Stout 85K5

[imiceman44]

A 73 with minimal rust is definitely rare! Pretty sure they build 73 to 75s out of prerusted sheetmetal

Thicker gauge metal would definitely be wiser on the inners that are basically flat. Not much to them

Even more rare where it was on the coast of the Mediterranean.
No idea where it lived until I bought it and went on the hill.
The rust was from bad door seals that got rust in that Grove and rusted through.
But the rocker boxes where still solid.
I made an opening in the rear portion to be able to spray the inside to keep it clean

 

[Chevy305]

Raptor liner came out nice.

I wonder if the early style nv4500 shifter feels any different than the later bolt on shift tower.

 

[Larry]

Raptor liner came out nice.

I wonder if the early style nv4500 shifter feels any different than the later bolt on shift tower.

They feel totally different. My other junks have the later 4500s and shift like sports cars compared to the early ones. The early ones aren't quite as crude as SM465s but they're a feeling of their own

 

[max 02]

I was always hoping for the straight 6 but the BB is so much better than a boring 350.
Amazing work as usual!
Best update I’ve seen here in a long time.
Thanks!

 

[Larry]

I was always hoping for the straight 6 but the BB is so much better than a boring 350.
Amazing work as usual!
Best update I’ve seen here in a long time.
Thanks!

Me too! Because an old 292 straight six topped with some sort of EFI, would have been the biggest anti-SBC or LS finger in the air thing if there ever was one. I'd been the last guy to the trail head but would have pulled everyone out when they got stuck. I'm still sad that didn't materialize. I'm not going to give up on a straight 6 project though. I have a NV3500 2wd trans that would be neat behind a 250 or 292 in some 2wd 67-72 or squarebody runabout rig someday. 250s pop up from time to time but 292s are almost extinct. I think it would be so cool to score a Brazilian port injected intake for one then have a custom cam ground up, tune it and go like hell in a non-sheaple fashion. It would probably pull like a hoss, have the HP power of a modern 1.5L banger and get the fuel economy of a poorly tuned carburated big block but it would be different and cool as hell. Would definitely have more room under the hood for other stuff like compressors, toolboxes and whatnot

 

[max 02]

Me too! Because an old 292 straight six topped with some sort of EFI, would have been the biggest anti-SBC or LS finger in the air thing if there ever was one. I'd been the last guy to the trail head but would have pulled everyone out when they got stuck. I'm still sad that didn't materialize. I'm not going to give up on a straight 6 project though. I have a NV3500 2wd trans that would be neat behind a 250 or 292 in some 2wd 67-72 or squarebody runabout rig someday. 250s pop up from time to time but 292s are almost extinct. I think it would be so cool to score a Brazilian port injected intake for one then have a custom cam ground up, tune it and go like hell in a non-sheaple fashion. It would probably pull like a hoss, have the HP power of a modern 1.5L banger and get the fuel economy of a poorly tuned carburated big block but it would be different and cool as hell. Would definitely have more room under the hood for other stuff like compressors, toolboxes and whatnot

Lol! I like your thinking and encourage it!

 

[folkenheath]

How much are those Brazilian port injected intakes worth? Are they iron or aluminum?

You could also just use a modern throttle body high pressure injector setup if the intake will bolt one on, but the MPFI would be slightly more efficient of course.

And if you get a modern cam and modern pistons it can help. Although the cylinder head is very important for efficiency too.

I like your current setup. Is this NV4500 the go to manual trans for a truck with a big block in it?

 

[sweetk30]

How much are those Brazilian port injected intakes worth? Are they iron or aluminum?

You could also just use a modern throttle body high pressure injector setup if the intake will bolt one on, but the MPFI would be slightly more efficient of course.

And if you get a modern cam and modern pistons it can help. Although the cylinder head is very important for efficiency too.

I like your current setup. Is this NV4500 the go to manual trans for a truck with a big block in it?

Buddy had a customer come in his shop with a old jeep 6 and running bad on 1 & 6 . He found the efi bolt on kit to replace carb was not letting it flow right . If long motor shod be port injection or some split flow intake to help feed end cylinders.

 

[Truckman4life]

@max 02 and @Larry you two shitheads got me wanting to do an inline 6 truck now for a DD. Perhaps I can do my '72 with one. How terrible is the 250 compared to a 292? A quick search shows one local to me out of a '79 and another in Grand Junction out of an '84. I'm nowhere near needing one now but it's got me thinking.

 

[nvrenuf]

All this TBI 292 talk... There's a build coming, another member is gathering parts now. Hopefully, he'll be far enough along to start a build thread this spring/summer. #stronglikebull

 

[Larry]

How much are those Brazilian port injected intakes worth? Are they iron or aluminum?

You could also just use a modern throttle body high pressure injector setup if the intake will bolt one on, but the MPFI would be slightly more efficient of course.

And if you get a modern cam and modern pistons it can help. Although the cylinder head is very important for efficiency too.

I like your current setup. Is this NV4500 the go to manual trans for a truck with a big block in it?

I don’t know what they would cost today. 5 or 6 years ago when the 292 was the plan, I was recruiting the help of a Portuguese speaking lady that used to baby sit my daughter when she was small. She helped decipher an ad on Brazil's version of eBay. She exchanged a note with them and I want to say the exchange rate brought it somewhere around $300 for the intake, distributor and some other small things but they weren’t interested in shipping Internationally so who knows what shipping would have been. Soon after I found my 292 was a dud so the MPFI intake dream died too

Here is a Brazilian 250 with MPFI in a GMT400 truck. I’m my understanding they ran these up until around 2000 model year. So damn cool! I still want one! This intake would work on a 292

As far as a NV4500 behind a BBC being the go to…..that's all personal preference but its my go to. I really like how the combo works because I tend to lug my engines around on the trail at low RPMs. That’s how to squeeze fuel economy out of them. On the other hand, I feel automatics are better suited for high revving LS engines that pretty much don’t make any usable torque until its spun well above 2,500 RPMs. A sports car engine like an LS engine doesn't pair well to a dump truck transmission

@max 02 and @Larry you two shitheads got me wanting to do an inline 6 truck now for a DD. Perhaps I can do my '72 with one. How terrible is the 250 compared to a 292? A quick search shows one local to me out of a '79 and another in Grand Junction out of an '84. I'm nowhere near needing one now but it's got me thinking.

Well, a 250 is much easier to come by as they were in many cars and trucks and they’re just more of them around. The 292 was an option in everything from ½ ton pickups to Medium Duty trucks. UPS ran thousands of them in their old package cars through the 70's and 80's. The big difference between the two is the 292 is tall deck that produces gobs more low end torque. 250s were more runners and could rev higher. The later 250s from around 1978 on were kinda turds as the intake was integrated into the exhaust manifold and had a habit of cracking. The head could be changed for an earlier 250 to run a more traditional intake and exhaust manifold. A 250 would probably be pretty disappointing in a 4x4. There are a few informative Facebook groups related to Chevrolet 6's. They would know much more about them than I would.

Here is the easy way to spot the difference between a 292 and 250. Identifying a 250 from older smaller 6’s has its own tricks to spotting the difference. I was mainly only interested in 292s

The 292 fuel pump is in the middle of the engine and the engine mount is more forward on the passenger’s side

Where the 250 fuel pump is towards the front of the engine and the engine mount is in the middle even with the drivers side engine mount

There is a guy on eBay that makes really awesome accessory brackets for the 6 poppers too. Expensive, but at least someone makes them because brackets, especially Power Steering and A/C are VERY hard to find

 

[Wes Harden]

Nice update on a great build. I did the double cross member and hd skid on 77 but my plate is a little different then yours.


and no provision for the upper frame brackets on my front.

Thanks for the Spectra warning, finally enough motivation to order efi tank for mine. I got the tbi pump assembly too.

Is there no other option for a distributor, the gm offering really is crap. We were changing them all all the time. Would 3 or 4 in stock, for @ 75 units that used them.

 

[Larry]

Nice update on a great build. I did the double cross member and hd skid on 77 but my plate is a little different then yours.

View attachment 466137
and no provision for the upper frame brackets on my front.

Thanks for the Spectra warning, finally enough motivation to order efi tank for mine. I got the tbi pump assembly too.

Is there no other option for a distributor, the gm offering really is crap. We were changing them all all the time. Would 3 or 4 in stock, for @ 75 units that used them.

Actually, the skid plate on this one was only a 4 bolt version too. I added a few more inches of meat on both ends to turn it into an 8 bolt plate like my K10 has.

You can see in this picture it started as a 4 bolt plate

Yeah, sad deal about Spectra. I got to be friends with one of Spectra’s Sales Directors that I met at a work event. He jumped from Spectra to REDARC USA right after the Rona because Spectra wasn’t doing well financially and he was worried about stability. The good news is now I have a connection at REDARC!

 

[Larry]

We’re almost getting caught up to the present-day status of the rig but here is the project that kept me sane and busy over Christmas break when the girls were home for 2 weeks.

Since the interior was coming together nicely, I had to figure out what I was going to do for a dash pad. I thought about buying a new one for my Suburban since it has some cracking then using the Suburban’s dash pad in the K5, but it just seems like all the aftermarket interior pieces like door panels and dash pads are just ill fitting overpriced garbage. Just like the replacement body panes.

I had seen a YouTube video where people were reviving old square body dashes using various methods. Some used Bondo, some used expandable foam….some covered them with vinyl afterwards fixing the cracks and others used some kind of texture and painted them. I ran across one video where a dude used Fiberglass Jelly Resin on the dash and it looked good and he claims it held up well. Soooo, a new Arts and Crafts project hatched.

I mentioned before that I bought a 1985 C20 straight off my buddy’s dad’s ranch for $200 in 2018. This truck is donating its front clip and doors to the K5 as well as tons of other little bits like A/C box items, etc. After the 292 was pronounced dead, the 350 from this truck was slated to go into the K5 unit the L29 came onto the scene. Same with the 9.5” semi floater out of this truck too. I went through it then decided to use a D60 rear instead so I sold the 9.5”. Luckily, I saved its horrible dash mat, which was perfect for an experiment like this.

The donor ranch truck I bought in 2018

After it was picked clean

The dash was ugly but we’ve all definitely seen worse

Following the Youtubers recipe, I cut out all the cracks. The speaker vents were the worst of it

Then I had an old nylon cutting board laying around the garage and cut it up and epoxied chunks of it in to fill the old speaker holes

Had to tape the cutting boards down tightly and let it sit for about 24 hours for the epoxy to cure

So far so good. Test fitment muy bueno

Then the fun began!

This was about the time Rob showed up for New Year’s Eve and New Years Day snow run so I covered him in fiberglass dust while we were shouting bullshit at each other over the loud buzzing of the sander . He thought I was crazy

 

[folkenheath]

I don’t know what they would cost today. 5 or 6 years ago when the 292 was the plan, I was recruiting the help of a Portuguese speaking lady that used to baby sit my daughter when she was small. She helped decipher an ad on Brazil's version of eBay. She exchanged a note with them and I want to say the exchange rate brought it somewhere around $300 for the intake, distributor and some other small things but they weren’t interested in shipping Internationally so who knows what shipping would have been. Soon after I found my 292 was a dud so the MPFI intake dream died too

Here is a Brazilian 250 with MPFI in a GMT400 truck. I’m my understanding they ran these up until around 2000 model year. So damn cool! I still want one! This intake would work on a 292


As far as a NV4500 behind a BBC being the go to…..that's all personal preference but its my go to. I really like how the combo works because I tend to lug my engines around on the trail at low RPMs. That’s how to squeeze fuel economy out of them. On the other hand, I feel automatics are better suited for high revving LS engines that pretty much don’t make any usable torque until its spun well above 2,500 RPMs. A sports car engine like an LS engine doesn't pair well to a dump truck transmission

Interesting, I've been to Brazil maybe 10 times over the years, you don't see many of those GMT400 trucks there, they have mostly tiny compact trucks. I do see them occasionally, along with some old Ford full size trucks that have a different body than we see here at home, again, not very often.

....an old 292 straight six topped with some sort of EFI, would have been the biggest anti-SBC or LS finger in the air thing if there ever was one. I'd been the last guy to the trail head but would have pulled everyone out when they got stuck. I'm still sad that didn't materialize.

Do you mainly like the different aspect of the 292 I6? I don't see how it would be any more reliable on the trail than an old SBC?

If you have an aluminum intake for a 292 we could add injector bungs to it, not that difficult, but the labor to machine the intake and fuel rail, and weld the bungs and mounts in is definitely more than $300 if you can find an original intake like that. It does look unique, no question about it.

 

[Larry]

This was the final product just before I started laying the Raptor Liner on it. Did I mention how much I am starting to like Raptor Liner?!! You're going to notice a theme here with a lot of Raptor usage throughout this project

It actually came out really nice!!!

The base model door panels I acquired somewhere along the line got coated too

I am not a fan of coalbin black interiors, so it got coated with 60BN Medium Cognac interior paint. This is the interior color of my Suburban and Rob’s K5. The main reason I chose this color is because Rob gave me his old Cognac seat belts out of his K5 when he did the Silverado seat with integrated seat belts. Aftermarket seat belts are about as sucktastic as everything else aftermarket so his OEM seatbelts solidified the interior color choice . I thought about doing it in Charcoal since I have a lot of that paint laying around from the K10s interior refresh a few years ago, but again....the seat belts sealed the deal

I’m pretty stoked how it turned out. Who knows, it may start crumbling to pieces in short order but it was worth a try and $40 worth of Jelly Resin. I would not want this melted cottage cheese texture on the dash of my K10 or Suburban or anything nice, but it fits the rugged and crude theme of this K5 just fine.

The new Taiwanesium A/C vents finally arrived last weekend. To my surprise, these LMC things looked pretty decent. They should because they sure the hell aren’t cheap! The dash trim is LMC also although the Scottsdale emblem and instrument cluster bezel are OEM survivor pieces from various other rigs. Actually, the cluster bezel is off the 85 C20 Silverado. I just peeled the aluminum plating off if it

This is the paint. Its not cheap! One can cost almost as much as the Jelly Resin and the left over Raptor Liner I used on the dash…..and I used 2 cans and need many more for the rest of the interior

Freshened up the door strikers too

 

[Larry]

Interesting, I've been to Brazil maybe 10 times over the years, you don't see many of those GMT400 trucks there, they have mostly tiny compact trucks. I do see them occasionally, along with some old Ford full size trucks that have a different body than we see here at home, again, not very often.



Do you mainly like the different aspect of the 292 I6? I don't see how it would be any more reliable on the trail than an old SBC?

If you have an aluminum intake for a 292 we could add injector bungs to it, not that difficult, but the labor to machine the intake and fuel rail, and weld the bungs and mounts in is definitely more than $300 if you can find an original intake like that. It does look unique, no question about it.

Maybe it was only the rich people that bought fullsizes but if you dig deep into the interwebs, the EFI 250 straight 6s were mainly in Brazil. Neighboring countries probably got them too. You’re right, most everyone drives cheap little rigs and mini El Camino trucklets like the Chevrolet Montana, VW and Fiat scooters there which are kinda of neat too in their own way.

Of course, I like the “different” aspect of the 292. A straight 6 is something completely different from the everyday sheaple’s SBC or LS and a 292 torque is right up there is a BBC, it just doesn’t have an ounce of HP. I said that right from the beginning

I also like the idea of using a genuine GM EFI system on the engine for the freakout factor as well, even if it had to come from the dark side of the moon. The sensors and injectors are off the shelf GM bits. Only the intake and throttle body looked unique to that engine. I despise any aftermarket engine or transmission control systems is also why I was looking at the Brazilian intake . Keeping your GM all GM is where the reliability comes in. None of it matters now because I don’t have a 6 banger and may never get another.

As far as reliability, UPS ran 292s for over 2 decades where they were well known to go several hundred thousand miles before anything major happened. They were just rough on fuel and eventually got replaced with 4.3Ls then those got replaced with Workhorse 4.8, 6.0 and 8.1s. There was an old GM engineer Rob and I worked with at Workhorse. Ole Winston could sell a 292 to a Cummins diehard with his stories and old GM documents he would bring in for show and tell. He actually worked on a project with UPS in the 80s where they did a seed test on a “Stratospherically Charged” 292 (that’s the name GM gave the engine). It was kind of like the new 6.7L Cummins B series Fuel Agnostic engines that are coming out in 2026 that can run on gasoline, diesel, propane or CNG. The difference was the Stratospherically Charged 292 engine itself could run on anything at anytime like an old military engine whereas the new Cummins Agnostic Engines are unique engines specially built to run on whatever the fuel choice is. Its not like you can run them on Gas one fillup then diesel the next. The 292 you could….. In the end, the 292 Stratospherically Charged engine didn’t catch on because of cost but the reason they used the 292 to begin with was because of its anvil-like reputation.

 

[Larry]

This posts bring us up to present day as of yesterday.

Yesterday I got chairs mocked in and are they comfy!

The passengers side needs more work though. The adjustor tracks are roached and I mounted the seat onto tracks too far one direction that drives it into console where the arm rest won’t come down or has any room for the seat belt.

I found those seats on Marketplace a few years ago when a couple dikes bought an International Forestry Service fire crew truck like the one below at a GSA action and planned to turn it into a vanlife rig and tour the cuntry. They had like 12 to 16 of these seats available for 50 bux a piece. I got there first and got the pick of the litter. The two I grabbed were in the best shape except the arm rests need recovered. I cannot figure how to get the pesky arm rests off so I guess I’ll have to carry the entire seats to the upholstery shop and let them figure it out later this summer. I’ll probably run the same Cabela’s Trailgear seatcovers on them that are on the K10 and Suburban.

I forgot to mention earlier that I do not intend to just leave the Raptor Line’d floor bare. Bed lining alone isn’t nearly enough to soak up noise and heat transfer. The plan is to use some thick jute and another ACC rubber floor mat like I did in the K10 when it got Rhino Lined in 2010 during the NV4500 swap. They also offer their mats in various colors so I plan to get a saddle colored one to help brighten up the floor. The K10 is pretty dark

The next plans are to start working on the trans tunnel box so the triple stick shifter can be mounted, bring in the C20 doors and convert them from power to manual, prep and paint the insides and install new channels and gaskets. Its almost bonus payout time of year at work so around March the expensive orders will be placed with Howell and ORD for the L29 harness and ORD’s high steer/crossover goodies, have a front driveshaft built and I need to buy the big CUCV radiator fan shroud goodies and a radiator. Hillbilly Wizard has that stuff in stock. It should be drivable by summer if all goes well….and by driveable, I mean drive in and out of the garage under its own power in FWD as I don’t plan on having a rear shaft made until the interior buildout and rear bumper is complete to see where the rear suspension is going to end up.

It probably won’t be road ready for quite a while longer, but I would like to take it to Blazer Bash 2025 . I definitely plan to complete the body paint job by the end of the summer. I just need those warm wind free mornings when the sun comes up at 5 am because I’ll be painting it outside in the driveway in the open air like I did the Suburban I’m too cheap to pay someone thousands of dollars for a paint job on this rig only for it to get trashed with desert pinstriping

 

[tarussell]

All this TBI 292 talk... There's a build coming, another member is gathering parts now. Hopefully, he'll be far enough along to start a build thread this spring/summer. #stronglikebull

Man that’s a great idea !

Someone on here should build a square with a TBI 292 with a high-lift more torque mak’n roller cam and higher compression pistons and dressed out with all the brackets , pulleys and components for P/S and A/C axial compressor and a modified HEI dist. set up - that would be really cool and a lot of work finding all the parts - but I’d be willing to bet that even a die hard big block fan would do it and that it would be worth it!

BTW, very nice build !

 

[Wes Harden]

And how close are you to full filling that build @tarussell