Drive a non-beater? 97 S10

In reply to Loweguy5 (how many cars will I buy this month before my wife leaves?) :

My 3/4 drop is springs and heavy duty shocks up front. Rear is just blocks. At least with this set up I havent had to trim anything. 

In reply to bonylad :

I was looking at drop spindles and springs in the front and just a block out back.

the main motivator for an LS swap for me is that I'm currently learning how to completely build these in school.. I can post more pictures and stuff of what Im learning if anyone wants 

Be careful with drop blocks. Although rare, I've seen them break leafs before. At best, they're good for excessive axle wrap. If you do go with blocks, I wouldn't go any bigger than two inches. There are a lot of trucks out there with four-inch lowering blocks and it just looks so sketchy to me. I'm not a fan of cheaping out on parts to begin with. 

Drove it for the first time in the middle of the night last night. Started it in the parking lot of the movie theater... shoot - no dash lights, and the headlights are pointing straight up, brights barely touch the pavement.

Luckily I had bought LEDS on Sunday night.

before I started actually driving it, wanted to get new headlights, turn signals, and the turn signal brake light combo with the accompanying clip-on 6 ohm resistors. Don't want to get rear ended because of 30 year old bulbs

Janky redneck wiring

Screwed the resistors in under the turn signals

Considering the fact that i actually only bought one headlight, other than that I'd say it went well. eBay got me with the not specifying a pair of headlights, so gotta wait a couple days till the next light comes in. 

Unplugged the dash lights plugged them back in.. suddenly they worked. Easy as that, I'm getting red LEDs to backlight the dash because it's real dim. Those are coming next week. Two of my buddies have done it on their regular cab short bed cateyes and went as far as gauge faces and needles.. I don't care that much right now but they do look good. Somehow I have a 90s Chevy dash that isn't cracked so gotta be careful to not completely destroy it.. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it

Tomorrow is replacing the mirror that fell out on the highway on Monday, and possibly a little buffing if it stops raining/icing

Alright, mirror replaced. Need some help with the headlights. 

I wired them in without resistors, turn the car on and it cuts the lights immediately. The s10 low beams are wired to the parking brake so when the parking brake comes off the lights come on. It is perfectly fine when the old lights are in so I'm assuming it is reading that the bulbs are out because the LEDs have no resistance.. high beams come on with the switch but since the lows are auto I can't get them on. Tried using 6 ohm resistors but they didn't work. 

Led low beams read 26 ohm w/o resistors 

Led High beams read 26 w/o

I just put it back together with the old lights before I realized I should check the old lights resistance. So I'll wait till tomorrow.

Is there a specific way to wire multiple resistors with 3 wires like the headlight harness?

Spend 2 hours figuring out how to not shatter my gauge cluster wedging it out of the dash.. got my LEDs clipped in.. welp. Gotta muscle it out again I guess

Took me 20 minutes to fix it... Guess that's how it goes. Looks clean and you can actually see the gauges while driving so that's better than when I drove it last week.

As far as cheap bed covers go, what are everyone's opinions? How feasible is a reinforced aluminum sheet dzus'd onto the bed? Its going to need reinforcement for sure and I want it to be removable to be able to use the bed for truck things. Any thoughts?

Shocks are completely gone.. smacked the bump stops a few times on some north St. Louis potholes but somehow she handled 3 full toolboxes and 3 large people with no issue..

Luckily got some race truck parts just in time.. but sadly can't install tonight while I wait for the rain to go away. Maybe Saturday while I watch Klutch Kickers

Bilsteins! Nice!

What LED headlights do you have? Most on the market are terrible...

I'm pretty jealous of the rockers and cab corners

In reply to ian sane :

I got ebay ones that I haven't gotten to work... They turn the lights off when the parking brake is not engaged.. I need to spend more time fooling with the wiring but I just haven't. 

All I can say is wow.. they're bad, can't believe I drove on these for nearly a month now

Just finished it though, had to cut the front tops off because they would come off. Didn't even have to take the wheels or anything in the front I don't know what people online were talking about. 

Going to go test drive now

Holy cow, literally everything is better, except body roll... Need sway bars desperately if I want to do anything that involves turning. But shifting is better, braking is better, hitting bumps doesn't make my bulged disk want to become a slipped disk... I forgot what it's like to drive a car with good shocks 

Alright, I'm still technically learning to drive manual. Ive kinda hit a wall when it comes to progression and feel like I need some help, any tips and tricks you guys have would be appreciated. Nobody in the extended family has had manuals for years, so it's not super helpful there. 

So at stoplights I just kind of sit with my foot on the brake and all the way down on the clutch. Is that right? People online were saying sit in neutral but I always end up killing it trying to rush from neutral to 1st and then letting off the really high clutch point with people behind me. What's the proper way of doing it?

I there a best practice to extend clutch life, or at least not damage anything? I was literally taught how to drive in 20 minutes so I got the crash course. I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything important.

The truck doesn't have a tach. Should I still be trying to practice blipping the throttle downshifting? And is there a trick doing that without a tach

I just don't want to end up driving someone else's car and having them be like, bruh who taught you how to drive 

I tend not to blip the throttle when downshifting. If the synchros bulk at going into a lower gear I'm not going slow enough for that deer. I generally sit at stop lights in neutral because my left knee starts to hurt but you're not doing anything wrong either way

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

Alright, thanks, I just wanted to make sure 

I'll hold the clutch in if it's a short light but most often I pop it into neutral because I'm lazy.

Berk everyone else when the light goes green. They're all going to be jackrabbits anyway and run up on your ass on the 1-2 shift because they don't realize other people might drive a manual. You can take a few extra seconds to pop it back into gear. It's only stressful right now because you're not comfortable doing it. That'll come with time and practice.

In reply to Gambit :

I leaned to drive stick on a Civic with no tach, so I've been there too. Sitting with your foot on the clutch is fine in most cases unless you're driving a classic Mini or something.

I learned how to blip the throttle on that Civic, even though it's not technically necessary for street driving. At this point I imagine you're pretty familiar with shifting by ear, and you presumably know about where the truck starts running out of puff. At that point you're not helping yourself by staying in that gear, so you upshift (of course, most street driving doesn't require revving that high.)

When preparing to blip on the downshift, listen to the revs: if they sound like they're a reasonable distance below that shift point, clutch in and shift down while tapping the throttle so that the revs jump up closer to that shift point, then let the clutch out in the lower gear. If you got it right, the downshift should be buttery smooth: no lurching when you let off the clutch because the revs were too low, no sudden rev drop because you over-revved. If not, practice makes perfect. Eventually it becomes second nature. You really don't need a tach, I never look at mine when I'm downshifting. If you really need some sort of reference beyond the feel of the car, your speedometer can help you judge when to shift (eg. if you usually shift into 3rd at 30mph, then if you're going less than 30 you can downshift from 3rd gear without fear of over revving).

I'm not sure if that was particularly helpful or clear lol.

In reply to AMiataCalledSteve :

Thanks for the breakdown, I understood the concept, but you explaining it does actually help a lot.. the t5 has a pretty clear mph to gear so I was able to catch onto that in the first few hours of driving. Your thread is fantastic btw

In reply to ian sane :

As for 90% of the Karen's (uggh, I hate saying it but it's accurate) around me id love to yell out the window and tell them to cope and seethe, but crank windows take too long to open

In reply to Gambit :

Thanks! The truck is super sweet, I love the color. I know that gearboxes all have synchros and stuff, but it's so dang fun to rev match downshifts I try to spread the joy where I can

Does anyone know anything about the DRL circuit for these.. it's a 97. The DRLs are supposed to come on with the parking brake off, and the headlights are automatic I think. When I put the leds I have in and turn the car on the dash lights for the DRL flash and then then off without the lights turning on. The brights work, I can't for the life of me figure this out. I tried resistors to fix that but that didn't change anything 

Took the front of the truck apart. Plugged the new leds in. Started the truck. Took off parking brake. DRLs come on with the dash lights. Celebration. Take apart lights to paint the pieces that hold them in. Plug it all back in. Start truck. Take off parking brake. Nothing. Yikes.

I wired the headlights to the brights switch. I'll probably end up rewiring everything headlight related anyways it's just a pain in my ass.

Going to get nrg red reclining seats today so I'm super pumped about that. I'll post pics tonight after I pick them up

What happens when you remove the drl fuse or drl relay?

Don't know I'll need to do that when it's dark to see if the auto headlights do anything.. the DRL dash light was on intermittently when I was driving earlier without the DRL actually being on