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Stomis' 94 Street Truck - Snail Trail

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Well narrowing the rear was a piece of cake :waytogo:

Did my math about 4 times before I cut anything. The first thing I did was trim my stock shafts down to get the cclip stubs off of them.



This allowed me to narrow the rear by 1" with the stock shafts. I probably could have narrowed it another 1/2" but I wanted to leave the shafts where they ended stock in the carrier. Basically the spline end of the shaft ends where the old cclip stub used to end. So I'll gain 1/2" of tire clearance on the fenders on each side.

I cut my housing ends. Used a hose clamp as a guide squared on the shaft and an angle grinder. I was looking for a big Hfreight pipe cutter but they were out.



Alignment bar in the rear



Jig the end up.



Nice chamfer for lots of penetration.



Welded on and finished.






Came out perfect. Looking forward to doing it again for someone else for some spare cash :D

Also finally got my Moser aluminum cover on. What a nice friggin cover...



If anyone wants some notes on how to polish a turd you can PM me :haha: I swear if I hadnt bought that posi for the 10 bolt this ****in truck would have a 9in in it by now.

 
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looks sweet. I love this stuff, doing the work yourself feels so much better in the end. Keep it up :thumb:
 
Thanks man. I do love doing **** myself. Like I said to my wife, I can spend the $200 to have someone narrow this or I can buy the tool, move on with my truck and make some money in the future.


I ordered my rear disks to the tune of $550 with shipping. 11in slotted and drilled rotors, GM metric parking brake calipers, pads, lines, and weld on brackets. Holy ****ing expensive... At least I dont have to deal with drum ****ing brakes anymore. Much hate for them.


I hit one minor snag which it appears Ive solved already. When I had my shafts cut I never had a seal surface or bearing stop machined into them. There was no seal surface simply because the original intent was to run self sealed bearings. And there was no stop because I was going to measure where to press the bearing onto and that was going to be that. But now that I have a stock conical bearing I need that seal surface since its larger than the shaft. Luckily enough it seems like I found a piece of chromoly on Mc Master that is magically the correct size w/o any machine work. Ive gotta measure to see if the OD is big enough but fingers crossed.
 
Rear is back in and hooked up. Bellhousing spacer is in. Old dowel pins out and new long ones in.

Waiting on brakes. My dad is taking a chunk of tube down to the machinist to make me seal spacers tomorrow...
 
This is probably a dumb question, but (from what I read) your only narrowing it by 1 inch? I may be reading it wrong haha I'm just wondering what u gain by doing that? Iv heard of people doing it for big racing slicks but don't they narrow it a lot more?
 
K5Titan83 said:
This is probably a dumb question, but (from what I read) your only narrowing it by 1 inch? I may be reading it wrong haha I'm just wondering what u gain by doing that? Iv heard of people doing it for big racing slicks but don't they narrow it a lot more?
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1in was all I could narrow it with the stock shafts. I didnt do it for the sake of narrowing it I did it to eliminate the c clips. The reason I took advantage of the 1in was simply because the wheels Im using off my old car are only 3.75 back spacing. The recommended 8in wheel backspacing for the truck is more like 4.25 or 4.5. So basically narrowing it the inch makes the 3.75in wheels the perfect size.
 
Stomis said:
1in was all I could narrow it with the stock shafts. I didnt do it for the sake of narrowing it I did it to eliminate the c clips. The reason I took advantage of the 1in was simply because the wheels Im using off my old car are only 3.75 back spacing. The recommended 8in wheel backspacing for the truck is more like 4.25 or 4.5. So basically narrowing it the inch makes the 3.75in wheels the perfect size.
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okay I gotcha, I just haven't heard of someone doing it other than for big slicks, so I was confused :D
 
Finally wrapping up the rear end dilemma. It disgusts me the price I spent having the stock shaft machined to fit what I need... $120 to have them cut for ford bearings, $120 for 2 seal surface bearing spacers, and now $200 to have the flanges and registers cut to fit the rear discs. Ouch my butt.

Heres the proper way to retain an axle in a semi floater :D




And the rear disks on after I bolted the shafts in. Idiots sent me two LEFT disks. Gonna have to call them and yell...




Hopefully tomorrow I'll get the parking brake hardware back on the calipers and get the brackets welded on, **** plumbed up and done!
 
Got her back on the road today. Ebrake isnt hooked up yet, I gotta change all my cables out. Theyre so stretched its ridiculous.

The good news is I have a truck again, bad news is I'll be pulling the trans in the not so far future to change the clutch. My master is maxed out and the clutch still wont fully disengage. That Hayes pressure plate must be ****ing huge. I'll be changing it out for a center force in a month or two. Its driveable but when you stick it in gear from a dead stop you can feel its just barely not disengaged. The center force is suppose to have the stock height on the fingers and they brag about fitment being just like stock so Im going to buy one for a 350/nv3500 truck.

I didnt take any pictures of the truck sitting on the wheels yet. All I can say is its a damn good thing I narrowed the rear a tiny bit...
 
Stomis said:
The good news is I have a truck again, bad news is I'll be pulling the trans in the not so far future to change the clutch. My master is maxed out and the clutch still wont fully disengage. That Hayes pressure plate must be ****ing huge. I'll be changing it out for a center force in a month or two. Its driveable but when you stick it in gear from a dead stop you can feel its just barely not disengaged. The center force is suppose to have the stock height on the fingers and they brag about fitment being just like stock so Im going to buy one for a 350/nv3500 truck.
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I had a similar issue with an 89 ifs truck I had years back. That first gear was always a fight to get into. It would roll slightly when you picked your foot off the brake unless it was on a hill. I could bleed and bleed and never really get that clutch right. The truck also had a hays clutch in it.

Every piece of the hydraulic linkage was made out of plastic. I lost the slave twice and tried replacing the master and the line but got nowhere. The slave had no bleeder screw, only an allen head insert. I had to make a bleeder screw for it that screwed into plastic threads. I vowed never to have a project with hydraulic linkage again. I have no idea what gm was thinking.
 
Richcz28 said:
I had a similar issue with an 89 ifs truck I had years back. That first gear was always a fight to get into. It would roll slightly when you picked your foot off the brake unless it was on a hill. I could bleed and bleed and never really get that clutch right. The truck also had a hays clutch in it.

Every piece of the hydraulic linkage was made out of plastic. I lost the slave twice and tried replacing the master and the line but got nowhere. The slave had no bleeder screw, only an allen head insert. I had to make a bleeder screw for it that screwed into plastic threads. I vowed never to have a project with hydraulic linkage again. I have no idea what gm was thinking.
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Well with the mighty vac and internal slave I have no problems bleeding. The clutch is simply way too tall, that or its defective but theres really no way to figure that one out... It looks like Im just gonna switch it to a decent LUK clutch. I had bought the Hayes anticipating keeping the small block and building it with more power in the future but Ive basically given up on that idea and am going back to my original plan of a turbo 5.3 later on.


In other news Im still not happy with how this truck sits. I put stock shackles on it last night to pick the back up about 1". It looks better but the damn front still needs to come the **** down. Im going to put DJM control arms in the front which will have 3" built in so thats 2" lower than how its sitting now. That will give me the same fender gap front and rear which is what I think will look best.

****ty picture of it sitting higher in the back last night.

 
Bowtie85 said:
I'm diggin the look, but yeah the front could be a bit lower
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definitely needs a little lower front. maybe drop spindles... they're getting cheaper all the time
 
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