I might as well rebuild the L33 while I'm at it and put that back in. The LS3 build I kicked around the idea of would be a little too spicy for how much tire I have on the truck. I'd like to drive it as much as possible this year and not have to drop a bunch of money on a new wheel and tire setup. That LS3 build might have to wait a year or be for an entirely different project. Need to focus on making this thing a runner and dialing it in, I think this thing has the potential to be a real weapon in a competition that has pretty open class rules like Holley LSfest.
I ordered a reman crank for the 5.3 from rockauto for $300 with bearings included which is a little less than double what it would be to just order main and rod bearings. If that works out, that's a good deal in my mind, I hate dealing with machine shops and will go out of my way to avoid them. Paying out the ass to wait forever on mediocre work has been a common theme with all of the machine shops I've dealt with.
I previously thought I had a wiring issue because the lights were staying on whenever the battery was connected but it turns out the high beam switch was flicked on. Derp. The battery appears to be properly dead though. It charges up to 12.5V but the second I put a load on it the voltage drops to 8V. I have seriously neglected that battery for 5 out of the 5.5 years of ownership and it's a 7 year old Walmart Special. It will probably get replaced with the same level of cheap Walmart battery.
java230
UberDork
2/15/21 11:07 a.m.
New garage looks great! Excited to see more progress.
Back in its natural state of rest.
And time!
I have head gaskets to fix the 4.8. I did a stupid and left the heads for the 5.3 submerged in Super Clean overnight and berked the gasket surface, I also discovered that two of the 5.3 pistons have cracks and I do not have any spare gen4 flattops. The new plan is to fix the 4.8, address the shifter and get the chassis sorted as I build the 6.2 and search for a larger set of wheels. I need 275s minimum if I am going to add power and improve the gearing.
Anyone have a set of C4 ZR1 wheels for sale or really any 17" or 18" wheels with a 5x4.75" (5x120) pattern that are wider than 9"?
I'm going down a little bit of a rabbit hole right now because I have a problem with scope creep. If I add power and regear the truck I will need to put wider tires under it, if I put bigger tires on the truck it will need flares, if I add flares I want the truck to ge all one color. So I ordered some vinyl wrap sample to try out some different colors. I like the current trend of the gloss pastel greys like Nardo and Ford's Abyss Grey, but I think it's a little over done and doesn't differentiate the truck much. The matte green metallic is a little too Incredible Hulk for my taste and the pearl white doesn't really work for me. The white looked much better in the online pictures.
The truck has always had this dent. I used this panel as a practice piece and I also was curious how a matte finish vinyl would show dents. I really don't care about the dents and scratches showing through vinyl but I want it to be all one color and be a decent 20 footer. I think a gloss metallic is the route I want to go.
I like this matte black metallic but it is really just a spicy primer black color.
I really like this dark green metallic with a gloss finish. This green was a different brand (the others were all Vvivid) and was pretty pricey so I ordered a few other green metallic samples that should arrive in a few days. This isn't too bad and I'm pretty confident I can wrap the truck in a weekend once I decide on a color.
Pepto bismol pink, ir purple metal flake. With a tan interior, and the magnesium wheels....
In honesty, lighter and brighter colors hide bad bodywork way better than metallic or dark.
In reply to Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) :
That makes sense, I don't want it to be too conspicuous and shouty as the exhaust does a good enough job of that on it's own. I think green with the olive/bronze wheels and yellow brake calipers will look really good and be kinda sublte.
