Not much happening to the K5 for a while but I got the passenger's side knuckle back from cross over steering machining at ORD the other day and it looks great!
Before blasting, paint and machining
All set and ready after ORD magic and my cleaning
So, these flat knuckles actually came off of the Dana 44 that used to be in
@ZooMad75 75 K5. I never really noticed the differences between early D44 verses the later ones until I had two on the floor laying side by side. None of this is new news to many of you that have played with a lot of Dana 44's but it was intriguing to see the differences
First off is the tube diameter. The earlier D44’s had 2.75 O.D. axle tubes. I learned this the hard way as I ordered some of those fancy new outer axle seals from ORD and took the measurements off this axle instead of the one I was building and they arrived too small.
Later D44’s have a 3” O.D. tube
Second, the shimmy damper mounted near the left front wheel with the damper attaching to the tie rod right smack in the middle. No wonder these early tie rods bent so easy.
Later D44’s, 10 bolts and D60’s have the shimmy damper mounted in the middle of the axle housing tube with the attachment to the tie rod at the left wheel end
Lastly, the spindle on the earlier D44’ used a small inner bearing (right) whereas the later D44’s had a larger inner bearing
Not related to Rob’s early axle but something else I’ve found an some other D44’s are oddball hubs with 4 tab at the hub base where the wheel mates. The D44 that came out of my dad’s old wrecker had one of these on one side and the D44 that I am building now that I got from
@Capt Ron had one on one side. I don’t recognize these 4 tab hubs ever being factory on a GM 8 lugger. Not sure if these are aftermarket, Ford or Dodge, or ??? None the less, I’m using a pair of matching ones like on the left.
That’s probably going to be it for a while on K5 as I have another project I need to knock out on my Father in-law’s 1993
454 SuperSportside. I did a 4.3L to Gen VI 7.4L (w/Vortec heads) swap about 7 years ago running a period correct TBI on a carbureted intake with a TBI adapter plate. I runs decent enough but the TBI ecm prom was never programmed quite right were it runs pretty rich and it just doesn’t have the gonads it should. The fact the intake ports and head ports do not match probably doesn't help either. Then about 6 years ago I swapped out the NV3500 manual and dropped in an automatic running on a TCI EZ-TCU. That TCI thing is a huge POS and so unreliable it isn’t funny so I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone and swap it over the SPFI running on a 96-00 black box controller that would also handle the electronic transmission functions and throw that TCI
in the trash
The rig. My FIL has owned it since it was about 9 months old
As the 4-fidy-fo stands today…
To the L29 Sequential Port Fuel injection. The biggest hassle will be adding the 4x reluctor wheel to the crankshaft and dropping the fuel tank to replace the low pressure TBI fuel pump with the later high pressure pump. Should be fun and keep me busy over Christmas break. I have tons of brand new GM bits and pieces coming in from Workhorse Parts for it (New L29 TB, injectors, sensors, 4x reluctor wheel, timing cover, etc. and then a Vortec 454 harness coming from Howell. Pretty much the only used part that will be used is the actual L29 intake
