Project 85--(long post)mine had basic stuff done (air cleaner,headers, duals w/glass packs) and a cam swap when I got it. Not sure why they did a cam swap and left the stock intake and carb, slightly faster than a turd then. These next changes were over a span of years, kind of a history of what I've done. A carb and intake swap was a noticable improvement, first changes I made to it. Lost weight and went to 2.5" exhaust with Flowmasters next, again with some small gains. Shift kit to the TH350. Around this time I had a multi angle valve job done on the 882 heads with a little bowl and runner work, machine shopped talked me out of larger valves, milled the heads, still not a lot of c.r.. Re ringed it at this time, no $ for a complete and correct rebuild. Ran quite a bit better. Changed to roller rockers sometime in this period. Maybe this time frame switched to all Mallory ignition- Unilite, coil,Hyfire IVc box. Added 2.5" dropped spindles, 1 coil cut, rear flip, and a locker to the 3.08 peg leg rear. This was a big swing in how the truck behaved, next had to rig up some traction bars to combat the wheelhop. Stayed like this for a long time.
At 320K it got a slight rod knock on start up, caused by a Holley 650 that I switched to that was dumping the bowls after shut down, I didn't catch it and washed out the bearings- just swapped cranks/bearings here. Added the 700R4. Found out 3.08 gear, o.d. and 285 70 15s aren't a good match for this engine- lugs in o.d.. The truck is pretty quick at this point, for what it is, the deep 1st gear in the 700 helped a lot to get it moving. Swapped this engine for a little hotter engine I had in the garage-the spare for the Chevelle. The truck engine stays on the engine stand ready the go in as a spare- it spent some time in the Chevelle and another short stint in the truck. Current engine has 9.7:1 c.r. with hyper pistons (yuk), Comp 282S cam, vortec heads, high rise single plane, the rest pretty much the same, exhaust grew to 3". Not the same truck at all at this point. Changed to 3.73 gears, has 275 60 15s now as the 285 70s are impossible to find. Woke it up even more.
Brings us to what I'm doing now. Just finished up installing ladder bars, having to re do exhaust, going to 3" x pipe and rearranging how the exaust was located. Added new headers-still sorting out spark plug issues. Have to modify/fab trans crossmember to run the exhaust the way I want it. X pipe and crossmember are what I'm doing now. Pulling the 700 to finish the mods on it and go through it next. After that, the big block that's in the Chevelle is going in the truck after I get its replacement done (started).
This post is too long already-there's been a lot of other work I've had to do to it over the years, a lot due to me wrecking it twice. Bunch of stuff I did to the tranny- it would take forever to go through all that stuff. All this work and the truck is still a heap of junk.
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