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And so 2008 begins...

jonathon

jonathon

1/2 ton status
Joined
Jul 22, 2007
Posts
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Location
Washougal, WA
At least in terms of work on my Blazer to get it mall capable:D

I've got a Q-jet inbound from I-5 Automotive :woot:That'll make a world a difference replacing the Edelbrock 1407 that's on there..

Stuff left to do that'll hopefully be done in '08:
  • Finish rebuilding tailgate, got my GM inner and outer seals!
  • Fix the oil leak(doing that next monday) DONE Slight drip from the intake, but not enough to make it worth changing the gasket.. rear main, oil pan, and valve cover gaskets replaced.
  • Exhaust - decided to put manifolds on and go from there.. engine is stock and will stay that way
  • Reroute the breather tubes on the diffs, trany, and t-case into the engine compartment
  • Flush the brake lines and do the rear brakes(they are okay, but one of the drums is fubar'd).
  • 5 Tires and wheels, hopefully I can find something decent locally
  • Floor pans need some patching, nothing major. For now they'll probably be rattle canned till I get the materials for POR and Herc together
  • Door and door window seals and the like.. need to get the part numbers and will order from GM Parts Direct.. quite a price difference than the dealer(Found this out AFTER buying the tailgate seals).
  • ORD steering box brace
  • Hand throttle
  • Electrical work.. would like to have my washer pump working among other things.
  • Speedometer - cable is good, speedo is good, but the cable doesn't turn going down the road and in the t-case it doesn't feel like it's engaging anything. Need a gear??
Pretty routine for most I imagine :crazy: For me half the battle will be saving the money up to do all this on a college budget, but in the end it'll be worth it! More Ramen and .22....
 
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SOunds good, a couple suggestions.

Here is a pic of my vent lines, they are as high up in the engine bay as possible. they are jus to the RIGHT of the windshield washer pump (on my 84 K5). They are out of the way and up high.

AK5Upgrades0002.jpg


The other suggestion would be to switch to Stainless steel brake lines if you have the funds. If your going to be opening up the brake system anyways. Also keep in mind, if you open the back system up completely (replacing lines) itll take ALOT to get the brakes bleed and all the air out. I have a mini vacuum thingy that I use and it took about 20time times or more to get all the air out.

Anyways, youve got your work cut out for ya. have fun. :D
 
where did you get those filters ? Mine are routed to nearly the same place and one of the stock caps has gone MIA and I like yours.
 
What's the average price of stainless lines? Would it be best to wait till after I run a lift? My goal for 09 is a 4" lift with everything redone right..

Your breather setup is awesome! Thanks for the idea, I think that's how I will go.. though what filters are you running?
 
The filters were bought at discount auto parts (now advanced auto). they are cheap and you can see in the pic, im using brass fittings to connect the hose and the filter.

If you know your going with 4" lift , go ahead and get the Stainless steel lines for that type of lift and get that out of the way. I got my lines from Summit, jus search. Youll get 2 front lines and 1 back line.
 
I replaced the rear main seal today :D Still have to put the oil pan back on and then of course a new filter(K&N Gold this time around) and oil, but the hard work is done! Started at 4:00 and ended up finishing up around 8:00.. installing the rear main seal itself and then putting the bearing cap and oil pump back in took all of 40 minutes.

Worst part was IMHO removing the oil pan. For some reason all the bolts were 7/16 except for 4, one of those 4 was 1/2" and the other 3 where 12mm, took me a while to figure that out :eek1: Glad that the Felpro one piece kit comes with bolts..

My rear main seal looked to be the original, and trying to remove the upper part with a punch resulted in it simply disintegrating. I was pretty upset at this figuring it'd probably mean pulling the engine(and I'm not quite ready to do that yet!). After rummaging around in my grandpa's tool box I found a broken knife and ground it down to fit perfecting with the seal.. it flexed enough to get the seal out so I could grab it with pliers :D

Overall.. so far it has been very rewarding. Nothing like working on MY junk :haha:Learning is half the fun, though sometimes it is frustrating without good guidance on the spot.
 
I don't think I have ever torn into a Chevy small block that didn't have two different sized bolt heads on the oil pan. Even my 88 Astro with the original engine had two different sized heads. I believe they were 10mm for most of them, with like 4 that were 12mm.

They make a very simple seal puller for instances like that, it is a small hook shaped device, best 5 bucks I ever spent.
 
loafer said:
Are you going to put the hand throttle on the shifter? I've seen that done before and seams to work well.
Click to expand...

Yep, on the shifter :D

My carb came today :woot:Going to put it in tomorrow.. they were fast! No pics as I can't find my camera :mad:

I do have a question about the dipstick.. mine has never given a consistent reading and I think the reason is it is too long. When I dropped the pan I noticed the dipstick was hitting the oil pump screen causing it to deflect. Is that correct? I know the dipstick is not for my Blazer, at 5 quarts it says it's overfilled :rolleyes: I thought about trimming it and then after filling it up with oil checking it and then remarking the dipstick...
 
Okay.. I'm having a hard time figuring out how the electric choke on my carb hooks up... the connector is one big prong, and of course the auto parts store didn't know anything about it :crazy:

So how is the choke wired up on the carb? I assume it is a stock electric choke...

This is what the connector looks like:

33-3f.jpg


Also, as far as running an inline fuel filter.. do I put a filter inside the q-jet still, or just run the the fuel line straight into it?
 
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Okay, I got my choke hooked up and working.. using a temporary plug till my OEM connector comes in.

The carb is in and the truck runs AWESOME compared to before. Very smooth, the exhaust doesn't stink and it idles very good. I believe it needs to be timed as it diesels a little bit when you turn the key off, didn't do that before but the old Edelbrock had a pretty bad vacuum leak..

The bad news is it leaks, pretty bad at the upper gasket right above the fuel filter :mad: Hopefully they'll cover it.. if not I have a friend that knows these things fairly well. Sure is frustrating though :(
 
Well I spent today chasing down the remainder of my oil leaks.. replaced the valve cover gaskets seemed to do the trick. I sanded the chrome off where they contact the gasket and hopefully that'll help keep it from leaking.

The carburetor is still a problem :mad: I checked the bolts holding it onto the manifold, they are both are torqued to 10ft lbs(from the Doug Roe book), so it must be something to do with the carburetor as it came :crazy:
 
The carb to intake bolts aren't what should be used to keep the three carb pieces together, you can pull it, and verify that the screws on the underside are snug, and of course all the ones across the top.

You can destroy the carb by overtightening these, so obviously you just want to make sure they are torqued correctly, if you've got an in/lb wrench and the Roe book has the numbers, use that.
 
dyeager535 said:
The carb to intake bolts aren't what should be used to keep the three carb pieces together, you can pull it, and verify that the screws on the underside are snug, and of course all the ones across the top.

You can destroy the carb by overtightening these, so obviously you just want to make sure they are torqued correctly, if you've got an in/lb wrench and the Roe book has the numbers, use that.
Click to expand...

You are talking about the screws on the top of the carb being over torqued? I haven't taken the air horn off or even touched the screws... waiting to here back from I5-Auto before I tear into it:doah: From my reading and searching I think the possibilities are the air horn is warped, float level needs adjusting, or the screws going into the air horn were tightened too much. Another possibility(again from my reading, I don't know if this could be the case) is that the front mounting bolts could've been tightened to much.. but I did put them the way my book said.

The Doug Roe book said to torque the 4 mounting bolts to 10-14 Ft Lbs each, was that too much?
 
Well, there are at least two screws on the underside of the carb as well, but what I'm saying is that they may be LOOSE, (any of the screws) but in checking, you don't want to overtighten. I've seen a few that when the carb has been assembled, the gaskets compress enough in a couple of days so that the screws are a bit loose.

IME when you overtighten the air horn screws the secondaries especially start to bind up. Worst carb I bought for parts you could visually see the casting was bent at every screw hole.

Did you use an in-lb wrench for the 4 mounting bolts? If you didn't, I'd be surprised if they weren't overtight, most ft-lb wrenches I wouldn't trust under 20 ft-lbs, if not more.
 
It was a ft lbs wrench.. put the bolts in and then snugged them with the wrench. I think the wrench is okay.. it is a snap-on rated down to 5 ft-lbs, though I guess I can't be too sure at it's accuracy since it was found in a ditch(seriously).

I'll pop the carb off tomorrow and check those screws.. but I don't have an in-lbs wrench.
 
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