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1996 K2500 “Krovvy”

n8in8or said:
You can see the issue in the thread that DieselAmateur linked. I have pasted pictures from his thread below. The hole in the stud is about .200" from engaging the castle nut. The nut isn't short, it just isn't lined up at all. I'm going to shim it with some washers and call it a day.View attachment 87996View attachment 87997
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Yup, those "shorty" style castle nuts. I've kept and reused the original, taller OEM castle nuts on ball joints, idler arms and tie rod ends just for that reason, or just kept the old ones if the new joint came with the taller castle nut.

100% on corporate bean counters! Somebody should contact customer service at Mevotech and complain about them making unsafe, faulty product because they do not include the proper castle nut for how the stud is drilled to properly retain the nut.
 
This is where the famous "Copy of a Copy of a Copy" comes in with aftermarket trying to duplicate OEM parts and not doing any QC on them.

it's like when you make a copy of a door key so many times that it stops turning in the lock!
 
Today I sanded the second coat of filler I applied last night. After that I got the inside of the doors prepped and painted.

I also got started on masking the the cab of the truck.


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I’m hoping to get the bodywork on the doors and cab corner done tomorrow and then primed, ready for paint. Hopefully I can be shooting paint after work on Monday.
 
Lots of filler, primer and sanding this week, but finally I’m ready to go for final primer and paint tomorrow. Just in time because a heatwave is getting ready to hit us starting on Sunday.

I also made a stand for painting the doors. When I did primer last weekend, I had trouble getting a good finish on the doors with them laying horizontal on the stands. Having them vertical should take care that…..either that or give me some nice runs 😅

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Got the paint sprayed today. The doors unfortunately ended up with a fair amount of orange peal…..operator error I’m sure, but I don’t know what exactly I did wrong. I laid down 2 coats of epoxy primer, 3 coats of base coat and 3 coats of clear. I think it would have turned out better if my last coat of primer had been sandable primer and I had sanded it smooth, but I’m sure I also introduced texture with the base coat as well. I also got a run at the bottom of the driver’s door when spraying the first coat of clear - it said “2 medium coats”, but I guess my “medium” was a bit heavy. Luckily I noticed it running before I sprayed the whole door - the run is going to be hidden by the belt molding.

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Another bummer is I didn’t see until I walked around to take a picture that some plastic masking got drug into the paint when I pulled the air hose back around at the end. So I get to touch that up. Yippee.

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These are the products I used.

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I think I’ve figured out what I did that caused the orange peel. Looking at the overall results I noticed that the rockers turned out great while the doors have the orange peel - I believe this means that the fan pattern on the gun was set too broad so it was casting paint too far up and down. That would have made a difference on the broader objects, but not on narrower objects that the additional paint wouldn’t have a chance to hit. I am going to jot down some notes to myself for the next paint job so hopefully I learn from this experience and do better.

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Today, my dad came over and we worked on the 454 for Father’s Day. He had faith that the engine was in great shape, but I was concerned what we’d find after it had sat for 7 years. He was right, it was still in great shape, even with all the miles it has. One head gasket was on its say out, and the exhaust valves can use some help, so it’s a good thing we popped the heads off, but that stuff is minor. He’s going to grind the valves on the valve grinder I have, which will be great because I’ve never used one, so it will be nice to see someone with experience operate it before I try it.

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ak diesel driver said:
I have yet to grind valves on my set up. New valves are cheap enough I just buy new ones and concentrate on the seats. Mostly eliminates the stem height issue.
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Yeah, I was thinking about the stem height. I was curious to see what he planned to do about that when he gets the valves done. He was an Olds mechanic in the early 70s and did valve jobs routinely, so I'm really interested to see him run the machine. Hopefully he still remembers how to do it. The cheapest exhaust valves we found were Manleys on RockAuto for $12 each, not a terrible price, but he's trying to do this on a budget and he'd like to save that $100 if he can.
 
I’ve been falling behind on the updates.

Dad came over and we dug out the Kwik Way valve grinder. It came from a Ford dealership, that’s why it has the Ford sticker on it

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He had the valves looking good in no time. This valve grinder does have the ability to grind the tips of the valves, but it only took about .005” of material removal to get them all cleaned up, so he decided to not touch the tip of the valves because they looked great and just let the hydraulic lifters take up the little extra height.

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After lapping the valves and reassembling, I stoned the deck surfaces of the heads and the block. My brother came over one night after work and chased the threads in the block and on the head bolts. The next night I installed the heads using new Fel-Pro head gaskets.

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I didn’t take any pictures, but one other thing I did was blend the tape lines where I repainted the rockers and cab corner.

One of the latest things I did was rebuild the HVAC. I installed all new blend doors in it. I also installed new gears in the actuators from blenddoor.com so they should keep working for a long while.

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I ended up yesterday working on the dash harnesses. I had hoped the 4x4 wiring would be already in the harness from his C2500, but it isn’t, so now I’m working on combining the harnesses. I’m sure that will take me at least all of today. Fun fun.

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I wasn't aware they sold replacement gears for the blend door motors. I have pulled them apart and used guts from another motor to make repairs but could not get it to time correctly. took several times pulling mine apart and changing the position of the tiny blue gear to get it to stop in the right positions. I'm sure there has to be a procedure for timing them correctly.
 
dbrannon79 said:
I wasn't aware they sold replacement gears for the blend door motors. I have pulled them apart and used guts from another motor to make repairs but could not get it to time correctly. took several times pulling mine apart and changing the position of the tiny blue gear to get it to stop in the right positions. I'm sure there has to be a procedure for timing them correctly.
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They have a link to a YouTube video on their site for replacing the gear and they don’t say anything about timing. I just used the pictures I took to get the gears close when I reassembled.
 
before I replaced my air box on my 95 with the ac on I had a little air blowing from the defroster and the floor with a majority coming out of the front vents. after replacing that portion of the dash that had the flapper doors everything worked like it should. though I did replace the actuator motors too. I do recall that one of the doors is spring loaded and even now if I turn on the ac and go right to high blower fan, the air will stay blowing out of the floor. I have to turn it on with the fan on low and give it a minute then go to high fan and it works as it should. my blower fan seems to create enough back pressure in the box to hold the doors so they won't do their thing.
 
ak diesel driver said:
I've never been into these hvac units, I'm guessing if my air doesn't seem to be solidly coming from the ducts called for then the actuator would be the issue.
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More than likely. You should be able to watch the mode door actuator move if you switch it through the different modes while looking at the actuator from the driver’s footwell. As I recall, that actuator is visible from there without a ton of trouble, but my memory has turned to crap and I could be remembering that wrong.
 
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