In reply to 03Panther :
You can use a stock harness and PCM for less than $100 if you can do basic wiring and find someone to delete VATs cheap or free.
I'll likely be all in for around $5500 when my truck is on the road, and that includes purchase price. It could be done much much cheaper. Or much much more expensive.
bgkast (Forum Supporter) said:V8 focus!
Don't think I didn't think about it. But no, this Focus SVT was bought to part out. And before I get bashed for parting out an iconic car, it has terminal unibody rust.
After getting rid of my truck and frame, I was down to a few bucks. Parting out the focus allowed me to fund raise and start looking for a southern truck to fly and drive. Missed a few good deals and clean examples, but decided to be patient.
Alright, so enter the Earl Truck. Why is it called the Earl Truck? Because I bought it from a legend of an older gentlemen (named Earl) who bought this truck in Arizona in November 2020 and drove it back to Ohio where it sat since. I was hesitant to buy it at first because he was asking $3,500 and I didn't have the cash. The truck was taunting me on Facebook Marketplace while I raised more funds. I negotiated a price of $2,800. I then loaded the family and set off for the land of all-day pajama pants and cigarette smoke...Akron!
So this is my purchase. 234k miles but it runs great and drives okayish. Made the trip home in stride. This is also a manual truck so I'm keeping this transmission as a backup.
Lots of paint fade and custom spray paint, so it needs some paint work but I don't care. It's rust free. After looking at all the components of my rusted truck, it's crazy to see how clean it is underneath. I grew up in the south, but I've gotten way too used to rusted E36 M3 boxes.
This brings me to present. The truck needs rear brakes (drums) and spring/shackle bushings. I also bought some Beltech 0-3" drop shocks for the rear. I want the truck to run and drive well before I drop in the LS.
When I drove the truck home, as I was pulling out of the driveway, Earl (the man) let me know that "that front rotor is bad." I agreed when i heard the sound of metal to metal when I left. Turns out it was actually the rear drum brakes. The drums were so worn/grooved, that I had to access the adjusters from the rear to release the shoes from the grooves. This is how I started:
Finally, off. Angry, see the grooves?
Crusty but not rusty old setup. This is how much material was left on the shoes:
If you've never muscled the chevy horse shoe spring back into place, consider yourself lucky. Here it is cleaned up with new shoes and hardware. Wheel cylinders are in great shape.
Then, spray painted drums because why not?
Then, you cry a little because you have to do the other side, but in reality, it isn't that hard. I've been busy living life and haven't gotten to the other side. That will come this weekend. I need to get the parted out focus to the yard and then I'm going to wrap up the brakes and use my chain hoist to lift the bed off the truck. That will give me easy access to the rear leaf/frame bushings and shocks and also allow me to pressure wash and pssst psssst on some paint on the rear frame.
Got the rear brakes all changed and have moved on to taking things apart to put them back together. Stay tuned for a gooder update.
Scotty Con Queso said:Stay tuned for a gooder update.
I'm looking forward to it!
Scotty Con Queso said:Saying I'll update thread in a day but actually updating a week later is par for this build. Moving on. The next step was to aquire a good frame. I did a lot of studying on how to lift the cab off the old frame and came up with this setup in my garage. It actually lifted the cab off the frame pretty nicely.
The next step was to find a decent frame to put the cab on.
I'm very curious about this crane set-up. This was an idea I had for removing the k-member in my Camaro, but I was scared of potentially pulling my garage down. 
Is the stud that it's mounted to reinforced in any sort of way? I have a feeling that my cookie cutter pre-fab house support structure isn't going to cut it. haha
I like this thread so far. And it's good to know that this gen of Colorado apparently disintegrates in the Rust Belt. Yikes.
Can't wait to see how this turns out!
In reply to V6Buicks :
The hoist is mounted to a truss running parallel to the mount. I was worried about this too. I did test lift the cabin the frame. Guessing I think is around 800lbs and the truss didn't budge. I'd say that's the highest I'd ever go. In my head, that weight is a factor of safety of 1.1.
It did lift the bed off the truck with ease. Light as a feather. I'll likely use this to pull the 4-cyl engine from the Earl Truck when that time comes.
I hate to admit this is the first time I've felt any love for this generation of Colorado. I've always found the styling kind of awkward, but the idea of the LS swap into a 2wd standard cab is really appealing.
The front end styling on these always gave me a Jake Tucker from Family Guy vibe.
Tony Sestito said:I like this thread so far. And it's good to know that this gen of Colorado apparently disintegrates in the Rust Belt. Yikes.
Can't wait to see how this turns out!
I bought a 2012 new and I'm not having any real rust issues yet. There's the whole Rust Belt, which does include places like Columbus (where I live), Cincinnati, Indy and Appalachia. But on a whole 'nuther level is the Rust Belt North of U.S. 30.
Rear suspension bushings replaced along with beltech struts. It's like a new truck.
Also did a complete tear down and deep clean of the interior. Much nicer and smells much better.
I need to part out another SVT which I'm picking up soon the finish the truck. In the meantime, I'm going to register and drive to work this summer with the 2.9 4-cylinder. After I raise the funds I'll take it off the road in the winter and swap the engine. I'm in no hurry.
Last I updated I planned to get the truck on the road with the 4 cylinder. Plans change. I had an annoying exhaust leak that I thought was the exhaust mani gasket. This is what I found when I pulled the heat shield.
Yikes. Took it off and tried to weld the cast but I made it worse. Now the exhaust leak is horrible. Not paying to fix it so out comes this engine to start swappage.
Which will have to wait until I part out the SVT Focus that's in my garage now.
I ordered that bigfoot adapter so I'll let you know how it turns out hopefully I can have it installed in the next couple of weeks.
In reply to OneSickGNX :
Cool. We can compare notes with the Fabbot vs the Bigfoot.
The biggest thing I've noticed from pictures is the V2 fabbot having the slots for -3 lines and I don't think the bigfoot has a flange to locate the ar5 just bolts. Ups says the adapter should be here on Monday so I'll take some pictures.
The adapter came in early. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the fit & finish. Hopefully it works well.
In reply to OneSickGNX :
Similar setup for the Fabbot Next Gen I bought. Like you said, I think the only difference are the slots for braided lines. I'll be drilling a hole in my bell housing but I did spring for the braided speed bleeder. Fabbot has really good info on their page for installation. I have the bell housing that I got from U pull & Pay with a 4l60 I sold for profit. Oh, and I got a fancy sticker too:
I have $1300 in parts sitting in my eBay cart that I need to buy but in no hurry. Sloppy Stage 2 cam, PAC 1218 springs, headers, a alum clutch kit, headers and a poly trans mount.
Also following.
I remember that some of these came with a 5.3 from the factory, but I think all of those were automatic.
Definitely want to keep an eye on this one. Great build!
I don't know if you checked rockauto but they have a good deal for a clutch assembly for an LS7 Vette that's made by luks which make some good stuff. I'm contemplating -3 bulkheads in the bellhousing instead of just holes but, I'm not sure what all I would need to do so.
Been way, way too long since I updated this last. Back in October, I noticed that my daily driven Silverado had unrepairable frame rust. With the used car market out of control, I decided to put the Colorado on the road as a stop gap. That meant getting it passed through PA inspection (safety and emissions) As noted earlier this year, the stock manifold and cat had a huge crack that I couldn't repair. So I bought a stupid cheap manifold on eBay. Stock on the left, cheapo on the right. It did the job and I was happy.
I then wanted to fix a few items on the truck so it would be little easier to daily. The first up was the headlights. These probably could have been buffed, but for $100, I just bought cheap replacements. I did have to use black silicone to seal them up before I put them on, which ended up taking a long time. I also had another grill that I pulled from the upull a while back that was yellow. After a lot of masking, I painted it white.
Before:
And after:
It'll look better once I repaint the lower portions of the bumper black, like I did with the rear bumper:
Another thing about the Earl Truck, is that it used to be a pest control truck. It had a complete wrap at one point, and two areas on the driver and passenger door remained and were just white spray painted over. With some new old stock aircraft paint stripper, I was able to remove the wrap down to bare metal and repaint. I also replaced the door handle with a new unit. Not perfect, but better than before. I still need to do the driver's side.
And after:
Another thing that bothered me about the truck was the TPMS sensors seemed to have been removed from this truck at some point, so I kept getting a flashing dash warning about a low tire. I was reading on the internet about how to disable the TPMS system and someone mentioned that the earlier trucks didn't have the TPMS system and you could simply swap clusters to get rid of the light. Then I realized, I have a 2004 cluster from the blue truck. The mileage is actually stored in the body control module, so I simply swapped clusters, a sub 5-minute job and no more warnings!
I got the truck through PA inspection with ease. The guy inspecting it was shocked at how clean it was underneath which is sad, really. I daily drove the truck until Thanksgiving of this year and it did great. It has since been parked in the driveway waiting on me to remove the 4 cylinder lump.
Another update, involving fun LS swappy stuff, coming soon.
OneSickGNX said:I don't know if you checked rockauto but they have a good deal for a clutch assembly for an LS7 Vette that's made by luks which make some good stuff. I'm contemplating -3 bulkheads in the bellhousing instead of just holes but, I'm not sure what all I would need to do so.
This was a pimpy upgrade to the crappy dual mass setup on my V. One of my favorite mods ironically.
You'll need to log in to post.
