And now I'm broken down waiting for the tow truck, after it died on the way back from the scrapyard. Too many lows lately
And now I'm broken down waiting for the tow truck, after it died on the way back from the scrapyard. Too many lows lately
Home and in the garage. I had about half a gallon of fuel in a gas can, and poured it in. The fuel pump sounds a bit different, so I may have wounded it. It did start, and I was able to move it in forward and reverse, but seems to be running a bit rougher than it had been before this all started. I'll get some fresh gas at some point, and check fuel pressure at idle.
Note to self: Just because the fuel gauge started working, it does not mean it is accurate. It was reading just a bit under 1/4 tank.
Been there. Luckily within walking distance of home when it died.
Oh yeah, based on the weight at the scrapper, I am guesstimating the truck has gained about 140 lbs, from 3000 to 3140. I had hoped to keep the weight down, but looking back, it makes sense:
I really wish I'd had corner weights before and after the swap. I am thinking I've moved the bias rearward.
The truck is put away for the winter. Front wheels are on ramps and the rear wheels are on cribbing blocks, so there is room to work under it. I don't have plans for anything too big over the winter, but want to get a bunch of small projects dealt with.
At least most of those, aside from the traction aids, wheels/tires, and gauges shouldn't really cost much, if any, money. Just time.
In reply to eastsideTim :
I can look and see if I have any of those gauges sitting around- I'm unlikely to be needing any for anything that I can think of since I'll be busy with the DMC for a while.
In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :
Thanks. I have some spare gauges laying around, too, just need to see what I have. I never got around to hooking up the coolant gauge, just used my OBD2 scanner to keep an eye on it, so that most likely just needs a t-connection at the stock coolant temp sensor location. Oil pressure is weirder - the gauge is maxed out, even when the engine is turned off, so I suspect the gauge has failed, not the sender. I may use it as an excuse to upgrade to Autometer.
Let me know if there is anything I can do to help get the DeLorean project moving. Would love to see it on the road again.
In reply to eastsideTim :
I'll try and take a look around and see what I have over the weekend.
Thanks- unfortunately the biggest problem with the DeLorean is just me making the time to spend out in the garage and work on it. Before the temperature dropped last week I spend the time to clean up a bit around the frame so I can get to everything easily now, so as long as I bundle up when it's colder out I should be able to work on stripping stuff off of the frame (which is what needs to be done most now). At some point I'll need to pull the engine & transmission, and that might benefit from an extra set of hands or two, but I have no idea when I'll be getting to that point yet.
Weighed my traction bars along with the hardware for them. 30 lbs. Similar to the Lakewood bars specific to the S10. They'll weight 2-3 lbs more, since the spring pads are integral on the commercially available bars, and mine clamp on and use the factory spring pads, but that's acceptable to me. I won't install them until I am done dealing with some other work under the truck, though.
Decided to tackle heater wiring today. Pulled out the AC and non-AC resistor, and the wiring pigtail I got from the non-AC heater box.
The orange wire splitting out was a bit of a warning signal. The original wiring on the truck does not have something like that.
Documented the resistance, and wire color for them:
The blue wire on the non-AC and tan wire on the AC system appear to have the same function.
Next, was checking voltage output on the wiring under the hood to see which wire correlated with which setting on the new non-AC controls. Problem was, I could not get voltage to any of them. A little research suggested GM's wiring for non-AC vs AC is significantly different, so even though the controls plugged into the underdash harness just fine, I am suspecting the power wire is in a different spot. Another difference appears to be that for AC, full power to the fan is routed as a trigger to a relay, whereas in non-AC, full power goes straight through the switch, but I haven't been able to confirm this yet, as I only have a AC wiring diagram. Need to go look for a non-AC one to verify.
Worst case scenario, I have an extra switch in the dash, with wiring sitting in the passenger side fender. I could use it as a trigger wire for the relay, and have full power to the blower motor or none. It'd probably take only 10-15 minutes to do, so I'll hold off on it for now, to see if I can figure out how to wire up the controls properly.
Good to see progress being made sir. My only auto progress was getting caddy's frame rail all rust repaired and then a trip to cars and coffee this morning.
How was cars and coffee? Was a little chilly out when I ran errands this morning.
I'm really hoping to knock off a lot of the "little" things over the winter, so there's not as much to deal with when the weather gets nice.
Wheel stuff, I want to add to this thread so I don't forget.
I have a set of 1" fender flares available.
Current wheel collection:
15x7 firebird alloys, backspacing of 3.5-4"
16x8 Trans Am GTA wheels, backspacing of 4.25" front, 4.5" rear
17x9.5 and 17x11 Corvette GS replicas, backspacing of 7-7.5" front and ~8" rear.
I figure, ideally, I want the wheels to stick about an inch out of the body, so they are just covered by the fender flares. Next work session, I'll swap out wheels, and see how things look. I have a 2.5" spacer so I should be able to get them all to fit without interfering, and can take measurements from there to figure out what size spacers will be needed for each wheel type and position. I probably should take into account the truck will get lowered, which may cause the wheels to sit a tiny bit farther than they would in this test, but it is only a marginal amount.
Played with wheel combinations today. Did run into an issue where my wheel spacer won't fit on the front wheel, and I ran out of battery before getting the center bore opened up enough. Will try again in the future, but for today, no 17" wheels up front.
Sorry the angles/distance on the pictures won't line up, I did not do the best job replicating the shots from one wheel to another. Hopefully, these are good enough for now.
First - the 15x7 Firebird wheels that have been on the truck for a while:
They are running a 205/60R15 tire, which is an inch shorter than what should be on the car. The tires on the other wheels are about the right diameter. These had a 6" fender gap, while the others had a 5.5" fender gap, which makes sense
Tuck (measured from outside of fender to farthest out point on the top side of the tire:
Front - 1 5/8" in from the fender
Rear - 1 3/4" in from the fender
Next up, the 16x8 GTA wheels
245/50R16 tires
Tuck:
Front - 1/2" in from the fender
Rear - 2" in from the fender
There is about 1.25" gap between the inside of the tire and the frame rail. I would probably run a spacer in the back. Another possibility would be to track down a couple more of them with the front wheel offset. If I convert the front to Camaro brakes, I think that pushes the front wheels out about 1/2", too.
I really like the way these look on the truck, and if it does not get lowered, I am pretty much certain these will be what gets used. Might still be used if it does get lowered. They seem very era-appropriate.
Finally, the 17" GS replicas:
275/40R17 front tires and 315/35R17 rear tires
Tuck(with a 2.5" spacer):
Front(estimated) - 1/8" out from fender
Rear - 7/8" out from fender.
About 1" clearance between the rear tire and the frame rail.
In order to get the estimate for the front, I installed a front wheel on the back, and worked back through using the 15" wheel info, since they are the same front to rear. The front tire installed on the rear was pretty much dead even with the fender (looked pretty good), and had about 1 1/4" to 1 3/8" clearance between the tire and the frame.
I do like the idea of running 315-width steamrollers on the S10.
A few factors to consider:
I'm really liking the GTA wheels right now, but I think the GS ones will work if the truck is lowered, and the fender flares added. What is uncertain, is how much lowering is needed to get it to look right. Since I'd still like to use it for truck stuff occasionally, a 2/3 drop is the most I think I want to deal with, so the fender gap up front will be around 3.5" and the rear fender gap will be up to an inch less (there are a few hundred pounds of stuff in the bed right now, so a completely accurate measurement is impossible. I can adjust the front gap a bit, too, since it has coilovers, but I think right now they are near their lowest setting. It also seems like 17" wheels in general won't look "off" on the S10, maybe it's just all the massive wheels out there nowadays making them look more normal.
The tires on both sets of wheels are in pretty bad shape, and I don't want to buy two sets of tires. At least I have all winter to think about it. Opinions are welcome.
Those 16 inch wheels look reet.
Pic of the front 17" wheel on the rear axle:
Edit: also a nice size comparison of the different tires in the stack.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:Those 16 inch wheels look reet.
Is that good or bad?
In reply to eastsideTim :
Gray Baskerville-ism. I don't like a lot of hot rodding neologisms but the word fits the groove of right/awesome/nice/cool/sweet
In light of recent events, I am dropping down the list of things I want to get done before spring. I also need to take a closer look at the GTA wheels that were in my storage locker. If I don't think they are safe, I may order up a set of Cragar Soft 8s, wider in the back, and maybe grab the most street-oriented drag radials I can find. Pretty suer all my grill pieces were in the locker, so stock grill will suffice. I will also not mess with anything related to lowering it over this winter. I'll run it stock height. Probably just going to wire up the fan motor to run on an on/off switch for now. May or may not mount the driving lights. The wiring is pretty much set up, so it should be a simple matter of figuring out how I want to mount them.
The goal at this point will be to have it ready for the street as soon as the salt is washed away, and get out to the drag strip some to see if I want to start leaning towards it being a streetable drag car, or keep going on the original path as more of an all-arounder. Mostly, I want to make sure it is up and running all Spring/Summer/Fall 2023, so I can actually enjoy it.
Hold on a mo'. What are you using for engine control again? If it is any of the stock GM computers, the software can do fan control and all of the computers have the hardware, even the truck computers that came in vehicles with mechanical fans. Add a wire for the fan 1 pin and run that wire to a relay ground. Done. If you want to get fancy, and if you have two fans, three relays will give you low speed/high speed fan control by running the fans in series on fan 1 (low speed) and parallel on fan 2 (high speed).
Have done this a bunch of times. (Not just hot rods: plow trucks run hot on the highway unless you convert them to electric fans, which is a 100% bolt and go proposition) If you have HPT it is literally clicking a radio button to enable it and adding a couple wires.
If you don't have HPT, I'll come down and hook you up. It does cost money to register an ECM with the software though, if you can source me a set of 14" 5 lug Neon wheels then I'll call it even 
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
Had me confused for a second, heater fan is what needs to be wired up, I am running an electric fan using the GM computer. I really should set the activation temperature down, at least temporarily, to make sure it works.
If you could use some 14" 5x100 steelies, I may have a couple in my backyard shed.
In reply to eastsideTim :
Derp! That makes more sense then.
Aluminum are greatly preferred because they kinda sorta look like Mini wheels if you squint a little, and they have generously sized slots, which will be convenient since Evan uses through-straps to secure a car on the trailer. It would also be hypocritical of me to use steel wheels when I rail against their use with aggressive tires, the wheels become a wear item.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
I think all my aluminum wheels went with the Neon when I sold it, or to wae when I sold the mud tires to him.
Going to try to commit to knocking at least one thing off my winter work list for the truck this weekend, since I have not touched it for a while, other than charging the battery. There is a chance we are done with salt for the season around here, so it could be back on the road soon-ish, if I deal with all the little stuff.
Got the reverse light wiring sorted, so no more blown fuses, and passenger seat and seatbelt are bolted down. Might have gotten more done, but needed to work on another car, too. Might still do more tomorrow. At the very least, it is tempting to get the auxiliary lights out, and start figuring out where they will get mounted.
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