The Wife's Dually - '82 K30 dually

[The Butcher]

Thanks. I might just go with the 1" body lift like skunked did since you said you had plenty of clearance with a 2". So, when you put a body lift on do you get rid of the factory body bushings, or do you stack them on top of the lift pucks? I assume the lift pucks replace the body bushings, but just wanted to be sure.

 

[Justin V]

The body lift goes in between the body bushings and the body. It is highly recommended to replace the body bushings at the same time. Several vendors have polyurethane ones and I think you can get rubber ones from LMC and likely other places.

 

[Justin V]

In this pic you can see the 1 inch puck sandwiched between the body bushings (mine are the poly ones) and the core support

 

[The Butcher]

Thanks for the pic. That helps.

 

[The Butcher]

Next time you have the covers off take note of the head numbers.

PO confirmed they are the stock GM oval port heads.

 

[skunked]

PO confirmed they are the stock GM oval port heads.

one of the better OEM heads.

 

[sweetk30]

781 / 049 .................

pull a valve cover and check . them be the 2 bbc large oval port heads to have .

 

[The Butcher]

If I get time today I will pull them and take a look. I'm trying to get a ton of stuff done before going out of town tomorrow for the rest of the week, so not sure I'll be able to get to it.

 

[The Butcher]

Has anyone used Eastwood Hi-Temp Satin Black coating on headers? These nice new headers already show some spot rust on them just from sitting exposed to the elements. I'd like to sandblast them and then put another coat of good paint on them so they don't end up looking all rusted out in short order. Anyone suggestions on paint for them would be appreciated.

 

[Truckman4life]

Don't mess with paint, just get them done with a nice hi-temp coating. Just my 2 cents.

 

[78K30]

I used VHT header paint on my crap tastic summit headers and it's holding up well despite my not following the instructions on the can. I blasted the headers in the cabinet in work then laid a few coats down in pretty quick succession. The can says each coat has to fully cure before adding the next but I haven't had any issues. They were in service about a year before the 350 gave up.

 

[The Butcher]

Did you have any break through rust on them after that one year of service? Doing ceramic or something would be nice, but it would be much cheaper for me to blast them and throw some paint on them if it will keep the rust spots off.

 

[The Butcher]

Small updates...

I went ahead and picked up the originally dually I was going to use as the body swap candidate (the cab anyway) last weekend. My wife knew I was going to go look at a tailgate and bed, but I ended up passing on those. On the way back I told her I did get some parts even though I passed on the bed and tailgate. She laughed when I rolled up with this thing strapped to the trailer. I said "It's parts, they are just all bolted together..."

There are some trim pieces on this one I will likely use such as the dash pad which only has one minor crack on the speaker grill part, the headliner (the board at least), the glove box, and the instrument cluster bezel. This truck ended up being a Camper Special (2wd with the SM465), and some genius had made his own bump stops for the overload springs using chunks of a tree... The nice thing is the 454 runs (it drove onto the trailer under it's own power, but wouldn't stay running), so that might get sold at a later date if I don't keep the rest of this truck and get it back to running condition.

 

[The Butcher]

Managed to get the bed off my 4wd dually. Talk about dirty. 30 years of mud and rust. Managed to loosen 3 of the bolts with a wrench. Torched the rest of them off since they were just spinning in place. The bed floor was so rusty you had to sweep the crusted rust off just to locate the bolt head. After removing the bed I could see the back of the cab and the original paint job. Looks like my camper special was the same red/white color combo as the 2wd I just picked up. Kind of funny. I also yanked the trans tunnel cover plate. Looks to be in decent shape, and should clean up nicely with a little blast and paint. I think I'll be able to cut the rest of the tunnel out of this one and graft it onto the floor of the 2wd auto cab to clear the 205.

 

[The Butcher]

I'm hoping to have time on Saturday to make a bigger dent in tearing down my 4wd dually so I can get the frame blasted and painted. This stuff always takes more time than you think it is going to...

 

[The Butcher]

@skunked what did you do for the mounting holes for your trans tunnel cover? Did you use a tap and die and make new threads to bolt the cover onto, or did you tack a nut to the underside of the sheet metal for the bolts to thread in? Is the curve of the 2wd floor at the mounting edge of the tunnel approximately the same as the tunnel cover for the 4wd?

 

[skunked]

I didn't modify my cab tunnel to accept a removeable tunnel. Those pics were from another build I found online. I would probably weld some nuts or use nut serts if I did though.

 

[max 02]

Oh man that's funny right there! I do like the fact that it looks like it worked pretty good!

 

[F.S.F.W]

Oh man that's funny right there! I do like the fact that it looks like it worked pretty good!

I bet it rides like a lumber wagon!

 

[The Butcher]

I think it was actually being used as a lumber wagon. Thus the "organic" bump stops.

Made some good progress yesterday. Took way longer than it should have since there was so much rust, but it all came apart eventually. The good thing is that the frame is in pretty decent shape considering how badly the body was rusted. It was filthy job too! I still need to yank the drivetrain and the fuel tanks, but I'm hoping I'll have time to get the frame ready for blast and paint this week. The first couple of pics are reposts, but I thought the progression from assembled to disassembled was kind of cool.