1996 K2500 “Krovvy”

[DieselSlug]

Yesterday I got 3 coats of paint on the pieces parts - 2 coats of Rust Seal and 1 coat of Blacktop.

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Tonight I spent some time on the press. First I pressed new bushings into the leaf springs and then hung them with new shackles.

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After that I took the drums to the press and knocked the wheel studs out. What a dumb design....so much extra work just to replace drums.

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My IH is the same way, but I cheated and left them together as they were in great shape. Just masked with painter's tape between the drum and hub flange haha

 

[n8in8or]

Small progress this evening.

I got the new bushings pressed into the upper control arms and got them slid in place.




I also got the rear hubs and drums prepped for some paint tomorrow.

 

[n8in8or]

Thursday I got paint on the rear hubs and drums.



This evening I got the steering parts and U-bolts ready for some Rust Seal tomorrow.

 

[n8in8or]

A little more progress this weekend.

Saturday I painted the steering components and u-bolts with 2 coats of Rust Seal and 1 coat of Blacktop. The paint took a REALLY long time to dry, I think because the air was dry, because of that I didn't get to put the coat of Blacktop on until after 1:00am Sunday morning, so that was a long day.



I also started pressing the bushings into the front lower control arms. I bought the front and rear bushings as they were listed in the Rock Auto catalog, but when I opened the box for the front bushing, I found it had both the front and rear bushings in it.....so this is the only part number you need for bushings for the lower FORGED control arms.



Once I got to start putting them in, I wasn't sure they were the right parts anyway due to the shape of them - the end was conical, but the bushings should be pretty flat on the end. I double-checked the part number and it came back to the forged arms in a couple listings so I pressed on (literally, ha). They worked. The pictures below show how much the bushings deform from their free state to the installed state. I screwed upon the first one and installed it dry - I debated between dry and lubed and decided on dry because I knew the factory didn't want them to spin in the arm......bad idea. That one went in really tough and I ended up spraying it with PB Blaster about halfway through, but I'm not sure that helped. For the other 3 bushings I coated them with Energy Suspension polyurethane lube before putting them in......they went in much easier.



I did some other odds and ends things Saturday without a lot to show for it. Yesterday I got a lot of the front suspension installed. Everything took so much longer than I envisioned - this was mostly due to trying to be careful with freshly painted parts and also the extra time of wire wheeling all of the fasteners before installation. By the end of the day I had all of the front put together except the tie rods and the brakes.



To put a bow on the GMT800 knuckle conversion, this is what my washer situation turned out like. I ordered some mil spec 18-8 stainless washers from McMaster-Carr.



This is how many I used on the upper ball joint to get the castle nut spaced out enough so the cotter pin would engage it properly.



And this is the washer situation on the lower. Note the thick washer - I forgot to grind the end of the taper on the ball joint studs before pressing them into the control arms. It would have been very cumbersome to do that with the arms installed on the truck (and I had no desire to wrestle them back off), so instead I found some good flat washers in my stash and bored them oversize so they would fit over the end of the taper. Then I added the stainless washers as necessary.



I'll keep plugging away this week and it should be on all fours very soon.

 

[n8in8or]

I’ve been making progress this week, but it’s been going slowly. Every time I think I’m done painting parts I find more so then I have to spend time prepping them, painting them and waiting for them to dry. I totally forgot about the calipers, caliper brackets and backing plates! So those got the treatment. It was all new AC Delco stuff.




While the new parts were out, I had to put them up against the old....this should be a really nice upgrade.





And here it is tonight with front brakes on and the tie rods loosely installed with the QA1 tie rod sleeves from that place @Husker6.5 loves . I think it looks kinda spiffy now.



Next up are rear brakes, though I won’t be able to finish those until Friday - I was cleaning up the rear wheel studs and didn’t like what I saw so ordered more from Rock Auto that are due to arrive Friday.

 

[n8in8or]

Another night of slow progress - prepping body mount hardware for paint.

I used Evapo Rust for the first time. It cut down on some wire wheeling, but even after 29 hours of soaking I still had a bunch of rust to knock off.

Before Evapo Rust



After Evapo Rust (After 5 hours I rinsed them off and chipped the big chunks off with a claw hammer. After 14 more hours I rinsed them off. After 10 more hours they got rinsed again.)




Soaked in KBS Klean after wire wheeling




I don’t want to paint any more.

 

[Husker6.5]

Wouldn't it have been easier, and probably cheaper, just to have bought new ones for the time spent working on these?

 

[n8in8or]

Wouldn't it have been easier, and probably cheaper, just to have bought new ones for the time spent working on these?

Easier, yes, cheaper I don't think so. LMC sells them for $15 each (which does include the upper bushing), so it would be $90 plus shipping for them. I will have about 2.5 hours into reconditioning them. I don't have a dollar value for my time, but that money I can apply to other parts for the truck so I'm ok with the time.

 

[Will L.]

Have you ever tried the electrolysis method?

 

[n8in8or]

Have you ever tried the electrolysis method?

I have not yet, but I want to. My dad has done it and I really like the idea of trying it, I just haven't taken the time to research it and set up a rig...… much like I haven't taken the time to get my blasting cabinet set up and running. Yes, I realize time invested up front would get paid back shortly thereafter, I just can't bring myself to do it yet for some reason. I felt good investing a lot of infrastructure time this winter getting the barn into better shape for projecting, so maybe this coming winter I can do some more infrastructure work like blasting cabinet and electrolysis rig. A better parts washer would be nice too and maybe getting an ultrasonic cleaner as well.

 

[n8in8or]

Wouldn't it have been easier, and probably cheaper, just to have bought new ones for the time spent working on these?

I thought about this some more and to be fair, it is probably closer to a wash, price-wise than I originally considered, but I kind of set my path a while ago and had to follow it through. When I was looking at body mounts a couple months ago, it was a lot cheaper to go the route of polyurethane mounts than it was to get new rubber mounts. This is also before I was cleaning and painting all of the parts. I do have some additional costs invested in restoring the metal parts now - chemicals, paint, shop supplies...….so when those costs get added to the cost of the polyurethane it does get closer to the cost of getting new rubber mounts. And then when the time savings are thrown in, that is certainly a consideration as well. So yes, if I was to look at it right now given the current stage of the project, I would be more tempted to get new rubber mounts rather than rehab what I have.

 

[Husker6.5]

And how much farther along you could have been with that day's worth of time spent elsewhere than in babysitting pairs of bushing shells decorroding. Drop in the new ones and move on to bigger and better things on the Krovvy List.

 

[Husker6.5]

Hopped back a couple of weeks in the thread to catch up on all your progress. Gotta "after the fact" question for you.

Instead of all that washer stacking to bring the castle nuts "up" to meet the holes for the cotter pin in the studs, why not just drill a new hole for the cotter pin lower down on the stud at the proper distance for correct depth engagement with the castle nut?

It wouldn't weaken the stud at all and you'd have proper torque friction between the nut and arm and stud in arm without the possiblity of future washer distortion affecting torqued clamping force between the stud and arm.

I've done it before and had it work out just fine drilling the new hole freehand, after determining the new location first, by putting the stud in the hole in the arm and using Vice Grips to clamp the rod end into the arm to keep the stud from spinning in the taper while drilling.

 

[n8in8or]

Hopped back a couple of weeks in the thread to catch up on all your progress. Gotta "after the fact" question for you.

Instead of all that washer stacking to bring the castle nuts "up" to meet the holes for the cotter pin in the studs, why not just drill a new hole for the cotter pin lower down on the stud at the proper distance for correct depth engagement with the castle nut?

It wouldn't weaken the stud at all and you'd have proper torque friction between the nut and arm and stud in arm without the possiblity of future washer distortion affecting torqued clamping force between the stud and arm.

I've done it before and had it work out just fine drilling the new hole freehand, after determining the new location first, by putting the stud in the hole in the arm and using Vice Grips to clamp the rod end into the arm to keep the stud from spinning in the taper while drilling.

Hmmm, I hadn't thought of that. That doesn't seem like a terrible idea. You wouldn't even have to do the vice grip, just torque it down once so it's fully mated (plus giving you your drilling location), back the nut off and drill away. Or just leave the nut in place and use it as your drill guide. Thanks for that thought, I'm going to mull that over.

 

[Husker6.5]

I did it with a set of "bargain" sealed "lubed to failure" tierod ends off of Fleabay on the Burb ten years ago that came with cheap-looking nyloc nuts and undrilled studs instead of castle nuts. I thought no effing way I was going to trust those cheap-looking nuts with their unknown plastic inserts to keep everything together over time and extreme cold winters, so I walked the two blocks over to the local TrueValue Hardware store and got two castle nuts from their pic-a-pac fastener aisle and drilled the studs to 7/64" for a 3/16" cotter pin, used a ¼" to chamfer the hole on each side and put the thing together the old fashioned way. I pay the bucks now to go Moog on everything now, because I had to replace them after two years and 15K because the whole set had already worn out.

 

[JayTheCPA]

LMC sells them for $15 each ...

Am not sure that you would have been better off with the purchase. Have learned that their stuff is a bit of a gamble as to whether it fits, or fits some related configuration that needs modification to fit what I have. Not helping the parts research is their lack of product rating / feedback by customers. But based on personal experience, can see where they do not want the feedback.

So by rehabbing, you already know that the parts will definitely fit and are ahead of the game from that perspective

 

[n8in8or]

I went Moog everything because I thought that was the best, but now I'm hearing they've cheaped out on their stuff. If I had known then, it sounds like Mevotech is the shiznit and the stuff I would have ordered instead.

 

[JayTheCPA]

Nah-Nu Nah-Nu!

 

[Will L.]

I remember and like that show. But what does Mork from Ork have to do with it?

 

[n8in8or]

I was going to ask the same thing