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1989 Crew Cab Tow Rig Build

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skunked said:
that harness sure make things simple.
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So simple it's not even funny. I was a little forced to go this route since my motor did not come with a wiring harness at all (was able to knock off some of the price because of it), but now that I'm going this route....I think it's so worth it.

So all wires that I can think of to splice in will be the 4 wires mentioned above to get it to fire up, tach, alt gauge, oil pressure gauge, and coolant temp gauge. Then all my gauges will be working and it should run. Even with my gas gauge, I'll just plug the connector going back to the pump back in and only splice the one power wire (one of the 4 mentioned above) into that pigtail at the pump and that's it.

I'm then going to be taking some time to remove all the TBI harness that will no longer be needed so I can keep it intact with the motor I pulled out of this thing since we have some plans to use that motor....so it will take some time, but should be easy peasy :grin:
 
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I really like the square bodies I have one for a tow rig myself mine is a 88 chevy crew cab dually on air ride with oversized bags and four link on the rear for weight I just did a cummins swap last fall and it is seeming to be good for it over the big block
 
Rusty1970 said:
I really like the square bodies I have one for a tow rig myself mine is a 88 chevy crew cab dually on air ride with oversized bags and four link on the rear for weight I just did a cummins swap last fall and it is seeming to be good for it over the big block
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Uh.....build thread?1?!
 
Rusty1970 said:
I really like the square bodies I have one for a tow rig myself mine is a 88 chevy crew cab dually on air ride with oversized bags and four link on the rear for weight I just did a cummins swap last fall and it is seeming to be good for it over the big block
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I contemplated a cummins as well, but this is not a dedicated tow rig. I only tow maybe once or twice a month, so for me I couldn't justify the additional costs to purchase the motor or to swap it in (since this 8.1 has been easier to swap than anything I've done before), so all of this made me settle on the 8.1. It will tow what I need just fine, and this will never be a DD as I've said before so I really don't care that it gets worse gas mileage as I will only use it when I want to, not a have to kinda thing.

If I was building a dedicated tow rig I probably would have done what you have done plus a few other things, but I was just trying to get good tow capacity with low maintenance after I'm done, along with easiest to swap for as cheap as I could, and this is what I came up with, haha.

You got a pic of your rig? Would love to see some pics of your rear link setup and everything else you got
 
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Kay86K5 said:
Thanks! I appreciate that. This thing was truly untouched when I got it...so hopefully I'm making it better instead of screwing it up, haha. I see your in Golden, you ever go to the Golden cruise on the first Saturday night of each month during the summer? I've been twice (brought my blazer once). I think once I'm done with this rig I will bring the crew cab towing my blazer up there and just tow around and let people look at them, haha
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Nah, every mod you've made has been a huge improvement:cool:

Yeah the lady and I always go a few times every year, it's fun to watch. I think I saw your 86, I remember a K5 on tons and big tires either last summer or the one before...had to have been yours. You're welcome to stop by my house but I don't have a whole lot of room for a truck and trailer :/
 
KevinsK5 said:
Nah, every mod you've made has been a huge improvement:cool:

Yeah the lady and I always go a few times every year, it's fun to watch. I think I saw your 86, I remember a K5 on tons and big tires either last summer or the one before...had to have been yours. You're welcome to stop by my house but I don't have a whole lot of room for a truck and trailer :/
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Yep, that was mine. It was last year towards the beginning of the summer. That was when I was on the 38.5" SX's. I have a feeling it would draw a little more of a crowd now on the 44" boggers :haha:

If we can make some time to go this year, I'll let you know for sure

82355 said:
What are you going to run for a tach?

Martin
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I'm just going to run a regular aftermarket tach. Nothing really special. I haven't picked one up yet, but I will probably get the same one I have in my K5 which I think I just bought from O'rielly's or something like that. The only trick you have to do is set the aftermarket tach to think it's looking at a 4 cylinder engine, not an 8 cylinder engine. As long as you do this, it will work just fine. Don't ask me why, I just know @Larry did this and it worked :D
 
Mine is not just the tow rig it is a daily driver as well I had a friend help me with tires we were able to accomplish the full swap from driving truck to driving truck in 6 days and I was able to find a donor truck with only 129k miles for $2100 so it was fairly affordable I did it since I had the square body and wanted to get rid of my other daily driver so I didn't have truck payments anymore it seems so far to have been a good call
 
Rusty1970 said:
Mine is not just the tow rig it is a daily driver as well I had a friend help me with tires we were able to accomplish the full swap from driving truck to driving truck in 6 days and I was able to find a donor truck with only 129k miles for $2100 so it was fairly affordable I did it since I had the square body and wanted to get rid of my other daily driver so I didn't have truck payments anymore it seems so far to have been a good call
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No car payment is always better IMO. Sounds like you have a sick rig
 
Ya it is getting there I have some more things that I need to finish up on it and that I still want to do but it is finally getting there hopefully I will be able to get some pics posted up here before to long
 
Nice truck and I love the direction you are going with the build. I have an '04 F250 with a 6.0L and if it ever takes a crap I think an 8.1L/NV4500 is in its future or just a plain old 454.
 
Truckman4life said:
Nice truck and I love the direction you are going with the build. I have an '04 F250 with a 6.0L and if it ever takes a crap I think an 8.1L/NV4500 is in its future or just a plain old 454.
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Thanks!

If you are thinking of going big block, I think it really depends on what you want to do with the motor. If you plan to keep it relatively stock, then 8.1 is awesome! If you are a big power kinda guy and really want to build a big block to your exact hp/ft lbs you want, then a 454 is probably better just cause of the aftermarket support. Since the general public is for all intensive purposes stupid when it comes to vehicles (and all you guys know what I'm talking about....you know about 80-90% of the people you know have no freaking clue about cars...), this means the 8.1 has got kinda a bad wrap for being a gas and oil consumption hog. Which really, if you step back and look at it, it's not that much worse than most other truck gas options, but whatever. Since they have got this bad wrap, there really weren't that many sold and hence there are not that many building them so the aftermarket support isn't as good. There is some, but just cause it's so small it's really expensive.

But I'm not too worried about building a motor as much as I am concerned about reliability and maintenance. A tuned 8.1 in stock form still puts out a pretty impressive amount of power. And if I want a little more later on, I'll throw a cam and a tune at it and call it good (and probably have some head/intake work done too). Goes back to what you really want out of a truck, ya know?
 
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Got a lot more little things done yesterday on this thing.

First off, I removed the factory oil cooler. Read of a few guys who just ditched them during a swap and never had issues with it at all. I'll just always run a full synthetic oil in this motor at all times. So drained the oil too and put a new filter on it to get ready for a first fire up. I plugged these with just normal 1/2" NPT plugs



I also topped off the fluid in my NV4500 and finally bolted both shifter boot's/bezels down for good. I had to modify the tcase bezels a little so it could bolt down in the factory location since the shifter on the NV4500 is further back than a SM465, but wasn't a big deal (I still need to remove the auto shifter from the column, just haven't done it yet)



I also cut the whole in the firewall to mount my new master cylinder. Just used a normal whole saw and made a little cardboard template to use as a guide...worked really good



This is where I mounted my master cylinder reservoir for right now, may change it later on, but will work fine for now (please ignore all the wires in this pic, haha. That's all the TBI harness still in the rig, once I install my new wiring harness and get my gauges working, I'll remove about 95% of that to keep it intact with the TBI350 I pulled out of this thing, since we have some plans to use that motor for other projects)



I also installed the 95 slave cylinder on the bell housing and ran the line up to the master cylinder. Obviously the connection from the 95 hydro line and the 87 master cylinder are different. I purchased a little tube adapter to mate the two different lines together. Haven't done that yet, I'll take a pic when I do

And I got my air intake setup put together. Just pieced together some stuff I purchased from Spectra Performance. I think it turned out really good. I need to either purchase or make up some sort of mount to attach in the middle of the air intake and probably mount to the alternator somewhere just so it's not flapping around, but that will be easy and this will do for initial start up







I also attached my upper and lower radiator hoses and filled up the cooling system, so that's all done. And I got my throttle cable pretty much done. I purchased a cable and bracket off a 1997 5.7 vortec truck, and it fits really good. I just need to modify just a little bit the bracket to mount to the intake, but that's no big deal really.

Just a couple more little small things before wiring and then see if it runs :D
 
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If I bring my crew down, can you get it setup with an 8.1L after yours?
 
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