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‘78 K5 Blazer- 38k miles and counting…

Literally all original driver that I will try my bestest to leave it alone and just enjoy it!
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Behind on the updates.

C10 Shindig was cool. Lots of cool builds and people. Cruised in with a couple of local guys along with my buddy Nick. Truck drove pretty good. Even got up to 90 at one point. On the way home the truck started chugging under heavy load. Fuel filter was fine, so I just kept driving. Pops ranout of fuel a mile from a truck stop, so we wedged a tire between the trucks and I pushed him on in. After his fuel up, we made it home fine.

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82355 said:
Should keep a gas can instead of a pusher tire?

Martin
Click to expand...
KC is an hour from our house. Cable Dahmer arena is 1:20 minutes from our house. We were doing 75-85 average the entire time. I’m sure his 350/350 combo were screaming and getting horrible gas mileage. When he realized he ran out of fuel he said, “Well I filled up before we left this morning!” I informed him that his one working tank only held 16 gallons, and that he should have gotten fuel before the return trip.
 
So yesterday I decided to work on some small issues I was having.

Started with an intermittent RH brake light not working. Traced it down to a ground issue. I decided that this truck would most likely never tow, and that I needed to pull all the trailer wiring and accessories off. It had a 4 pin and a 6 pin trailer plug on the rear bumper, along with trailer brakes. The way they wired it all in was just asking for electrical issues later down the road. I removed all of it and reattached all the cut wires. Not sure what issue specifically caused it, but the lamp is now working as it should.

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I’ve still been having an issue with fuel consumption and overall poor performance from this 400ci. So I went ahead and stared from the beginning with the carb. I ended up turning the mixture screws in 4.5 times, which is extremely unnecessary. I then turned them back out 2.5 times which is usually a good base to start with. The truck no longer takes 10-15 seconds to start after warming up, and feels like it’s 80% closer to running properly. Unfortunately, when removing the trailer wiring I noticed the mufflers were rusting through. So those need to be replaced soon before I get too involved tuning the carb with bad rusted mufflers.

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So last weekend I drove this about 30 minutes south to my cousins wedding. On the way home ann exhaust leak started and eventually got louder to the point that it was obvious a gasket let go somewhere. I couldn’t see well enough in the dark when I got home so I checked the next morning. I found that donut gasket blew out completely. After 3 trips to the parts store I got the correct gasket. Once installed, I fired the truck up, and it immediately pushed that gasket out, but did not blow it apart. I reinstalled it again, and snugged it down even more.

After that happened, I started questioning if I had a different issue going on and decided to see how much exhaust was actually coming out of the tips.

Driver’s side seems decent, but RH is maybe 20% flow. That explains a lot of the running issues I’m still having.

Since the exhaust isn’t terrible at the moment, I’m just going to toss on some cheap Amazon mufflers for now, and then redo the entire system later down the road.

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Is that the gasket between efe valve and manifold ? head pipe should use a doughnut or nothing.
 
Found out a week ago that I was invited to C10’s in the Park down in Texas, so drivability and reliability for this truck have moved way up the priority list.

I ended up finding that the exhaust riser was stuck mostly shut, and that was contributing to the lack of flow for the exhaust on the passenger side. I got it freed up and working properly, and installed a new donut gasket. I also found that the parts store had a bad batch of gaskets that were produced and the newer batch was way better.

The old gasket just crumbled and came apart while on the way back from a car show that was 30min away.

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New gasket on the left, old batch gasket on the right. Clear difference.

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After that was all snugged up and the exhaust was flowing right, the truck still just wasn’t where I thought it should be. It ran ok, but seemed to really take a lot of throttle to keep at speed on the highway.

Although this truck only has 30k miles on it, I thought I better check the timing and make sure it was good.

Once I hooked the timing light up it read dead on at 0°, which is way too retarded for a small block. I bumped it up to 8° as I read somewhere that the 400’s really liked that, and holy crap what a wake up call it was for this old truck.

This thing is sipping the fuel now, and barely takes any throttle to hum along at 75mph. Punch the throttle and it gets up to 85 like nothing.

Next on the list for tuning is to hit the carb with a vacuum gauge and see where it’s sitting now.

After that it will be time to address some leaks. Valve covers, rear output seal on the T-case, and possibly a pinion seal. Then it’s on to some comfort features like cig lighter.
 
Picked up the truck yesterday. Shop said it had a stripped stud, and the flare was pulling from the flange. Truck is super quiet now, and you can hear the mufflers starting to come apart inside. Shop said it will be fine for now, but definitely need to save up a little for some new exhaust.

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Started knocking out some of the trip list today. Pulled valve covers and replaced the leaking cork ones. Then cleaned up the valve covers and air cleaner and hit them with some high temp black.

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Cleaned the windshield and re glued the rear view mirror I broke off a few weeks ago.

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Also replaced the rear output seal then hit the car wash to clean up all the build up and residue from the oil and t-case leaks.

No more leaking valve covers.

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Did an oil change and also remounted the driver’s side fender emblem. Tomorrow I’m going to diag an intermittent cigarette lighter so I can charge me phone while driving. As well as start to clean the interior.
 
The mufflers finally bit the dust and clogged up. Snagged a couple of cheap 2” Thrush mufflers from Amazon.

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The exhaust flows properly now and has a very subtle exhaust tone to it, but louder than it was. Great balance for a highway cruiser.

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The Blazer runs a lot better now and feels like it should. Back to alternating DD duty with the ‘03.
 
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