Chevy S10 - $2017 Challenge and beyond

What year range Cherokee steering shaft works for that conversion, mav? Mine is sloppy as heck .... and I think the steering box and various linkage joints are ok, so guessing that leaves the rag joint as the culprit. I know Flaming River has a replacment u-joint for the rag joint, but it is $$.

In reply to einy:

84-94 Jeep Cherokees are supposed to be pretty much a direct replacement. Later Cherokees and Grand Cherokees are supposed to work with a little cutting.

One thing to note, I disassembled the steering shaft and oiled it a bit so it had a better chance of collapsing in case of an accident (and also to put the plastic guard for the rag joint onto it). If you do that, be careful not to lose any of the plastic tabs. If they fall out and you don't put them back in when you are reassembling, there will be some play.

Not the most productive weekend, but still a little was done. Saturday, I gathered up the old battery, condenser, evaporator, and radiator from the S10, and took them to scrapper. Scrap is still way down, I netted a total of $8.50. I also managed to tidy up the garage a bit. I have a bad habit of letting tools get scattered way too quickly, and it doesn't help that they don't all fit in my toolbox.

Today, first thing I did was put up a piece of pegboard over my workbench, which should help the scattered tool issue, and maybe allow me to use my workbench for more than tool and part storage:

I cleaned up the heater box a bit, in order to paint it a bit later, then set to removing the stock exhaust, since I'm guessing the y-pipe is not going to match up with the V8's exhaust manifolds. I'm not entirely sure of what sorcery it was, but it only took some PB blaster and a few bolts required an impact wrench, but all of this came out without any cutting:

I think the exhaust clamps can still be reused once the threads are chased. I never want to buy a project car from Ohio again.

At this point, the garage had heated up enough to paint, so I hit the heater box. Its not the best job in the world, but it looks better than it did, and as I keep reminding myself, I'm building this truck for me, not for the concours judges.

In between coats of paint, I decided to occupy myself with removing the cowl on the truck. I was greeted with a ton of dirt and crud packed into it.

I didn't want to vacuum it up while the paint was drying, so that'll have to wait til later. I'm amazed, though, all that stuff packed into a car up north would have caused a bunch of rust holes into the cab, but this one seems solid. Score another point for southern cars.

Update on the rear spring saga. 6 days after their last tracking update, I sent Amazon an email about the order. It appears the original springs were lost in transit, so they resent the order yesterday. One out of TN, shipped via FedEx, and one out of PA, shipped by UPS. The FedEx shipment just arrived. The UPS order is supposed to be here tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

Edit: Oh yeah, any tri-state GRMers know of a good place to sell catalytic converters? Years ago, a place out in Goshen, OH gave pretty good prices, but I don't remember who it was. Will have to track them down if there are no places closer to town.

No idea, mav, but Goshen is pretty small. Can't be too hard to find !!

eastsidemav wrote: Update on the rear spring saga. 6 days after their last tracking update, I sent Amazon an email about the order. It appears the original springs were lost in transit, so they resent the order yesterday. One out of TN, shipped via FedEx, and one out of PA, shipped by UPS. The FedEx shipment just arrived. The UPS order is supposed to be here tomorrow. Fingers crossed. Edit: Oh yeah, any tri-state GRMers know of a good place to sell catalytic converters? Years ago, a place out in Goshen, OH gave pretty good prices, but I don't remember who it was. Will have to track them down if there are no places closer to town.

Let me know what you find out about selling the converter- I've got the original one from the Pat sitting around that I've not figured out what to do with yet.

I sold the Roadmaster cats on eBay for $76 + shipping for the pair. Search for your model in "recently sold" listings to get an estimate of value.

I've taken a few to Can Dew Recycling down in Covington.

Anxiously awaiting the UPS truck, the rear spring is out for delivery!

BTW - did a googling and Phipps is the place in Goshen. I'll probably take the truck's cat out there or to Can-Dew once I pull the bracket off it, and have time to spare when they are open.

Thanks for reminding me I had a few more dollars to recoup in the challenge budget by selling the cats off the Lincoln. I really appreciate the help.

In reply to Dusterbd13:

It didn't use the same h-pipe setup as the mustang, did it? Years ago, I think I sold fox mustang H-pipe cats for $25 a piece. Usually could buy a stock H-pipe for less than $100 dollars, so with 4 cats on it, you could make an easy profit. I should have been buying up every cheap one I found back then.

The leaf spring has arrived!

Sometimes I really berkeleying hate the "resourcefulness" that the limited challenge budget requires.

I spent a good chunk of yesterday attempting to work on the passenger front suspension (and running out to parts stores to borrow tools multiple times), because I'm planning on replacing the upper control arms and spindles, and I need to temporarily pull the spring in order to get one of the motor mount plates installed. So far, I've pulled the brake caliper, disconnected the sway bar end link, and loosened the castle nuts on the lower control arm and the tie rod end. And made myself very sore.

The rest of the time has been spent compressing (and uncompressing) the spring, and more importantly, trying to pop the spindle off the lower control arm without damaging the ball joint. I've attempted several methods, and nothing has been successful yet. If it weren't for the challenge budget limitations, I'd just hit it with the pickle fork, but, that would destroy the ball joint, meaning I'd need to press in a new one. That is an annoying job, so I'd spend money on good quality ball joints, so it doesn't have to be done again soon. And if I'm going to remove the control arm, I should probably replace the bushings, since they are pretty worn. But, it's false economy to buy just new control arm bushings, so it'd be better to just buy a full poly bushing set for the front end, seeing as all them are probably somewhat sketchy by now, and the engine is out, making them (relatively) easy to replace. But, new, good quality ball joints and a bushing kit will put my budget more at risk. At that point, berkeley it, might was well say never mind to the challenge, screw the 305 in the fireturd, find a donor with a good 6.0L LS motor, and toss that in, so I'm not doing two engine swaps in this truck. Or sell it all and put a downpayment on a used C6.

Oh, and the steering box appears to have started leaking, I probably screwed it up somehow switching out the steering shafts. Now, I have to take the budget hit for the manual steering box (and run the v-belt setup), rebuild the current one, or hope the steering box in the fireturd will be okay - and if I do that, probably have to swap pitman arms and hope I don't screw something up doing that.

Weird - I thought I posted an update, but its not on here. Took a lot of work, but I was able to get the right front suspension removed, and set the motor plates in place:

They don't line up with the provided hardware, so after cleaning up, I ran out to Lowes to pick up some more stuff. I'm thinking of replacing the lower 7/16" bolts with some 3/8" bolts. I suspect if I keep it all grade 8 it should be fine. I'll find out tomorrow. If the weather is as nice as predicted, I'll also grind the driver's side motor mount to fit the motor plate properly, so it'll clear the steering shaft.

Been slowly making progress. Since the last update, wae stopped over, and the two of us were able to get the motor mount plates pretty much aligned, hopefully. A piece of advice for others doing the swap - if you are not making any changes to your front suspension at the same time, just go ahead and cut some holes in the passenger side of the engine crossmember.

I did also swap out the upper control arms and spindles with tubular arms and lowering spindles. I have pictures of that, but if you've been following pimpm3's build at all, it's pretty similar to what he's already done.

The power steering box: why not depower it? Pump ALL the fluid out, loop the lines. Ive been debating just that with the Cherokee box in our challenge car. The stock wore out depowered box feels just like a manual one now that all the fluid is out.

In reply to Dusterbd13:

I've actually got a manual steering box I could swap with if I wanted to. The main reason against it was to save some budget room, and not have to rig up an extra idler pulley if I stuck with a serpentine belt. I was originally hoping to go with manual steering, but lately, I seem to be a bit more injury prone, so power steering might not be a bad thing. On the other hand, since I'll be running a 305 TBI, ditching accessories will probably be one of the most effective ways to make more power

I was supposedly going to be selling the 4.3 today, and that fell through, which I think is the third or fourth time this has happened. I did sell the catalytic converter, though, and put another $51 back in my budget. Last weekend, I sold some mudflaps that were in the Firebird when I got it, so I am up to a smidge over $100 sold off on the S10, and $5 sold off on the Firebird.

In reply to eastsidemav:

CL sellers and buyers can definitely suck at times...

Yeah, not a CL fan right now. I'm half tempted to buy a quick release linkage, hang the 4.3 over the Fireturd's hatch, and film it being dropped, then upload it to youtube to see how many views I can get.

For a little catching up, here's the front passenger suspension, after the drop spindle and the new upper control arm:

Camber and toe is now seriously messed up, but it seems like it'd be wise to wait until the engine is in to do any alignment work. It is bad enough, though, that the truck doesn't want to roll on its own. I put it on a set of rollers to move it around the garage. I'll also probably go back and do some brake work before the challenge.

Here's a look at the mounts temporarily bolted in. We spent a considerable amount of time trying to get them lined up, so it should pay off when we drop the engine in.

Next, it was time to tackle the rear suspension. Ride height is fine for a truck, but way too high for autocrossing (and more important to me, it needs to be lower to look good).

The tape measure slipped a bit, so the measurement is a bit off, but it should give you an idea of the fender gap.

Pulling the rear springs was fairly straightforward, although tiring, even with an impact wrench. A lot of PB Blaster was used. I started on the driver side, and did alright until I hit the front spring bolt.

There is nowhere near enough room to pull the bolt out, due to the gas tank. The only option is to drop the gas tank, or cut the bolt. I chose to cut the bolt, and burned through multiple sawzall blades. At least that means GM used some pretty good hardware. The best reason I can figure for them doing it this way was to have the bolt head on the gas tank side, to reduce the chance of the tank getting punctured in an accident. I'm taking a chance, and putting the bolt back on the "wrong" way.

Comparison of the original spring vs. the lowering spring:

Passenger side spring installed:

Other than being a lot of physical effort (a lift would have made this a ton easier), it wasn't the most difficult job. There are three suggestions I have for anyone doing this job in their garage. First, if you do it one spring at a time like I did, loosen the u-bolts on the opposing spring a tad, just to make it easier to adjust the axle, and get the pad lined up correctly on the spring. Second, use a small floor jack underneath the shock to lift and position the mounting plate. It's a lot easier than trying to compress the shock by hand. Third, wait until you have both springs in to torque everything to spec.

I am a little concerned about the amount of room the shackle has to move, but there is some weight in the bed right now, so it should be alright once the bed is empty.

In the end, got a few inches dropped, and it looks a ton better sitting that low.

Now, I just need to get that blasted 4.3 sold, so there's room to pull the fireturd's engine and stash it until it's ready to go in the truck.

Actually I would have figured they installed the bolt in that direction so it was captive and if for some reason the nut came off that it wouldn't go flying off the truck and leave the suspension seriously compromised...

Ashyukun wrote: Actually I would have figured they installed the bolt in that direction so it was captive and if for some reason the nut came off that it wouldn't go flying off the truck and leave the suspension seriously compromised...

Except the other five bolts on the springs and shackles have no such restrictions. They had enough room to come all the way out. As I understand, it's fairly common for these bolts to become rusted to the leaf spring bushings, and be impossible to remove without cutting. I'm guessing with this being a southern truck, I got lucky.

Oh, there were a couple more reminders that this truck came from Florida. It's been warmer than usual for the last several days. As I was moving wheels out of the way, saw some movement out of the corner of my eye. Another lizard appears to have come out of hibernation. I brushed it out of the garage into the lawn with a broom. If it's lucky, it'll find someplace safe to survive, but more likely, it'll be a snack for one of the feral cats in the neighborhood. Secondly, as before, every time I used the impact wrench or a hammer, sand seemed to come out of every crevice in the truck. Beginning to think I could build a beach in my yard if I saved it all...

Oh yeah, think I need to step back from the project for a few days. I had a nightmare last night that the upper ball joints were loose, even though they were new and I properly torqued them.

The 4.3 engine is sold! Got $75 dollars for it. There's probably not much more budget to recover from the S10, except maybe a scrap run once the truck is finished, so any more sell offs will have to come from the fireturd. If we get the engine pulled on March 4, I'll get parts up for sale right after then.

In preparation for the fireturd's engine pulling tomorrow, I moved my workbench and shoved the S10 forward. We'll have about six and a half feet of room behind it in the garage, so hopefully the engine hoist will be able to stay all the way in the garage.

Of course, a third gen firebird's snout is kind of big, too, extending about 14" forward of the front fenders and more from the radiator core support:

Hmm, lots of room in there to stash a nitrous bottle, or an intercooler...

I like the Banshee-inspired front end on late third gen Firebirds, but after pulling it off, I think the car looks even better with no nose:

That should make engine removal a bit easier tomorrow. Once everything is disconnected, and the engine/trans hooked up to the hoist, I'm thinking we can just ease the car backward backwards down the driveway until its clear.

I should probably start putting together a craigslist ad for part sales. (shudder)

I would get the Firebird up on CL now. Rather than listing specific parts, just make a listing in the Auto Parts section of Parting Out Firebird. List what you are keeping and what is already missing and then let people tell you what they want.

Show as many pictures as possible.

Engine is out of the fireturd. More details and pictures after I've recovered. I hate third gen f-bodies, and am going to enjoy seeing this one go to the scrapper.