Dru's 86 longbed project

[Dru]

Didnt want to start a build thread, cause I dunno how fast this will go, but here is my 86 that was gave to me by a longtime friend.

I was looking for a 62-63 longbed, but these 73-87 years mean more to me anyhow, as they were what was drove when I was younger.

Am the 4th owner, I know the original owner, but the second owner was a close family friend of mine since growing up, till he passed some years back, and a relation of my friend, who gave me the truck.

It had seen some years of being used hard, and put away wet, while in my friends possession, but it has some sentimental value to me, and Im going to try and get it close to its old glory.

Started out he gave me the truck about a week and a half or so ago, and it had a tired oil crust encapsulated 305 in it. Not the original also. I decided it needed more power, and found a 454 with all of the accessories from a 77 still attached, for sale on Ebay, bought the motor for fairly cheap, but had to drive around 850 miles to get it.

Stuck the 454 in to check it out, an it ran bad, turned out it had got hot, and wasted two exhaust valves, and had a flat cam. Pulled it back out, and rebuilt it real quick, all new bearings, freeze plugs, timing chain, mild cam, and a set of fresh heads. The motor was already .030 over, and no real ring ledge, so I just put a light hone on the cylinders, and some new rings.

Painted the engine all together, and even some of the rubber hoses to mimic an industrial mass/assembly line look, I have a twin cylinder Onan genset that was close to the same color, that I want to mount in the bed. Is a GM Detriot diesel color.

Plans are to either put a Muncie 4 speed, or a Super T-10 behind the big block soon, as Ive almost already blew up the weaky Turbo350 in a few days. Also hope to swap put the rear end to a posi unit soon, the 2.73 isnt helping the breaking things too.

Then lower it some, I dunno if I may just tuck it down on the big tires a little bit, or go with different tires on those rims, or new rims and tires. I didnt like the big tires at first, but they are growing on me, and I used to drive a truck that was close to the same wheels and tires, so I kinda like it in that respect. Its sitting on small block springs in the front still.

Paint/bodywork will come this summer, I've been riding a motorcycle year round for over 6 years, and this will be my first winter for quite sometime with something heated, so even though I'd love to start on this part, it would be much more prudent to wait till spring/summer.

The air cleaner is filthy, cause I had cleaned up a tall small block air cleaner that I was hoping to tuck under the hood, but I need to cut a modify the base plate, to tuck it down over the carb better. it was just late night by the time I got to that part, and was ready to drive it home, so the dirty skinny big block filter was used for now.