After making the air cleaner adapter, I decided to clean up the 1994 throttle body, as it isn't interchangeable with the one on the 1999 motor, due to sensors. I stripped off the sensors and cable bracket and set it to soak in a bucket of PineSol for a couple of hours. After soaking for a bit, I hit it with an old tooth brush, followed by a rinse in hot water and then blow dry. The difference was amazing. To keep it looking clean, I coated the bare aluminum with a few coats of clear high temp engine paint.
While mucking around with the transmission linkage, I began to get the impression that I may have to use the steering column from the 1994 Dodge Ram. This is a bit of a problem because the steering wheel is trashed and I don't have the 3/4"DD-3/4" 36 spline u-joint to connect the steering shaft to the column. The problem exists because the Dodge steering column has the shifter arm on the frame side of the column, rotating down to Park, where as the GM column has the shift arm on the engine side of the column, rotating up to Park. I've determined I will fabricate some sort of simple linkage to reach around the column to work the Dodge linkage from the GM column.
I now have the engine wire harness somewhat installed. The EMC/PCM is mounted on the right inner fender and I just need to secure the harness to keep it out of harm's way. I'm still lacking the lead that runs from the Power Distribution Center to the alternator and the ends to connect to the starter, as someone cut those off the original 1994 harness before I bought the donor truck. While working on the wire harness install, I added a fitting to run a mechanical oil pressure gauge, as I'm not using the 1994 instrument cluster. Good gosh brass has become expensive. Three pieces that used to cost $4-$6 ended up being $16 for a 1/8" NPT nipple, a Tee and a 45* adapter. I will also add a mechanical water temp gauge before firing the motor off.
I'm still lacking a few pieces and a bit of custom wiring to get it running, such as the starter, the fuel pump module and a serpentine belt. I need to sort through the 84 pin body connector and select which circuits need to be retained for starting and engine management. The rest of the lighting and body electrical will be handled by the Ron Francis harness I bought nearly 20 years ago.
I also have my transmission cooler more or less mounted up. I still need to connect the plumbing, but since my reproduction radiator doesn't have the fittings for an automatic transmission, I'm running the oil to water cooler from a Dodge Cummins diesel, followed up by a oil to air cooler in front of the radiator. I ran this set-up on the GM engine and transmission I had before hand without issue, so it should work fine for this application as well, though I should probably include a temperature gauge to be certain.
-Joe