'90 K5 "Project Sanity" Sold 7/5/2018

[C1090blazer]

well i saw what blazer you bought and i would of bought it too.....but dang it doesnt even look like the same one ......yea we do hate rust im glad i found the one i did without rust for so cheap "traded two vehicales that didnt run" but it didnt come with no drivetrain hmmm i guess atleast it doesnt leak nothing...lol.... but where i messed up at j/k i stumbled across all the ck guys ... so i did stripped the only thing it did have the half ton axles and now it has 14ff and a dana 44 herculined...ect..but it will be on the road by mid summer ...sorry for running on ...i get a little excited ......

 

[Can Can]

I like this thread.........



Fantastic work, Rene. You'd almost think you were a welder instead of a garbage man....

 

[tRustyK5]

I started with garbage...

My hat is off to CK5 as a community for teaching me so much more than I ever thought possible. Life without a square body or two isn't any fun...

Rene

 

[tRustyK5]

Took a break from body work today.

35's with no lift. Actually drove it to the gas station like this:

I failed to remember i hadn't re-installed the tail light on the passenger side yet...lol. Made it home without getting busted for being dumb.

Plans are 4" home brew shackle flip and 3" TC EZ rides up front. Actually drove pretty good with the 3.08's and 35's. I will be addressing that too though.

Rene

 

[colbystephens]

that tire size looks good w/ the no-lift factor! I like it! When are you thinking you'll do the shackle flip?

 

[tRustyK5]

I dunno...I really should finish the body stuff first before getting more side tracked.

I'd say in a month or so...basically as soon as I can lay my hands on some front springs.

Rene

 

[y5mgisi]

I just want to do truck work! I mean, even something so simple as a tire swap can get my motor reved! If only i could make a living at it...

 

[K5 Jess]

Body work looks awesome! what are you thinkin for paint?

 

[tRustyK5]

Body work looks awesome! what are you thinkin for paint?

Stay tuned...I have a color in mind, and a plan. I don't want to say yet though as I may change my mind. Once I actually buy the paint and spray the first panel I'll spill the rest of the plan.

Rene

 

[tRustyK5]

So I ran across a parts K5 a few weeks back. It was the same truck I got the 35's off of...the guy offered me the rest of it for $250 minus the motor/tranny/t-case that he wanted.

4" lift springs, 10 bolt front with premium Warn hubs, 12 bolt rear 3.42's and no gov lock. Not ideal gearing, but it'll be exactly the same as the 31's and 3.08's it had as far as the speedo is concerned. It also gets me away from the beat to death Gov Lock the 90 has. I'll probably rebuild and re-gear the 90's 10 bolts in a few months and just run the 10/12 for now. Also gets me the 73-80 hood I needed and all the wiper parts so i can run the older front clip i have.

I went out there to start robbing parts today, noticed the older style dash pad was in pretty good shape...and as I'm removing it I notice this:

I'd never actually seen one in person, but have always wanted one. That made the whole deal for me!! Seeing as my K5 is a 90 I'm going to swap the speedo portion into this cluster and run it. I did grab the wiring harness with noise filter that hooks to the tach too.

Rene

 

[Burbdood 74]

You guy's and your good deals.

When it comes to finding deals, I feel like the kid who shows up with his baseball mitt to play in the neighborhood football game... I'm never in the right place at the right time.



BTW....what ya gonna do with them thar 4" lift springs?

 

[tRustyK5]

Well with the 35's a 4" lift is the option that involves the least 'bad' IMO. Minor trimming only, overall height is still OK for my carport, handling is still good. So, I'm gonna run the 4" fronts and do a homebrew shackle flip in the rear. Not sure what brand they are, but they have 6 leafs up front that are thinner than the leafs on my old Rancho springs. I'm hoping the ride is tolerably good. I gotta find a raised steering arm, other than I'm good to go. Then it'll be on to making the Bilstein's i have fit somehow (14.5" 5150's)

I almost never run across good deals, or rare stuff. This was definitely an exception, and a surprise. The guy had no clue it was significantly rare, and somewhat valuable (as far as guage clusters go), and i wasn't about to fill him in.

Rene

 

[muddermilitia]

I hate you.....that is all

 

[Teck]

Very nice find. That is sweet.

 

[lectric80]

Wait, that speedo is out of an older truck right? If so that speedo shouldn't work in the 90 because the 90 has an electronic speedo. No cable to drive the speedo head.

 

[Recon!]

Seeing as my K5 is a 90 I'm going to swap the speedo portion into this cluster and run it. I did grab the wiring harness with noise filter that hooks to the tach too.

Wait, that speedo is out of an older truck right? If so that speedo shouldn't work in the 90 because the 90 has an electronic speedo. No cable to drive the speedo head.

He knows

 

[lectric80]

Crap, I misread that! Sorry Rene!

 

[colbystephens]

Nice!

 

[Russell]

I actually just fitted an orange ringed tach and small fuel gauge into my 90 electric speedo cluster just yesterday... There is some plastic modification that has to happen (mostly involving a dremel and cutting tools) and you will have to come up with a different way of displaying the alternator idiot light (fuel gauge replaces it) but I was able to make a cluster that bolted straight in with only a single wiring modification to the wiring harness in the truck for said idiot light.

Since my truck is a diesel, and it does not have a stock filtration system on it I simply cut up the alternator idiot light lense and the stock diesel idiot light pod lense and replaced the water in fuel portion of the lense with the alternator lense. Looks pretty good if you are able to cut the lenses perfectly straight and line them up properly.

Another option to avoid needing to replace the idiot light opening is to purchase a tachometer from a medium duty truck. They have the fuel gauge integrated into the tachometer.

 

[tRustyK5]

So, I did post this up elsewhere, but figured I'd put it here too to keep the whole build in one place.

I didn't do a play by play with pics, but I added the factory tach and small fuel guage into my 1990 cluster. On my cluster I had to dremeal out a 3 way partition for idiot lights for the fuel guage area. One was a batt (low voltage) light), one was the indicator for DRL's (hated that one anyways and the third one "low coolant". I have voltage and coolant and oil pressure guages, this was all redundant to me.

The small fuel guage shares a mount point with the temp guage. For the wiring I traced the old fuel guage wiring on the printed circuit and determined which wires did what and which pole they needed to be plugged into. I clipped those from the harness plug in and ran small female bullet connectors to the guage itself. So basically it is stand-alone like the tach.

For the tach there is a 3 wire harness. The mount points are all there, I just trimmed slightly in a few places so it would sit as intended, then screwed it down. There is already a square blank in the back of the cluster that needs to be chewed out to allow the three wire plug from the back of the tach to poke through.

I shot a little vid of it all working in the truck.

Volt guage is 1978
Oil pressure is 1978
Fuel is 1978
Temp is 1990, and the only 100% metric guage
Speedo is 1990 VSS
Tach is 1978

Cluster and Printed circuit is 1990

Rene