Today I...

[roadking77]

Hit nearly 60 deg. was gonna take the bike out for a  little spin, it wouldn't start Not getting gas for some reason. So, I figured I would work on the t/a a bit, tried to adjust the pass window, not much luck there either , I did get my truck cleaned though

[DeCaff2007]

Today I... went to work for 7 hours that FLEW by.  Dealing with idiots is highly frustrating but makes the time go by fast.  Then, I came home and immediately got back to work on a friends 95 Dodge Dakota.  Biggest POS ever made.  All I'm doing is replacing upper and lower ball joints.  Yeah.......  Don't rent tools from AZ.  They are JUNK!  It was easier to remove the entire lower control arm than it is to try to press the ball joint in with the "special" tool.

I fought with that lower ball joint for 3 hours with that goddamned tool.  Then decided to remove the LCA (which involved removing the front diff cover, removing the axle from the diff ((to make clearance for ONE EFFING BOLT)), and 2 separate trips to AZ for parts) and had the frikken ball joint pressed in with a socket and sledge hammer in 10 mins 

Then it came time to put the diff cover back on.  I noticed both axle seals were leaking, as well as the rubber seal to fill the diff fluid.  Oil pan gasket is leaking in several places, drain plug is welded into the pan  (Good luck with next oil change!!), and omg the RUST.

This truck is yet another nail in the coffin of why I will never again buy a Dodge vehicle.

[SpankinElroy]

I rocked out at the AC/DC concert...they totally tore it up. Angus was without question the workhorse of the bunch, grinding that axe like I've never seen before. A true testament to rock n' roll...those bastards are the sh!t I say

[Raptor]

Today I... went to work for 7 hours that FLEW by.  Dealing with idiots is highly frustrating but makes the time go by fast.  Then, I came home and immediately got back to work on a friends 95 Dodge Dakota.  Biggest POS ever made.  All I'm doing is replacing upper and lower ball joints.  Yeah.......  Don't rent tools from AZ.  They are JUNK!  It was easier to remove the entire lower control arm than it is to try to press the ball joint in with the "special" tool.

I fought with that lower ball joint for 3 hours with that goddamned tool.  Then decided to remove the LCA (which involved removing the front diff cover, removing the axle from the diff ((to make clearance for ONE EFFING BOLT)), and 2 separate trips to AZ for parts) and had the frikken ball joint pressed in with a socket and sledge hammer in 10 mins 

Then it came time to put the diff cover back on.  I noticed both axle seals were leaking, as well as the rubber seal to fill the diff fluid.  Oil pan gasket is leaking in several places, drain plug is welded into the pan  (Good luck with next oil change!!), and omg the RUST.

This truck is yet another nail in the coffin of why I will never again buy a Dodge vehicle.

Not sure if judging an entire brand with a bad experience from a 21 year old worn out truck is a good idea

[DeCaff2007]

Today I... went to work for 7 hours that FLEW by.  Dealing with idiots is highly frustrating but makes the time go by fast.  Then, I came home and immediately got back to work on a friends 95 Dodge Dakota.  Biggest POS ever made.  All I'm doing is replacing upper and lower ball joints.  Yeah.......  Don't rent tools from AZ.  They are JUNK!  It was easier to remove the entire lower control arm than it is to try to press the ball joint in with the "special" tool.

I fought with that lower ball joint for 3 hours with that goddamned tool.  Then decided to remove the LCA (which involved removing the front diff cover, removing the axle from the diff ((to make clearance for ONE EFFING BOLT)), and 2 separate trips to AZ for parts) and had the frikken ball joint pressed in with a socket and sledge hammer in 10 mins 

Then it came time to put the diff cover back on.  I noticed both axle seals were leaking, as well as the rubber seal to fill the diff fluid.  Oil pan gasket is leaking in several places, drain plug is welded into the pan  (Good luck with next oil change!!), and omg the RUST.

This truck is yet another nail in the coffin of why I will never again buy a Dodge vehicle.

Not sure if judging an entire brand with a bad experience from a 21 year old worn out truck is a good idea

Ok. let me further elaborate.

When I was just a youngin' , the second vehicles I ever owned in my life was an 87 Dodge Shadow (this was 1998`ish).  Literally a leaky, rusty, POS!  115K miles of turbocharged crappyness.  But I was young and dumb.  That also gave me a bad taste for Dodge right off the bat. 

...but I didn't learn my lesson.  A year or so later I'm at a dealership... looking at a new~ish Plymouth K car.  I pop the hood.  Oil everywhere.  No reading on dipstick.  Entire undercarriage is rusted to Hell.  JUNK.

Fast forward 10 years or so,  a buddy of mine decides to drive his 95 neon into the side of a mountain in a drunken stupor.  He comes to me to fix it.  Other than the obvious physical damage, the thing was a POS rustbucket. 

Same buddy's sister has an 01 Neon.  Another POS rustbucket.  She unintentionally smashes a pothole and destroys the right front rim/tire.  Guess who gets a phone call.  It takes all the strength of two fully grown men (her hubby and I) to break the lug nuts loose.  This is WITH a breaker bar.  3 lugs come off, 2 SNAP the studs off.  This leads to hub/axle removal.  With all that rust lack of maintenance in general, this turns into an all day project. 

Now should I go into the things I've had to do to the womans 03 Jeep Liberty?  Nice vehicle in theory but it's slowly succumbing to rust.  Nah, it's actually still a POS.  Needs a heater core.  Huge job that requires special tools and evacuation of the AC system.  I'm avoiding that one for as long as possible.

Yet another buddy asks me to replace front axles and seals on a late 90's Jeep Cherokee.  After taking one look at the rust under there, I refuse to touch it.  His junk barely starts and needs a full exhaust to begin with.  JUNK.

Just three days ago...  a rusty, leaky 95 Dakota pulls into my garage.  Need I say more?

Oh LoL and here's the final nail in the coffin:  At AZ, if I'm not grabbing parts for junk imports (which don't really count, lol) or Fords, guess what make of vehicle comes in second:  Dodge/Jeep.

Convinced yet, Raptor?

[fb_rider]

Today I...Became an Eagle Scout.

Congratulations!  You should be very proud of yourself; that's quite an accomplishment.

X2! Good job 77 TA man

X3 very nice accomplishment!

[cal30_sniper]

I hacked up an old iron intake...




Pretty pleased with how it turned out. I might send it off to get powdercoated an aluminum color. I'm going to look at building an aluminum forge tomorrow so I can fill the heat crossover passages in my heads. Lowes, here I come!

I also got the rest of the odds and ends under the hood into epoxy primer. Headlight buckets and mounts, bumper mounting brackets, etc. I'm waiting on my patch panel and fender to valance bracket to come in, then I can finish up the fenders and get them in epoxy. After that, it's time to finally bring the shell out of storage and start stripping it down. Lots of solid work!

[TA6.6Liter]

Filled out the NATS and TIPP CITY forms to be mailed tomorrow.

[Casey]

Meh, most everyone is guilty of making a piece of crap at some point or another just some more than others.  My brother has the 5.9 Durango 4x4 with some 250,000 miles on it and outside of the faulty governor sensor locking out overdrive and 4H it's still in good shape.  His girlfriend has a 90's Jeep Cherokee with even more than that.  Any of the economy cars from the domestics until here recently are garbage, you can tell they really didn't care for making them at all.  Generally if it's RWD with a V8 most domestics are solid enough.  Generally any Japanese car made in Japan and not over here is good.  European cars are hit and miss, but most made in their homeland are good too.  Really the biggest factor is how it was maintained and treated.

Still no luck in finding a manual bird. 

[77 TA man]

Meh, most everyone is guilty of making a piece of crap at some point or another just some more than others.  My brother has the 5.9 Durango 4x4 with some 250,000 miles on it and outside of the faulty governor sensor locking out overdrive and 4H it's still in good shape.  His girlfriend has a 90's Jeep Cherokee with even more than that.  Any of the economy cars from the domestics until here recently are garbage, you can tell they really didn't care for making them at all.  Generally if it's RWD with a V8 most domestics are solid enough.  Generally any Japanese car made in Japan and not over here is good.  European cars are hit and miss, but most made in their homeland are good too.  Really the biggest factor is how it was maintained and treated.

Still no luck in finding a manual bird. 

Exactly, there are some out standing factory designs and there are some not so outstanding designs but most of it is how its driven and how its taken care of.

[hakitup]

I hacked up an old iron intake...




Pretty pleased with how it turned out. I might send it off to get powdercoated an aluminum color. I'm going to look at building an aluminum forge tomorrow so I can fill the heat crossover passages in my heads. Lowes, here I come!

I also got the rest of the odds and ends under the hood into epoxy primer. Headlight buckets and mounts, bumper mounting brackets, etc. I'm waiting on my patch panel and fender to valance bracket to come in, then I can finish up the fenders and get them in epoxy. After that, it's time to finally bring the shell out of storage and start stripping it down. Lots of solid work!

That looks great, I have wanted to do this too but have been a little hesitant.

Tom H

[cal30_sniper]

I hacked up an old iron intake...

That looks great, I have wanted to do this too but have been a little hesitant.

Tom H

Thanks, Tom! It was actually way easier than I expected. I used a 4 1/2" angle grinder with cutoff wheels and a grinding wheel. I also had to use a hacksaw in a few small areas that the grinder wouldn't fit, mainly finishing the first cuts through the flange at the bolt holes and the narrow bridge of metal between the thermostat and the front of the runners. It honestly took longer to vacuum up the metal shavings than it did to cut the thing apart.



Today I fired up my home built furnace that I'm using to melt the aluminum to fill the heat crossovers. I used a large metal pail and a 1 gallon metal paint bucket, with quickcrete in between and a 12" sink extension to hook the shop vac up so it blows air into the inner pail. Load it up with some charcoal brickets, hit the switch, and bring on the heat. I'm using an old fire extinguisher with the top sawed off as a cauldron, and a plier-style oil filter wrench to move it about. I melted about 10 beer cans today and got a few tablespoons of aluminum poured as a proof of concept. Next time I use it will be after I have the heads disassembled and the blockoffs built for the intake flange. I plan to bolt on the plates, turn the heads so the intake face is down, and fill from through the exhaust valve port until the melt is up near the valve guide. I'll use my die grinder to smooth out the bowl to match the end chambers. Gonna have to drink some more beers to increase my can supply between now and then. Finally, a good excuse.

[scarebird]

My smelter was more crude - a hole dug lined with bricks and an air nozzle hooked up to a piece of conduit.

Cam swap tonight started on the Lemans - back to a 2801.   Make a a nice cruiser as the TA will thrash it at the track.

[roadking77]

I'm mechanically challenged, I don't understand what you are doing with the intake.

[cal30_sniper]

I'm mechanically challenged, I don't understand what you are doing with the intake.

I'm filling the heat crossovers in the head, so I won't need the heat crossover on the bottom of the intake anymore. Saves a few pounds and my back trying to lift it off and on.

I also cut off the water crossover so I won't have problems with it leaking, can gasket match the intake, and will have a dry intake if I decide I want to pull it off. When I build the bigger cube engine, I'll be using aluminum heads, which don't have the heat crossover port anyways.

[Ford5of5]

I want to do this to an intake just because it looks cool.

Cal30, I notice that you cut through the center of the inboard holes. I see others do it that way too. Is there a reason for it? It just seems to me that it would make more sense to keep the entire bolt hole. I never tried this before, I'm just curious.

[cal30_sniper]

I want to do this to an intake just because it looks cool.

Cal30, I notice that you cut through the center of the inboard holes. I see others do it that way too. Is there a reason for it? It just seems to me that it would make more sense to keep the entire bolt hole. I never tried this before, I'm just curious.

Yep, I thought that was weird when I saw other people do it also, but there is a reason for it. If you look at the intake surface of factory iron heads, there are two holes between the heat crossover passage and the inner bolt holes. Those holes go through the intake surface and into the oil drainback area inside the head. In order to seal those holes up, you need to fabricate a metal plate between the inner holes where the heat crossover used to be, even if you've filled the crossover passages in the head. Edelbrock aluminum heads don't have those holes, so if you were planning to solely run the intake on aluminum heads, you could cut inside the bolt holes and keep the entire hole.

This modification is a pretty decent weight reduction. It went from pretty dang heavy, to about the same weight in hand as the entire aluminum Holley Street Dominator intake that I have with the crossovers still attached. Once I cut that aluminum water crossover off the HSD and use it, I'll save a bit more weight. Even though the crossover will add some weight on the vehicle, it will still be much easier to lift this intake in place. Not hard to do when the engine is on a stand, but it can be tough to get it done and all the bolt holes lined up when the engine is already in the car and you're leaning over between the fenders and hood.

[tajoe]

When I 1st saw your reworked intake Cal, I thought it was a RAIV, or 455HO manifold. I have a set of 191, (71 455HO heads), and some-one had done the blockoff to the crossover passage like you're doing. Never had it on the road tho.
 Not sure what your intent with that modification is, but if you drive it on the street, you may want to invest in a manual choke. Makes life "so" much more pleasant, when driving through the warm-up cycle.

[77 TA man]

Today I....
Started working on getting the early '77 shaker and the rear spoiler pieces sanded down to get prepped for white primer. I'm going to use some of my left over Royal Gloss Blue paint to paint engine call outs on the shaker with the use of a construction paper stencil. Definately not priority but doing what I can when I can...

[77 Pontiac]

I played around with my new hvlp spraygun today - never used one before so bit of steep learning curve, but youtube came in handy for getting started.. painted some suspension parts black with agricultural enemal paint, turned out quite nice - and should be way more durable than cheap rattlecan paint 

[cal30_sniper]

When I 1st saw your reworked intake Cal, I thought it was a RAIV, or 455HO manifold. I have a set of 191, (71 455HO heads), and some-one had done the blockoff to the crossover passage like you're doing. Never had it on the road tho.
 Not sure what your intent with that modification is, but if you drive it on the street, you may want to invest in a manual choke. Makes life "so" much more pleasant, when driving through the warm-up cycle.

Mainly just trying to lighten things up a bit, and I really wanted to fill the crossover in the heads. After having played with header design in college, I can't see how there wouldn't be a major impact on the exhaust scavenging by having two exhaust ports on each side of the head tied together and linked across. Whatever exhaust pulse you have going out headers would be dampened by all the interlinked passages between those 4 cylinders, much like running the old 3-tube headers. I'll be going Eddy heads when I build the larger cube motor later on, so I won't need the crossover with those either.

[77 TA man]

It was a mix of black paint and grey primer, I'm trying to get the black off and down to the factory white paint before going any further.

[Casey]

^Good times.  I was almost tempted to dremel out the back on mine so the scoop would be opened, but since no one had hacked into it already I couldn't in good conscious.

[77 TA man]

^Good times.  I was almost tempted to dremel out the back on mine so the scoop would be opened, but since no one had hacked into it already I couldn't in good conscious.

Not only has the scoop opening been butchered, it has also been repaired. Under the grey primer patch on it there is a fiberglass repair on it. Almost Nothing on my car hasnt been dickered with at some point by a previous owner. Although from what I've seen from the front wiring it is still untouched so thats good.

[Ford5of5]

Today I looked at a 2010 Silverado 2500 with long bed and 2wd. I can not believe how hard it is to find standard cab, long bed without 4x4. Everything seems to be crew cab and extended cabs these days. Any members own a 2500? What's the milage like? I never owned/needed anything bigger than a 1500/c-10/k-10 and I'm rather addicted to 6cyl these days. I like 16mpg compared to the 8 mpg that I use to get with my old v8 4x4's.

[roadking77]

t/a man, it looks like they filled in the drain hole. That may be the fiberglass patch you are seeing.

[79GoldnTan]

Have a 13 GMC 2500. 4x4  get around 12. On the highway around 14. Hook up the job trailer about 8. Not sure if two wheel is much better but you won't find a better truck than a Chevy 2500.

[77TAfromMO]

Today I committed to building a 455 for my 1977 TA. It may be a slower build as cash will be tighter than planned. Hoping to build it to about 600hp. Big dilemma is should I sell my 72cc E heads with round ports and invest in larger cc heads or just throw in some reverse dished Pistons ?

[77 TA man]

t/a man, it looks like they filled in the drain hole. That may be the fiberglass patch you are seeing.

. From 3 o clock to 6 o clock the whole outer edge is fibeglass. You can see the crack marks better on the bottom.  For my B-Day I got an aluminum intake and an Eldebrock carb, that should make the 400 run real nice. 

[Casey]

Thinking about giving in a buying a Mustang... *shivers*

[cal30_sniper]

Have a 13 GMC 2500. 4x4  get around 12. On the highway around 14. Hook up the job trailer about 8. Not sure if two wheel is much better but you won't find a better truck than a Chevy 2500.

I get the same mileage out of my 86 C20 Suburban (3/4 ton 2WD). Only difference being I get 10mpg towing around 9-10k lbs. 454, tri-ys, true duals, eddy intake, quadrajet, and ram air box, with a NV4500, 3.73s, and 265/70/17s on hummer H2 rims. Only thing better than a Chevy truck is an old Chevy truck!

[72projectbird]

I get the same mileage out of my 86 C20 Suburban (3/4 ton 2WD). Only difference being I get 10mpg towing around 9-10k lbs. 454, tri-ys, true duals, eddy intake, quadrajet, and ram air box, with a NV4500, 3.73s, and 265/70/17s on hummer H2 rims. Only thing better than a Chevy truck is an old Chevy truck!

Amen!

Here's my 73 I'm building up:

[cal30_sniper]

I get the same mileage out of my 86 C20 Suburban (3/4 ton 2WD). Only difference being I get 10mpg towing around 9-10k lbs. 454, tri-ys, true duals, eddy intake, quadrajet, and ram air box, with a NV4500, 3.73s, and 265/70/17s on hummer H2 rims. Only thing better than a Chevy truck is an old Chevy truck!

Amen!

Here's my 73 I'm building up:

The earlier squares are awesome. I'd love to do the round-eye conversion on mine someday.

Here's mine:

[gm muscle]

I think your Suburban looks great as it is.

[72projectbird]

The earlier squares are awesome. I'd love to do the round-eye conversion on mine someday.

Your burb looks great as it is!

I have a buddy with a 75 Burb and they do look really good as a round eye truck.

[Casey]

All I heard was 454 with a stick, that's one truck I wouldn't mind driving.  Then again my idea of an ideal truck is an El Camino.

[79GoldnTan]

Yes sir. All my trucks are work trucks and I keep them along time. This one only has 43k on it, one before that was 01 Chevy 8.1  Allison trans. 200k still ran great just getting crusty,one before that 88 Chevy 350 auto 275k never a problem  all my trucks haul ,tow,plow. Hopefully this will be my last new truck.will be looking for 67 to72 c10 to retire with.

[restoring81t/a]

Finished installing my PTFB solid body bushings. I stripped the passenger cage nut and had to remove the inner fender to access it and fix it.

[kali_74TA]

Today I looked at a listing for a 2001 TA...... Couple questions:

1. other then VIN, and possibly seeing car in person, any way to tell if car is 2001 or 1999 from just pictures?
2. what would it run for the below to fix/do and what is a decent tuneup consist of?
          - Muffler is loose and rattles
          - Could use a decent tune up

[Casey]

Really no difference in '99-02 models, '98 had a one year only computer but the sail panel doesn't start bubbling on its own either.  Muffler rattling should just be a hanger or the like, that or if it's been replaced and instead of welding it they used clamps they could need readjusted and tightened.  Tune-up generally consists of spark plugs, air filter, oil and filter, etc...  Fair warning, replacing the spark plugs on a fourth gen would drive a saint to cussing.