1971 GMC Donald
 

I wasn't sure I wanted to put this build up, but hopefully my trials and tribulations help someone else that is working on a similar project!

It's a '71 GMC 1500 that I bought in hopes of building into a good handling, fast and fun driver that won't cost a small fortune. My wife and son sort of liked it when I called it Donald one day while tearing it apart, saying that it was big and orange, a little crusty, and was going to eventually be a bit on the loud side and thus its name became official. The picture is from the day that I had it dropped off in my driveway, it hadn't been registered since 1983 and had a bent lower control arm from some sort of curb hopping incident I suspect.

Full disclaimer, I got it to the point of driving before starting this thread... I didn't want to be one of those dudes that starts a sweet looking build and then quits posting halfway through.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Initial plans were as follows:

LS swap with a Sloppy style turbo kit
4L80E and 1 piece driveshaft
4/6 lowered suspension
Patina body with refurbished frame and suspension
New brake and fuel lines
Relocated gas tank

And then the fun began, teardown! I probably dislodged, scraped, washed, and blew out with the air hose 32Lbs of southern Utah dirt. Supposedly the truck was some kind of telephone company truck originally. I enlisted some help from my teenaged son in an attempt to get him interested in cars, unfortunately, it only worked marginally.

Love the tin foil fuse job!

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

What’s not to like. Looks good to me!

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

I knew the truck needed some floor patches and both rockers and cab corners had been eaten by the famous salty earth that is so abundant in Utah. Luckily for me, most of the damage was easily seen from the outside so I didn't run into any real surprises.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

More fun ensued with my good old Makita angle grinder and a wire wheel, followed up by some drill and air chisel games. In hindsight, I probably would have had the frame blasted and saved myself untold amounts of time, but I hear this is supposed to be part of the fun :crazy:

I crosscut the heads of the rivets to make it easier, but still had to drill the middle out on some. Whoever GM had installing these things should be in the Hall Of Fame!

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Part way into the build I found a place called Tinworks Fabrication in Tennessee that had some slick crossmembers and LS swap parts that I liked, so if you see parts in my pictures with their TWF cutouts in them now you know. The only complaint I would have about everything that I bought from them was they said that the trailing arm crossmember fit long and short beds, but that required me to notch the back of my cab a little. Not something I really wanted to do. Other than that, they have superb fitting, high quality parts that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend using.

Once I had finished wire wheeling and scraping the frame and the weather started warming up, I broke out the spray gun and painted it up in Rustoleum semi gloss black.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Love him or hate him that's a perfect description!:lol:

I'm in for the ride too!:metal:

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Looks like its going to be a nice build. It's fun following along these rapid fire builds.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

I stitch welded the trailing arm seams (can't get those pictures to work for some odd reason), removed the spare tire carrier brace, emergency brake bracket, found a replacement control arm and then got into my favorite part, bodywork...

Luckily a good friend of mine (who has quite a few builds under his belt) helped me out with this and made the process go a little smoother. New driver's side section of floor along with a few small patches, the cab corners, and replacement of the nearly missing rockers took seemingly forever. It was a learning process for meI am very thankful that for whatever reason I have always loved the patina look, even back in the 80s when it wasn't cool!

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

More bodywork pictures , this took a lot of weekends. I mean way too many hours spent trimming patches to fit, stitch welding, grinding and eventually body filler and sanding. Tedious is not a strong enough word! I applaud anyone who does bodywork, especially those with the patience and skills to do it well.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

And more pics...

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Sticking with my clean underside theme, I donned a Michelin man suit, dust mask, my wire wheeled trusty Makita grinder again, and a good attitude and climbed under my sketchily set up bed! A mere 2 days of labor and eating rust and dirt got me a nice clean surface and I sprayed it all with the same Rustoleum black paint as the frame.

This was something that I am absolutely happy to have done, every time I get under the truck and rust doesn't fall in my eyes, I smile!

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Next on the list was brakes new brake lines. I liked the idea of manual brakes so I didn't skimp on the master cylinder and got a Wilwood with an adjustable proportioning valve. For the time being the truck will keep it's stock front disc and drum rear brakes, remember my budget?? My buddy continued helping me with his experience building hotrods and we bent up completely new brake lines. I put on some Hawk front pads and new rotors in hopes of improved bite with dreams of the turbo motor's massive increase in power. Rear brakes were just rebuilt and installed new Raybestos shoes, also in hopes that they would be able to woah the boosted LS down from speed.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

About the same time as I got the brake system up and functioning, my search for a motor finally came to fruition and I found an all aluminum LC9 out of wrecked 2008 Suburban. Within a week of that I pressed the "buy now" button on a 1999 4L80E out of wrecked 3/4 ton Chevy truck and my plans were finally starting to come together!
I used Tinworks Fabrication motor mounts and transmission crossmember and they fit like a glove.

We ran -8 fuel lines from the universal Tanks Inc. fuel injection tank with a -6 return line and installed a Snake Eater Hellcat pump. Hopefully this is enough to keep up with the motor at 15 or so PSI. I used some cheapy chinese fuel rails and adjustable fuel regulator too finish off the supply side here.

The motor apparently was a mouse home during it's junkyard phase! I was pleasantly surprised with how clean both the motor and transmission were once I got inside them. We followed along with Matt on the Youtube Sloppy Mechanics channel and installed a Transgo shift kit in the 80E and then I got into the teardown of the 5.3. I pulled the pistons and gapped the rings to handle the boost and installed a Sloppy Mechanics Best cam. The piston tops needed some serious cleaning with all of the carbon buildup that I attribute to the crappy stock PCV system, the intake manifold was BATHED in oil too.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Installed an ICT valley cover, this is a Gen 4 motor that I had to delete the AFM crap from. New LS7 style lifters and a normal 3 bolt cam gear were also extra purchases that I didn't really plan on in the original "budget" either. This budget phenomenon apparently happens to most hot rodders...

I drilled a nice hole in the stock oil pan for a -10 oil drain line to facilitate the turbo oil drain. I ended up chickening out and buying ARP head bolts, but I did reuse the factory TTY rod bolts and just tightened them to 51ft lbs. I put an Ebay special adapter plate in place of the original that sits over the oil filter to eventually run my turbo oil feed line and an oil pressure sensor in.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

More test fitting pictures.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

With the motor sitting in the truck, now it was time to start building the turbo hotside.

This was a first time affair for both me and my buddy that helped throughout the build, so I did a lot of test fitting and google research deciding exactly where to put the turbo and how we were going to accomplish it. Sticking to the "sloppy" style and attempting to stay within my budget (failed...) I had some old stainless TRD Tundra exhaust that I had saved years ago that looked like would be perfect for this!

I knew I was going to use stock manifolds flipped because the trucks have a lot of room in the engine bay and because headers were WAY out of my price range. I used tow straps, wire, cardboard, and I can't remember what else mocking things up to get it all to fit where I wanted.

We almost burned my barbecue to the ground preheating the manifolds for welding :devil:, that got exciting for a few minutes. Everything worked out in the end though, the BBQ survived and the hotside works fantastic, although I nearly miscalculated the final positioning of the radiator, my crossover has about 3/8" clearance.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

And some more... fabbing up the waste gate dump into the 4" down pipe that I hoped dearly would clear my front tire when I got around to turning the steering wheel right. It does.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Following along with the Sloppy Mechanics recipe for big power, I installed a 3"x31"x12" intercooler.

Lots of measuring, eyeballing, googling, and contemplation were involved in this portion because I wanted everything to line up and keep the radiator in the stock location, but maintain the largest gap between the intercooler, radiator, and not hit the grill.

I totally whiffed on the passenger side and now have a "fresh air intake" hole in the lower core support, but I wasn't overly concerned with damaging my core support being that it is rust damaged under the original battery mount.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Looks great so far. I usually paint my intercoolers black to hide them a bit.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Nice work so far. With the GMC grill there's no hiding what's lurking under the hood!

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Funny you mention painting the intercooler, I told a coworker who's into all things turbo and he was absolutely aghast at the idea of trying to hide it! I'm still not against it by any means, you can tell by the exterior of my truck that I'm into the whole plain wrapper thing :lol:

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Thanks for the compliments, I thought at this point I would try to think back over the past couple years of the build and remember the ups and downs of the build. Here are some meandering thoughts...

I did the caster mod during the reassembly phase and did a home alignment with a long string and 2 jack stands. Brilliant idea that I stumbled across one day on Youtube! The power steering pump just barely clears the driver's side of the frame, and the stock return line needs a little tweaking, but it also clears. I did replace the power steering box with a 1974 quicker ratio box and love the light feel of it.

I put a Jeg's XHD 3000rpm stall converter in the 4L80e and that sucker stalls almost exactly at 3000! The stock dipstick from the truck transmission fits just fine.

I bought an Autocity radiator with dual fans for about $330 (I think it fits some Chevelles too) off Ebay and it has already driven me around town and back and forth to work on a few 100 degree days keeping the engine temps below 211, even sitting at lights in afternoon traffic. The radiator did necessitate some trimming of the core support to fit correctly though.

I studied Matt Happel's Sloppy Mechanics videos for quite awhile before starting this, but Donald is my first foray into turbos and LS motors. The Terminator X came out during this time and made the tuning part seem way easier to learn along with quite a few smart guys putting videos out helping to answer questions before I even asked them. It has a 3 port MAC valve with an electronic boost controller (Matt Happel's) hooked up to the wastegate and my lovely wife gave me an Evil Energy catch can for Xmas so that I could delete that horrible GM PCV system with. The motor still has the original oil pan and dipstick being used and they are working just fine.

Donald was inspired by my first vehicle ever, at age 16, which was a 2wd 1969 long bed stepside Chevy C10 with a 350 and 4 speed combo in it that I eventually swapped a 1967 cab and front clip onto along with a 383 stroker that I built and a turbo 350 automatic. It could hang with the original 5.0 Mustangs back in the mid to late 80s and was 5 different colors, just how I like my sleepers!

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

After the miserable body work was done, my buddy sprayed all the new sheet metal areas with sealer. Someday next year I hope to rattle can some Hugger Orange over this to stick with the patina theme.

I made a fake filler tube to keep the authentic behind the seat gas tank look, the truck even had an original body color gas cap when I bought it!

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

I reinstalled the front clip and got to work putting in some sound deadener that would hopefully keep the 4" exhaust rumble low enough to have a conversation inside while cruising around. My wife thinks it's loud inside, but everybody else says it's just right :metal:

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Man I'm diggin' this truck! What kind of power do you think it'll have with your current plan?

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Well, that depends on how brave I get! It has Snake Eater 100lb injectors and I'm almost setup to run E85 in it now, with that in mind I should be 700-800hp. That would be with 20lbs or so of boost and a lot of tuning and some good air (a rare commodity in Utah!), but driving it around on 4-5lbs of boost in hot weather like I have been for about a month it definitely seems doable. It's pretty damn fun already!

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

I'm sure that I have skipped around the order of the build a little, mostly because it took over 2 years to get through and the old memory isn't what it used to be!

Having thrown out that disclaimer, I shall continue on. Here are some shots of radiator mounting tabs that I made and the one-off aluminum intercooler bracket that a friend of mine did for me. Then I moved on to 2 things that I had been working on in my brain for close to a year, a fuel filler door and a battery bracket. I have to admit (without hurting my shoulder from patting myself on the back too much...) that they turned out just about how I imagined they would and seem to work almost perfectly. So far.

The door took some serious time with a Dremel and oodles of little cutoff wheels to cut out and then some trial and error coming up with a hinge setup that was robust enough. I also borrowed the Harbor Freight spot welder from a friend and spent some hours getting everything just so with the hinge mounting and the $3 Home Depot push button magnet lock.

The battery mount was a bit easier after I mounted the bed and found one on Ebay that would tuck the battery up far enough for my liking. I didn't really want it in the bed, that looks a bit tacky to me, but I wanted it as far back as possible for some traction.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

And more

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

I really like your fuel filler door. I need to do something similar on my truck and have envisioned it looking just like yours. I'm just wondering, how on earth did you cut those radiused corners! My biggest concern it making nice clean cuts since I want everything to sit flush and use original metal like yours.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

I tossed around the idea of using a jigsaw or sawzall to cut it out, but eventually settled on a Dremel with a 90 degree adapter after many discussions with my metal working friends. I had my doubts having never actually used one and only owned one because I had inherited it when my mom passed away. At least 3 people specifically said the Dremel was the only way.

I used the red tupperware lid that you see in one of the pictures as my template. It took me quite a few hours laying in the bed and about 47 of those cute little 1" cutoff wheels! You just have to be very careful slowly carving at the metal on the radiuses.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

At this point I finally got to test fire the engine, and after a few foolish snafus, at one point the Holley software somehow reordered the firing order to go 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, it made a few spectacular backfires before I decided something serious was amiss! Once it fired though, it ran perfect! No smoke, clatter, no fireworks, it was quite a relief to hear nothing but the purr through the 18" dump pipe.

Here are some shots of the clearance between the fans and the hot side crossover pipe and the Amazon budget heat wrap and turbo blanket that the entire hot side was covered in to keep underhood temperatures down.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Sweet truck, its going to absolutely haul at 20psi and E85! Time for some tires.. and maybe bigger brakes :)

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Thanks coldrider and yes indeed it's going to need some bigger tires and brakes! I had a friend stumble onto a set of FREE 295/50 15 tires on old chrome wheels. Those things look absolutely monstrous next to the 215/60s that I'm currently running.

As for brakes, eventually I will get some Wilwoods up front and swap the drums for disc in the rear, but that budget thing keeps getting in my way...

I told my son that I wanted it to be just fast enough to scare me.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Now that I had the engine running and enough of the wiring to get it to move under it's own power I needed something connecting the trans to the rear end and someway to change gears.

After pricing some local places I found a place in Idaho called Full Torque Driveshafts that were willing to build what I needed, a 3.5" diameter exceptionally long shaft that would hold up to my dreams of 800hp! They got it done in 5 days and shipped in a giant box right to my door step this aluminum beauty. It has 1350 joints on both ends so I changed the pinion yoke to a heavy duty 1350 unit to match. I was a bit nervous getting some basic measurements and sending a bunch of money to these guys that were relatively new to the business, but it fits absolutely perfectly.

Next up finding a shifter for a 4L80E was a bit of a challenge, mostly because I didn't want to have to buy different plates and brackets on top of the big $$$ that the shifter itself was going to cost. I ended up with a TCI Diablo and a DIY riser to get it up high enough to where I can easily reach it with my seatbelt on. It comes with about a hundred extra brackets, plates, and doodads to fit seemingly just about any sort of transmission made. Brilliant!

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Nice to see another LS turbo!

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

We are a rare breed, aren't we? I've been a truck guy my whole life, the faster the better!

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Now after a few trips up and down my 70 foot driveway, I made the executive decision that the 4" straight pipe was going to be too obnoxious for real world driving. I went on the hunt for a cheap slender muffler that I could tuck somewhere under the bed out of the way. I ended up finding a cheap 24" long 4" straight through muffler from Summit for $60 along with a couple bends to complete the exhaust far enough back to dump over the axle.

I envisioned the finished exhaust routing following the frame rail as it bends up over the axle similar to how a motocross or sport bike would look. The muffler had to take a few whacks with a large hammer to maintain some clearance with the frame as well as the straight portion getting some where it goes under the rear cab mount and past the cab sheet metal. The muffler was money well spent, it definitely quieted the engine to a very tolerable level to the point where you can have a conversation with someone while driving around.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Not sure that I ever mentioned a few oddball things that I did during the build, so here goes:

Mounted a CPP 1 1/4" front sway bar and stole another member's idea (can't remember who) to flip the rear shock mounts and flatten them out to mount those shocks on the outside of the frame, both of these mods seem to really help this old truck handle way better than I remember!

I installed Ride Tech street grip lowering springs on both ends along with some CPP lowering spindles up front and custom machined blocks in the rear. There are a few little odds and ends that a couple friends of mine custom machined for me along the way, like a one off ignition bezel.

I didn't touch the internals of the front calipers, tie rod ends, or rear differential, they are all original and work fantastic. I did replace the trailing arm and panhard bar bushings along with new ball joints, front wheel bearings, rotors and lower control arm shafts.

The cab had a CB radio antenna hole poked right through the center of the roof, so rather than filling it, I had my son 3D print me a fake shark fin antenna.

The rear passenger side of the bed where the taillight mounts had been hit and bent a little and instead of trying to pull it out, I used a heat
gun to mold a new lens to match the curve.

Re: 1971 GMC Donald
 

Now that the truck was moving under its own power I started to work on some of the small things needed to make it driveable.

First up was the blinkers, one front and the opposite side back worked when you flipped them on and the brake lights didn't function at all! We surmised that it was a grounding issue and after multiple tries figured out that it was actually grounding out in the column blinker switch. It wasn't my favorite part of working on the truck, but so far they have worked flawlessly since the replacement switch went in.

My VS Racing turbo kit came with a 50mm BOV and flange which would require some aluminum welding, I am not the guy for that job, however a friend of mine at work has a welding business on the side and he is the guy. I think it turned out absolutely beautiful.

My good friend of 20+ years was driving home from work one day and spotted some wheels and tires in a front yard sitting as if they were for sale. He stopped and asked what they fit and how much were they asking for these big fatties and the owner said that he simply wanted them gone, for free! I now have 4 295/50-15s on big older chrome wheels, luckily looks are not my real concern. These things look like steamrollers compared to the puny 215/60-15s that were on it and so far I only have them on the rear and haven't tried fitting them on the front yet.

Look at all that ground clearance!