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So many build threads of c10 pick-ups that it feels like spam to make another but what the hell. I figured out how to do it from other build threads to might as well toss mine on the table.
Specs:
1984 C10 Custom Deluxe, former municipal fleet truck. 53k original miles, 1800 hours on the meter.
5.3 junk yard special from a 2005 1500 pickup, that smacked a moose on the road. Gen 3 external, gen 4 internals. 110k miles. Stock cam, stock heads (not removed), stock bolts, etc...
78/75 cast turbo from VS racing
Decapped injectors
walbro 400? maybe 450..I cant remember lol
3"intercooler
water/meth
th400 from an old Buick
Ford 8.8 from a 1999 Explorer.
Factory ECU
PAC 1218 springs
Experience 0
Second step, skipping the first: Drag it home on a rented trailer. Step one was buying the engine. I just kind of got a wild hair after reading so many turbo 5.3 threads. I got on craigslist and found a decent 5.3 with all the wires and junk with it and bought it up, having no clue what to put it in. I started searching for F-bodies and G-bodies, el camino's, etc...anything 80's and cheap with no significant body damage. Not necessarily an easy task in AK. Short bed C10's are rare here and people seem to think bolting a bunch of chrome from summit onto a 35 year old factory SBC somehow makes the rusty chassis its in worth $6k-$10k. I found this long bed with no real rust for $900.
Someone tried to steal it from the folks I bought it from, really bad car theft issues in Anchorage now days. Luckily these thieves where dumb as rocks because a C10 is brain dead easy to hotwire. They punched the door lock in and took a hammer and chisel to the ignition key and just mangled it to the point it wouldn't work at all. Once that didn't work they slithered under he truck and cut the filler neck tube off and stole some gas...I popped the drive shaft off and dragged it up on to the trailer. luckily the parking lot was glare ice and i didnt need the steering column unlocked. I just chained it to the Tahoe and dragged it around on the ice.
I was astonished to find every single factory part still in its place. Literally everything was factory except the added items like the engine hour meter and some wiring for yellow caution lights and stuff that make it a municipal vehicle. Came from the waste water plant. I accidentally shattered the glass in the hour meter with the hood hinge taking the hood off. I though it was all rusty in there but nope. Zero rust, just all rust colored dust. Factory shinny paint and the original rubber rust coating.
Did I mention I'm building this in my shoe box of a garage?
Little bit of test fitting to get an idea of the room i have. No engine mounts or anything yet.
Bought this after I saw someone on the site here with one, Made the vice mount from some scrap.
Zero clue what I'm doing really. This is my first car I've build proper. When i was 16 I blew the engine in my s-10 and a guy I worked with at the pizza place ran delivery as a second job (main job was a transmission tech at Chevy dealer) asked if i wanted him to rebuild it. I asked him to teach me to do it and i would pay him the same. He taunt me for free. Dave, you're a good dude. The 700r4 blew 2 weeks after i put the cammed and 4barrel carbed 4.7(bored .060) in there lol. I paid him to build the transmission for it. But really my only experience building is with ATV's and ice racing snowmobiles. But I've made tube chassis's and hand pounded out custom made 2 stroke pipes with a sand bag and mallet, ported those engines and made my own ignition systems. So i just started cutting **** and welding it together. I'm basically copying Truckdougs little blue truck in layout.
Wish I could power wash all this crap but its -20 outside while I was doing all this so it was rags and de greaser all winter...
I end up changing this as the turbo just sat to high. It would have been an inch or less from the hood.
I wanted to do the waste gate right on the housing but I don't have a TIG setup and I don't trust a single business here to weld it right. So this was my best shot at giving it priority flow.
So I ended up cutting the elbow and flipping it 180 degrees which lowered it about 8"
In order to hide the cooler so it wasnt pressed up in the grill i chopped some of the rad support out and welded in a couple pieces of 4" exhaust and ran the plumbing right through the middle of the support.
Practice on a chunk of scrap pipe and make a pair of these for easy beads. I got it much cleaner after a couple practice runs.
parts man came!
$300 mystery th400. Bought it from an old school drag racer here. A random add for chevy parts popped up, I get to the guys house and he has 50 years worth of drag racing stuff he's getting rid of. Hundreds of cranks and blocks, transmissions, tons of perfect straight body 60's stuff. Guy was a savior. I ended up walking away with all the hard to find small crap the scrap yard would no sell individually like the clam shell mounts for a 350. Threw together a mount from more scrap to hold it in the engine stand.
Never seen or touched the inside of a transmission before this but hell if I'm paying $1000 in labor. This thing has a budget lol. So I downloaded the transmission rebuild book for it and looked up a bunch of mods to make it hand the power and the RPM I want to throw at it. Restricting the pump feed, bleeder holes in the drums, clearance, spiral clips instead of clips, etc...up graded the sprag and stuff to the parts from the 4l80. Should be good for 1000hp? lets hope, but I'm only shooting for 600-700. It's the RPM the th400 can take i was worried about. Went to the local torque converter guy and had a HD th400 converter modified for close to 3k rpm stall he could get and a fully welded case or what ever that meant.
The conversion plate for the transmission is only made for the old bolt patterns. They will all work on a 5.3 but some of the holes do not line up because the 5.3 has not had certain holes drilled and tapped. Those spots can still be drilled and tapped in the 5.3 block they just didnt do it at the factory. I found it easier to weld a stud in rather than drilling the block and hoping i get it straight with a hand drill.
Broken exhaust bolts, just weld them out with an old nut. Be sure cover the engine up good with a welding jacket or fiber glass blanket.
Didn't realize a special tool was needed for this. Sloppy mechanics video has this method. Worked good but the tool started bending a bit, used hot rolled steel to make it. cold rolled would have been better but again, it was just scrap.
Last edited by LetsTurboSomething; 05-23-2020 at 01:16 PM.
Skipping some stages here. I tend to binge work on stuff like this and some times i forget to take pictures as i go when i get in the zone.
2" cross overs, 4" pipe from the turbo all the way back.
They say everyone should do their own harness modification at least once. Again budget, so I went at this beast. No room in the garage for a table so it's draped across the rad support...not ideal...
So many wires, so much solder.
Once you get through it all using lt1swaps instructions on his site, it's really not bad at all and how the engine management works makes a lot more sense. That thick bundle of wires doesn't seem so daunting to look at anymore.
Old junk out.
New junk in. It's a Jeep shaft.
New tank from Rockauto, The 1987 tanks are EFI tanks and fit perfectly back into the old tanks spot. My advice, just do this and do not bother with the original tank. They will be rusty and thin and the new tank is dirt cheap and you can drop a walbro pump right inside. I tried salvaging the original tank but it ended up rusted so think i could dent it with a finger nail. The factory plastic skid plate on the gas tanks hold all the road gravel/sand/salt right against the tanks for 30+ years. They have no drain holes in the bottom to let that crap out...terrible.
Need some traction for all this. Tires for performance are super hard to find in stock anywhere here. But I found these at a good price. Drag radials are out of the question here as the road surfaces are never hot. Even on an 80+ degree day which we might have 10 of a year, the road surface is still cool. Drag compound tires just crack and get messed up here unless you store them inside every day you're not at the track. This is street car.
Hmm, the old evap canister looked just like it was made from a coffee can. Soooo....
A coffee can, some JB weld and about $15 in shark bite fittings from the hardware store make a catch can that fits in the factory evap can location and looks fairly factory when painted black.
Harness back in, catch can in, pipes wrapped, water/meth installed, oil lines, vac lines ran...I used some left over heater hose for the catch can hoses which I imagine will be going bad and have to be replaced sooner than later. It was left over hose, free and there at the time. Do not use heater hose for this!
A bunch of work occurred before this pic involving the installation of a Ford 8.8 axle which did nothing but make me mad for a week. Nothing fit right, all the u-bolts i bought i bought the wrong size and when i went back to get 3.25" dia. bolts I could not find them anywhere. I had to order them custom made and wait two days. The brake fittings where all screwy. The spring seats I got lifted the axle to high off the springs after he flip was done. About 1/2" to 3/4" to much. Had to grind out and cut off all sorts of stuff but I left as much of the stack mounts for the explorers rear sway bar. 7 days of irritation and The first pic i took was when i finally dropped it back down lol.
You research and research and inevitably you get caught off guard by something more expensive and harder to do than you anticipated. This was that moment for me. The dang drive shaft. I got a quote on what i thought i needed months before i needed it done. I get in there and I double check what he is going to make me meets the requirements for the truck. It did not. See, when you tell people here you're making a high hp hotrod. No one thinks 600+ hp and 6000rpm. Then think 383 stroker @4800rpm. Queue the blank face when i fully explain at the counter what i made. He then explains that this being a long bed, this drive shaft is stupid long. Around 72 inches between the universal joints. This length of drive shaft spinning at 6000+ rpm cannot be made from steel as it cannot be balanced and will basically break it self. So I am informed I have to use a steel shaft with a carrier bearing or an aluminum shaft at 72". Both are considerably more expensive. Not wanting to make a cross member and deal with more fab work this close to the end, I just had this mighty aluminum shaft made. I paid less for the engine...but 1350 joints on both ends with a 1350 axle yolk from an F-150 so i didn't have to use a conversion joint.
This last week I worked out the only issue i had in the end which was my dumb *** not plugging in the knock sensors so it was forcing me into knock retard when it went into power enrichment mode. Which I guess is the fail safe the computer uses when it can't find any knock sensors. Tuned well enough to leave some nice bacon strips on the road in every gear. Running 90 octane pump gas with a can of Torco accelerator in the tank every time because we only have crappy 90 here.
We're going to the drag strip on Thursday the 4th of July to tune it the rest of the way. Started the build in February just after the big earthquake hit here. Let me tell you, after being in a 7.0 quake you will work with some serious anxiety while under a 2 ton truck on jack stands.
Thanks Truckdoug for your excellent build threads, youtube videos and all your help tuning it!
Last edited by LetsTurboSomething; 07-03-2019 at 12:09 AM.
What's the advantage of changing the steering shaft
That old truck play in the steering wheel where it just kind moves left and right and inch but the tires never move, eliminates that. Makes it track like a new truck.
Originally Posted by jeffs55chevy
this is a cool build. i love the intercooler piping through the radiator support idea. also cool use of the bandsaw great idea.
The band saw thing isn't my idea really. All the off road guys have been doing this exact thing with them for years. You can buy a bracket for about $50 pre-bent and drilled for any brand from several of the off road parts sites.
Last edited by LetsTurboSomething; 07-03-2019 at 10:27 PM.
Got it to the track today. Unfortunately all I had time for was 2 runs. I didn't have a long sleeve shirt and they made me go get one before i could get on the track lol. So i lost an hours of test and tune time. There is always Sunday though to go back.
First pass I didn't do a burnout and I ended up breaking the tires loose shifting into 2nd. Made a 15sec.
Next pass i smoked the tires because they put water down whether you do or not (dont have drag radials). I ran a 14sec@14psi, 12 degrees timing on 100octane. My meth injection controller isn't working.
I'm positive I can get it down into the lower 13's doing nothing to the truck. Those two passes were the first time I've ever been on a drag track and had a light tree and everything.
You will get there-I found this pic of a track a while back, thought it was the coolest
looking scene. Could it be your track? Always wondered where it was.
How well does the 4" dp pass down the firewall area?
Im putting together a list for a similar setup for my C10 and just trying to make sure I can run a dp down through there and not outside the frame rail like I often see.
Also, what diameter driveshaft? Im gonna have to have one made for mine as well, since I have a steel shaft that already vibrates.
How well does the 4" dp pass down the firewall area?
Im putting together a list for a similar setup for my C10 and just trying to make sure I can run a dp down through there and not outside the frame rail like I often see.
Also, what diameter driveshaft? Im gonna have to have one made for mine as well, since I have a steel shaft that already vibrates.
Thanks
It's tight, but it clears everything. About 1/2" clearance at the most from the engine/frame/transmission. Its wrapped down to the main pipe too. Underneath it goes under the factory cross member and has about .125-.250" clearance to that in the small area that looks like its made to have a pipe under it. It seems low when you look at it from the side of the truck but the gas tank is still the lowest thing on the whole truck.
I really wanted the inner fenders left in so it could be driven in any weather.
what plug wires are you using? and how are they routed. kinda hard to tell in the pics
LT1 stuff. They're from a camaro. They are just routed over the manifold and held out of the way with some safety wire. I will probably replace them eventually with some cut to length ones.
07-02-2019, 01:43 PM
Square Body 5.3 turbo. Updated and upgraded. 
