74 K10 Honey Badger Build Log

[Kolton5543]

I bought a '74 K10 Cheyenne in the beginning of January. The story goes I have a '92 Caprice. It was my first car with a TBI 305 and 700r4. I bought a '95 Caprice with an LT1 initially to use as a parts car but it was too nice to tear apart. A friend of mine wrecked the '92. After driving it for three months it got parked 200k+ miles and I fixed the '95. Two years later the '95 got some non-repairable frame damage and is time to be replaced. From the same guy that wrecked the '92 I bought the K10.

When he had pulled the original 350 and traded it for a torn down big block. He was going to put a 468 and TH400 into but then didn't. He bought another k10 with a 305 and SM465 and put the 468 in there instead. He then sold me the engine less truck to me for $500

Here it is when I brought it home.


I promptly removed TH350 and gave it to another friend and put it into his '81. I decided to use the 305 and 700r4 from the Caprice. I wanted the 700r4 for the lower first gear and the overdrive allowing me to cruise 75+ with reasonable gas mileage. I intended on replacing the 305 with something bigger later down the road.

There's a few ways to do the 700r4 swap. I could have moved the cross member back and re sized drive shafts or moved the engine mounts forward. I opted to go with the motor mounts because I am on a tight budget and re-sizing drive shafts is expensive. Also moving the engine forward would make it easier to access things at the rear of the engine. I tried to mate the NP203 to the trans using a 4WD out put shaft. I cut it short and turned it down to fit the t-case. I decided to not use it as the spline engagement was only about 5/8". It would work fine for a street queen but this is a toy and I'm afraid it would fail pretty quick. I decided to just get a conversion shaft from Advance Adapters instead. P/N 50-6900 Worked perfect. I moved the motor mounts 1 3/4" forward. Don't let anybody tell you its anything different. They lined up perfect. If I were to do it again I would slot the holes just to give me some room for fine tuning. The shift linkage hooked right in to the cars shift rail connector thingy just fine. I can manually shift into all gears except first. I have a lot of slop in my linkage though so your mileage may vary.

Moved motor mounts


The t-case shifter linkage hits the valve body of the 700r4 needs to be raised

I haven't found an easy way to install the VSS with out spending good money on one from JTR or something similar so I just havent done it yet but I will post when I figure something out.
I used two pieces of 2x2 1/8" angle iron with holes drilled 2" apart to raise the t-case shifter up.


Had to re-size the dog house a little to fit the shifter.