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When buying other people's problems goes wrong

PORTnPOLISH83

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Dec 10, 2014
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Location
Northern IL
Hello everyone, thisnis.y first real post on this forum but I've been lurking here a while. I was raised die hard Chevy so I've browsed through some.of the good info on here before.

Anyways,
I'm one of those guys that lives off of buying "crap" from other people and driving the wheels off it. My last Toyota beater gave up on me and the hard to find parts forced me to scrap yard it. 400 bucks and it toted me around a year and hauled about 5 cords of wood this summer. Since the Toyota was gone my initial action is to cruise craigslist and see if I can find any deals on square bodies. Low and behold I found a decent looking 83 k5 for 800 bones! After some wheeling and dealing I ended up getting it for 600 and all I had to do was out a fuel pump on.
A night in the garage and the fuel pump.was on and I got.to hear her roar for the first time and she wasn't a bad runner. After driving it a week I found more and more wrong. Most stuff wasn't anything for me to worry about because I'm a very competent mechanic and fabricator. But today after solving many of the small issues and evaluating my game plan for the Kore serious issues like rotted floors and stuff I decided to fix the non working license plate light.....and boy that turned into a mess. After following the wires and discovering what looks like 3 different rewire jobs and the current one being very hot and melty and burnt I reliazed they had hacked the wiring over and over to the point in was frustrated trying.to.make sense of the excess of wires and the ignorance of the work.
So now I'm kicking my self thinking the carburetor wasy biggest issue (hack job vucuum lines). But I know in the end how good of vehicles they are and they are worth the time.

Highlight of my finds
(Entire rear lighting system was being powered by 1 unfused 18 gauge wire)
(They burnt one set of wiring I found up doing the same thing as mentioned above)
(All the vacumm lines were cut and blocked, all vacuum systems were being ran off multiples Ts being ran by one single port.

Also the carburetor secondaries are not functioning.
 
You and I have a lot in common,as far as vehicles...:rolleyes:

I think you'll be happy with your "new" truck once you iron out all the major issues...in your area I bet there is still some salvage yards with trucks the same vintage as yours (square body),and you should be able to snag the tail lamp harness from the cab back fairly easily--just about all the 73-87's have the same rear harness...the rearmost portion of it is where most get butchered for trailer wiring,etc,so look there first...a Suburban or K% and pickup are all very similar,so that gives you more potential donors to pick from..

I find it easier to just unplug a factory wiring harness and plug another in,rather than screw around splicing wires all day,that'll corrode in no time and give more trouble later on..but if your willing to mess with wires,you can just buy a roll of 4 conductor trailer wire and it'll match your color codes,you'll have to use 4 prong trailer plugs in place of the oem ones..

The carb secondaries might not be working due to a few things--if its a stock Q-jet,it could be the linkage to the rear butterflies was missing or removed,fell off,or the choke pull off that lets the air valve open isn't working,or someone tightened up the adjustment on it a bit too tight--if you think they are not opening just because you cant see the air valve open when you floor it sitting still,be aware it wont open with zero load on the engine,or very slightly--its not until the vacuum drops off the air valve will open more..
 
Haha yeah I love the truck. Just a little overwhelmed by the amount of problems is all.
I found the choke was holding the secondaries shut. Got it all squared away now. But they are opening too soon now and bogging.
 
I've got the lights "jerry rigged" for now. I actually enjoys re wiring stuff. I found a schematic so I'm going to wire it accordingly. I'm going to put the stock plugs on too since I found them in the truck. Then at some point I'll go through the fuse box and re do that. I already have future plans to build a replacement engine and add a manual transmission. I've also always wanted to put a 4 door cab on a blazer frame.
 
Choke is supposed to hold 2ndaries closed initially until choke opens. Choke break diaphragm also slows down them down.
 
Yeah I know, the choke was actually holding them shut all the time due to improper adjustment. Everything is adjusted properly now.
 

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