'91 K5 Four Wheel Camper

[imiceman44]

If I had known problems with this arrangement over the years I certainly wouldn’t do the same design to a 3rd rig A second bolt would be ideal but then again, I’ve never had an issue in over 10 years and almost 50K miles on the K10. If you really think about it, the sheathing doesn't have the working pressure on it......the cable does. The sheathing is nothing more than a guide for the cable to run

Also the location of the bolt makes a difference, being the pulling radial away from the bolt it will not move.
If it was pushing it could

 

[campfire]

I’ve never had an issue in over 10 years and almost 50K miles on the K10.

Thank you, that's exactly what I was asking.

 

[ZooMad75]

Progress dump. Larry's been busy since his daughter gets to go back to school and that allows Mama to go to work too. In between work calls he's picking away at the list.
Single headlight core support cleaned up and fogged black.

Sorry for the glare, but the afternoon sun really lights up Larry's shop. He's pulling some fuel from the tank since Murphy struck again since I didn't run out the last tank of fuel I put in it after the Desert trip.

With the tank down he pulled the sending unit to install the higher pressure pump (ac delco ep381). But he may have found why my fuel gauge has always been a little wonky.

He used a little epoxy on the arm and buttoned it up after it cured. Tank back in he started to tackle the fenders. I still had a couple of cans of tan I had mixed up from the last go-round so at least the insides would match and the outside will be done with the rest of the truck.

Meanwhile, I've had the inner fenders that Ian did some excellent repairs to the rust on at work for the last two weeks. I've been waiting for my body guys to squeeze them in and shoot them with bedliner while they shot one of our used trucks. Didn't happen last weekend and didn't happen today. So I ordered a couple of rattle-cans of Raptor liner and picked up some primer on the way home. I got home and got with it. At the point of the pics below I had a single coat on each after the primer. The Raptor was pretty thin so I had to run for another couple of cans and put another coat on each.

Larry's got the starter in too.

We are getting down to the nitty gritty of wiring. But we want the front clip back on so we can map out the layout of the harness, set up the ECM mount and fuse panel.

 

[ZooMad75]

One minor set back was noted this week too. Larry had noticed under the truck there was an oil leak. It was coming from the low oil level sensor in the pan seen above. I got a text we need to fix it. I ordered up a sensor since GM does not sell the seal separately. Even with my price break at work, it's a $40 sensor to get a 25 cent o-ring. The idea was we'd get the sensor in and use it to match up the o-ring with our assortment of o-rings we have in stock. On the sensor it don't look out of the ordinary other than the color.

With the o-ring removed you can see the inner shoulder that probably lines up with the threads on the sensor for an extra degree of sealing I guess.

I was able to match up an o-ring minus the inner shoulder. Larry started kicking around the idea to delete the sensor altogether and asked me to id the side/pitch of the threads on the sensor.

The size of the threads is M20 x 1.50 for the sensor by the way. Seems as if while searching I found the LS world deletes the same sensor and a plug is readily available everywhere including Amazon for like $10. I ordered one up to delete the sensor. No more leak.

 

[ZooMad75]

Progress is rolling on over at Larry's place. He has the engine harness reworked after I put in the sealed fuse panel. Howell does good work but they didn't follow my request for running a longer trunk for both knock sensors and added it other circuits we didn't need for gauges and starter control. Once reloomed Larry says it will tuck away better than either trucks he's done before. Should be very clean for wiring.

I've got a day to spend over there this weekend to address the air tank mount and other odds and ends. Plus I need to marry/convert my 4 headlight harness with a 2 headlight harness Larry picked up at the boneyard yesterday.

Pretty close at this point once the core support goes in we can hang sheet metal and install the harness. Won't be long to fire it off.

 

[6872xtc]

Nice!!

 

[eclipse85k10]

Progress is looking good

 

[ZooMad75]

My little portion of the engine harness rework. Fuse panel is from Littlefuse and is built like a little brick $hithouse. Sealed tight too.


Goes together like a weather pack connector with seals on the wires and cavity plugs in the unused holes.


Much more water tight than the one that came with the harness.

 

[mrk5]

My little portion of the engine harness rework. Fuse panel is from Littlefuse and is built like a little brick $hithouse. Sealed tight too.

View attachment 355943
Goes together like a weather pack connector with seals on the wires and cavity plugs in the unused holes.
View attachment 355944 View attachment 355945

Much more water tight than the one that came with the harness.

Have a link to that?

 

[ZooMad75]

Have a link to that?

I get you a link after work tonight. There's actually a couple you'll need. I'll explain when I post them.

 

[Bent77]

Good job @mrk5 you got adopted

 

[ZooMad75]

This is the type of panel I got.
Littlefuse

I got it from here:
Mouser Electronics

Problem was in my haste to get something coming I didn't read the fine print to understand the panel comes without the terminals, wire seals or cavity plugs. I was more pissed at myself than anything. So I went back to Mouser to discover they sell the terminals in batches of 100 or more.

So I got them from Digi-key electronics. I bought 10 instead of the 8 I needed. Buy extra if you aren't confident in crimping these style of terminals.
Terminals
Wire seals
Cavity plugs

I think I have all of $7 into all of the terminals/seals and plugs plus shipping. That stuff is pretty cheap. The fuse panel was $17 but worth it for the quality of construction and water sealing ability. It was a pain in the ass to sort out the details but now that it's done I'm happy with the results.

Larry's got the harness re-loomed and hung on the engine today. Looks fricken awesome.

Should be able to get a bunch done tomorrow.

 

[deadman]

Looking really good!

 

[mrk5]

This is the type of panel I got.
Littlefuse

I got it from here:
Mouser Electronics

Problem was in my haste to get something coming I didn't read the fine print to understand the panel comes without the terminals, wire seals or cavity plugs. I was more pissed at myself than anything. So I went back to Mouser to discover they sell the terminals in batches of 100 or more.

So I got them from Digi-key electronics. I bought 10 instead of the 8 I needed. Buy extra if you aren't confident in crimping these style of terminals.
Terminals
Wire seals
Cavity plugs

I think I have all of $7 into all of the terminals/seals and plugs plus shipping. That stuff is pretty cheap. The fuse panel was $17 but worth it for the quality of construction and water sealing ability. It was a pain in the ass to sort out the details but now that it's done I'm happy with the results.

Thanks! I don't mind learning from your mistakes.

I think maybe the seals from my weather pack terminals would work.

 

[ZooMad75]

Got a lot done over at Larry's today.

The main thing I had to deal with was the mounting of my air tank under the radiator support. How I had originally installed it with the support in place didn't give me any way to drill the holes I needed to attach it to the frame. So I used some chunks of angle iron to clamp the bracket to the upper frame lip with a couple of 1/4" bolts. Crude, but it worked and never came loose. But with it apart this far I wanted to mount it better without the extra chunks of angle iron.

I pulled it all apart and mapped out the holes. I added riv-nuts to the brackets to allow bolts to come up from the bottom and lock it in. A quick cleanup and some paint and I was able to bolt the unit back in.

The setup sits right under the radiator support with room to spare. It's more secure now too.

Larry's main goal was to get the sheet metal rehung and get the large chunks of truck off the floor. The Radiator support can go in with the air tank project completed. New body bushings were used to replace the dry rotted, collapsed originals.

Starting to close in the engine now.

We pulled the fenders out from under the K10 and got them hung on the body. The driver side fought a little bit with some adjustment issues. But the passenger side practically fell into place with very little adjustment.

The hood was next and it got installed and adjusted to the truck.

The beast is caged in now.

We put the passenger side inner fender in so Larry could tackle the ECM mounting this week. But it's looking good under the hood now.

Part of the haul Larry got at the boneyard this last week was an evap canister. Running without one has come with the side effect of fuel odors in and around the truck on long runs. I ordered the harness with the provisions for the evap system and the ECM also had the evap system turned on. I'm the guinea pig on this setup from his trucks. But Larry will probably retrofit his Suburban as his wife and kid both complain about the odor in that truck. We need to get the canister mounted under the truck before the exhaust work gets done.

Speaking of the exhaust, it's getting completely redone. The routing on my existing system prohibits the install of the fuel tank skidplate I've had to install for a couple of years now. But the size will bump up to 2.5" over the 2.25" I have been running with the 5.3.

Getting closer.

 

[mrk5]

Engine looks sharp!

 

[82355]

I always try to talk people out of removing the evap canister.

Martin

 

[eclipse85k10]

Getting closer that's exciting

 

[ZooMad75]

With the change in the core support from the dual headlight to single headlight setup I had to make the headlight harness match what we were changing over to.

Larry had picked up a headlamp harness at the boneyard last week out of an earlier truck for a possible swap candidate. Further inspection at the bulkhead connector proved the 89-91 setup is different than the 88 and earlier bulkhead connector. That's not going to work. Another difference is the 89-91 is at the marker light/turn signal. The 89-91 has two bulbs in the housing, one for the turn signal, one for the marker light. The earlier setup uses one bulb for both in the housing. Reworking an earlier harness to fit my application just is more work than it needs to be.

The quickest route is to rework my existing dual headlight harness and make it a single. The route I would take is by installing the HD headlight relay harness I had already bought but not yet installed. It's the LMC kit that I picked up for the truck the first time around. A couple of notes to anybody looking at the relay harness kit from LMC. First is the fact that they sell the kit for specifically for the 89-91 dual headlight (V22/uplevel) setup but the connectors on the harness DO NOT match the stock headlight bulbs. They match LMC's composite headlight housings that have replaceable bulbs. It's noted in the description that they don't work with stock bulbs, but at the time I bought mine it was not in a plain obvious way. It was subtle enough I skimmed right past it. Shame on my for not reading the description. So I sat on the kit rather than screw with modifying it to work with the stock bulbs. The second issue with the kit is the fact that the two power wires for the load side of the relays is NOT fused. There aren't any inline fuses to the kit what so ever. The kit is well built other than the stupid omission of fuse protection.

I brought home the harness and the other couple of harness Larry had in case I needed something from them. I laid out my original harness on the tailgate of my S10 and started to map out the changes. It really was pretty simple. Knowing how the stock lighting circuits run from GM, the main power from the switch goes to the driver side headlights with a splice to add the parallel circuits over to the passenger side. The relay kit would normally plug into the stock driver side sockets to provide the switched input needed to turn on the new relays. Rather than deal with the bulk of a connector I no longer needed I clipped the connectors and wired it in with weather-tight heat shrink butt connectors. The final modification needed was to add in single H4 headlight connectors to replace the dual connectors provided in the kit. The high and low circuits tied into the H4 connector with a ground wire for a single headlight connection on each side. I inserted the relay harness into the factory loom to tuck it away. I ended up replacing a lot of the loom that just crumbled. Inline fuses were installed on the power circuits that feed the high current power to the relays.

It's all ready to install back into the core support.
Where I ended up yesterday overall. It still needed the H4 connectors installed.

This is the driver side of the harness. It just happens that the relays fit the harness better on this side. It's easier to run added length to the passenger side to pull power from the battery there.

The passenger side prior to installing the H4 socket and re-looming.

It's all ready to go now. But it was dark outside when I finished so no pics.

 

[ZooMad75]

Larry has the ECM mount completed and harness routed and tied down in multiple spots. He's outdone himself.

Fuse panel is on the firewall, fuel pump relay right next to the ECM on the mount bracket. There was enough length on the DLC connector to route it inside and under the passenger side of the dash. Same for the tach wire.

I dropped off one more heater hose tonight. He's going to stuff the headlight harness in then the radiator and hoses. Should be able to add coolant. Inching closer to lighting the beast.