Ole blue, 1981 Chevy K10 restoring an old friend

[Sheepdawg58]

hey y'all... I guess I'm gonna dive right on in and start up this build thread. I've always loved building trucks, been around racing all my life and have built several trucks over the years. This truck has a special spot in my heart and i guess ill start its build with a story.

My dad and mom bought this truck brand new off the lot in 1980, and for the first few years it was just a second vehicle. Dad used it to go to deer camp or haul the boat fishing, he eventually put a 4 inch lift on it and 35 inch Gumbo Monster Mudders, and eventually went to 38.5 Gumbos when he started to run it at the local mud boggs. he won a few trophys in the mud bogs, and won a couple in the show and shine part too. I was just a little kid and i loved goin mud riding and hanging out with daddy.

My dad mom and brother after one of dads mud boggs where he got 2nd place.


Mom and Dad holding their first place trophys, dad for the mud bogg, mom for the show n shine


eventually dad started neglecting the truck, it became just an ole farm hand and was beat on and wasnt really taken very good care of, and just before i got old enough to drive dad parked it beside the shop and let the grass grow around it. When i turned 16 and got my first job my first paychecks went to a new set of tires, a new carb and a rebuilt trans for the truck, I pulled it out of the weeds and started driving it to school. The ole 350 dad had built was about wore out but it still sounded mean and would smoke the ole Q78-15 buckshots in a heartbeat, if it didnt break something hahaha.


eventually i started breaking it a lot, and i mean ALOT. I built a 383 for it and put a set of half tons out of a friends truck that had 5.13s in it cause i was sick of dealing with the 3.08s in the truck. Man oh man did that really change how the truck acted. it would dang near pull the left front up when i left off the line, and with the 383, built th350 and them 5.13s the 38.5 Gumbos i had would sure go through some mud. I eventually broke the frame in half at the rear shock mounts snatching a friends Z71 out of a field when he found out that 37 inch boggers are no match for a soft bottom. I tried to find another frame but couldnt find one in decent shape cheap enough so i ended up parting the truck out. I kept the body of the truck, and vowed that whenever i got my life back in order, and old enough to settle down and restore Ole Blue that I was gonna do it.

poser pic of me when i was in high school. 4 inch lift and 38.5 Gumbos on it.


Ole Blue bout to pull out a pulp wood truck that got stuck.


I have way more pics and im goin to put them on here (i like taking pics) but i dont know the picture limit per post so right now im gonna break this up till I stop being lazy and find out haha enjoy!!

[Sheepdawg58]

ok on with the story

Ole Blue and my dads 1982 Jeep Scrambler that we built together.


the last picture I have of Ole Blue before i parted it out years ago. we was enjoying a horseshoe mud race that day, and i ended up grenading the 12 bolt rear, stripped the pinion teeth off drag racing a built F250 with a 7.3... I had him beat by 2 truck lengths in the 300ft dirt drag. i guess the rear end broke when i came across the finish line. anyways the week before is when i broke the frame, and i had patched it together so i could keep driving it till i found a frame, but when i blew out the rear end i decided it was time to park the truck.


ok, fast forward 8 years. I am in a much better place in life, getting married soon, and really had been wanting to put Ole Blue together for a while. I talked to my fiancé about it and decided it was time to try to get Ole Blue together so i could drive it when we left the church at our wedding. This truck was a part of so many of my firsts and has been a big part of my life, good and bad, so i wanted to get it back running so i could eventually restore it.

my cousin basically has a chevy boneyard behind his house, and had a 87 chevy K10 shortbed that he had parted out and was just sitting there, we talked it out and made up a deal, only problem was, me and my fiancé moved from Mississippi to Minnesota. I couldn't be there to get the truck together enough to haul up here so my cousin told me he would make a rollin chassis out of it so we could load it on a trailer and haul it up here. he had a 6 inch lift laying around and some ole R85-15 buckshots with ralley wheels and other things like that to help me put the truck together. he got it together in a couple weeks and my dad loaded all the parts i had for the truck in boxes, loaded the 396 i bought from another cousin of mine, plus the th350-208 and hauled it up here easter weekend.

how it looked when my cuz got it from my parents house, still makes me sad to see it apart like this.


i love this pic, Ole blue next to another truck that meant alot to me, my 89 yota rock crawler i built and eventually sold to my cousin. 2 bad trucks from different eras of my life sitting side by side, oh if only them two trucks could talk haha


as soon as the truck got up here i started to work on it. getting the parts out of the boxes and trying to figure out what i still had, what i needed to replace, and where everything went... it was crazy. I had a limited budget and very limited time to get this truck done before the wedding, and if one major component wasnt working it would end my dream of driving Ole Blue at the wedding. stay tuned, it gets interesting hahaha

[Sheepdawg58]

first thing i did when i got it in the shop and all the spare parts out of it was snatch the front cap off. I wanted to be able to paint the frame and everything, plus be able to more easily stuff the BBC into the truck. I have to apologize because when I started this i didn't take alot of pics because i was still debating joining a forum and doing another full scale build thread. I'm gonna hit the high points for now and now that I've found this board and if yall like it ill keep building and posting pics.

front cap snatched off and ready to be cleaned up and painted.


I used VHT roll bar and chassis spray paint, I've used it for a while and really think it holds up well. plus it sure shines well haha


My lovely fiancé enjoying herself spray painting the underside of Ole Blue. she had a blast helping me put this ole beast together.


here is what y'all been waiting on. this is the 396 that is gonna find its home in Ole Blue. but first i gotta clean it up and make sure its not gonna puke oil everywhere.

[zieg85]

Great story!  Glad the Mrs. to be, shares your hobby... Mine don't.

[Sheepdawg58]

ok, since basically all i did was replace the oil pan and oil pump, clean and paint the motor I'm not going to bore you with the pics of that. but here is the finished shot of the motor just before i got ready to put it in the truck


I ended up pulling the trans back out of the truck and bolting it to the engine before i stuck both into the truck together. there was a bolt broke off in the bell housing that i had to drill out and heli-coil the threads, so i used the bellhousing as a guide for the drill and all. it worked like a champ and i was able to get all the bell housing bolts to work right. My fiancé was under the truck helping to line the tailshaft up with the tcase as me and her dad slid the engine home.


got the 396 sitting in its home, fit like a glove, the distributor is pretty close to the firewall but it has a stupid ring around the coil that sticks out some, im gonna replace the distributor soon and will have a different coil on top.


i replaced all the gauges, the frame came from a 87 EFI truck so instead of even fooling with the wiring, and since eventually i want to run an after market speedo and tach in the big gauge holes, i hooked up an autometer gauge. i had to replace one of the fuel tanks for now since both was rotted out. i bypassed the tank switch stuff and just am running off one 16 gallon tank for now. i think the gauges look pretty good for a good "temporary" setup.

[Sheepdawg58]

it took me a little while to get everything buttoned up. i ran rubber trans lines, cause me and steel lines dont get along. plus the lines i ordered from classic industries was so poorly bent that there was no way they was gonna line up. I live about an hour from where the shop is where my truck sits so i could only work on it during the weekends. finally i got everything hooked up and took it on its first test drive, i had NO lights hooked up, no hood but man it sure felt great to hear that 396 thunder through them open headers as i rode up and down the gravel road near the shop.

snapped this pic as we was heading to our celebration dinner right after i took my first drive in Ole Blue in over 8 years. man i was so exited to see the truck able to move under its own power.


I spent a little time trying to tune up my demon 750 and get the engine running right. but with these 36 inch tall tires and 3.08 gears it was hopeless. I got a second set of rims that came up here with the truck and a set of 33s to put on there so i was waiting to get a chance to swap them out, so i flushed the radiator, cleaned the truck out and was making final touches when this happened.

uh oh... that looks really bad....



ha actually it wasnt that bad. the freeze plug on the left front side of the motor got a hole in it, i guess when i did the radiator flush there was a weak spot in the freeze plug and it found it. it had me freaked out there for a minute but i figured out that i could put a block heater into that freeze plug hole, so i was happy after that.

this is the block heater that goes into the hole where the bad freeze plug was. I've personally never used one before in my life since I'm from Mississippi haha. so this was a new experience for me.


not really a great pic but this is the block heater put into its place. no leaks, ive yet to test it out to see if it actually works though...


stay tuned more to come haha

[Sheepdawg58]

ok with that scare out of the way, and the truck finally running ok and doing what its supposed to i decided it was time to put some exhaust on this truck. the uncapped headers is fun for a lil while but they end up getting very annoying after a while haha.

this is always a very scary sight for me. watching as someone else works on my truck.


this is the exhaust i ended up with. ran 2.5 inch pipe with 1 chamber flowmasters and turn downs, the guy ran the exhaust a little longer than i wanted but instead of arguing with him i just left it alone, eventualy i wanna shorten the system up just a little bit to get the exhaust farther from the rear axle so its not blowing down on it as much.


after i got the exhaust done it was time to tackle the lights. the wiring harness on this truck is in bad shape. it has been hacked together, caught on fire, patched, and hacked up some more, then after that it sat for 8 years. I was pretty nervous as i started hooking the lights up but they all basically went together just fine. I'm  not sure why but someone removed the little bracket that touches the brake light switch to turn the brake lights off, so i gotta make me a little bracket to get them working right. other than that the truck was coming together fairly quickly.


I got a ton of work done on the truck in a weekend. i put the hood on, put on new mirrors, swapped tires, and even replaced both wheel bearings and both axle shaft ujoints after finding that the right front tire was about to fall off when i swapped tires. the truck is bent up, and the hood is crooked. its not as awesome as i want it to be but man i cant believe its actually together and looks like a truck again. I'm blown away by it.

[bake74]

Great story!  Glad the Mrs. to be, shares your hobby... Mine don't.

     Agreed, very cool story.  And Zieg, don't feel bad, my wife will help only when I really need her to and she does not like it.

[Sheepdawg58]

well since i finally got the truck together i decided it was time to wash it. I was actually nervous to wash it cause i was afraid of jynxing it and something else breaking haha. but seriously i snatched the seat out and washed the truck inside and out. its so nice to have bed liner on the floorboard, but since the truck is retired from hard mud riding im thinkin about putting carpet back in over the bed liner.

how do you clean your cab out??? haha i use a scrub brush and water hose....


the ole truck actually still cleans up pretty well... it sits a little tall on the 33s. but I really don't care right now. its still in the "build process" and will be just fine for now. I'm eventually gonna regear the axles and stuff and then ill run bigger tires. yes it has a gray fender on it, thats what happens when you hit a cow haha


and that about does it for now. so far ive taken the truck on a couple trips, even went about 40 miles in it around the country goofing off with my fiancé, the truck didnt break or have any problems so now its time to get tag, insurance and get it on the road again... just in time for the wedding, which is coming up in about 30 days woohooo

[Sheepdawg58]

ha thanks y'all. I'm a very lucky man. I absolutely enjoy being able to go out and work on my truck and have her come out and want to help. she runs combines and tractors and all that kinda stuff too. so its awesome for me. i will keep up on the build and ill even start doing step by step DIY pieces to each part i build up on the truck... hope yall enjoy and i hope to hear from y'all... anyone else have a story like this?

[Tonka]

Thank you so much for sharing this truck and it's amazing story. I love vintage old school lifted trucks- steel wagon spoke wheels, gumbo's/buckshots/groundhawgs That whole thing is what I fell in love with as a kid. I'd have been drooling as a child and I still am. Now putting a 396 in it.. Woo!!! Now this is gonna be the best thing ever. Thanks again for posting.

[cvbear]

Thanks for sharing.  Congratulations on your upcoming marriage.  Your Fiance' sounds like a great lady.

[Engineer]

You probably won't like that 396. The one I had wouldn't quit burning my back tires off.

[Sheepdawg58]

Lol yeah it's not very powerful... Just a basic 396 with 454 heads and a big cam... I can't wait to rebuild it the right way... I am excited to drive it every chance I get haha

[DnStClr]

I am excited to drive it every chance I get haha

A good story about . Say, does your dad say it's your truck, or that it's HIS truck now that ya got it on the road again?