69 C20 4x4 project - the mutant

[68 TT]

This project started life as an inexpensive 1969 vintage factory A/C cab for sale on CL that I was thinking about using to build up instead of my rust infested 67 C10 cab. Turned out the guy was also trying to sell the bed, front clip and chassis separately on CL as well and had a clean title for the whole thing.

A few hours later I had the whole thing delivered to my house.

All it is missing is the windshield, gauge cluster, the doors, hood hinges, brake booster and the engine & trans. I just so happen to have a spare brake booster, engine & trans so no big deal on the missing items.

Floors are in far better shape than my 67 C10 cab and with factory A/C and a clear title this thing is destined to become a whole truck again. The radio area is even untouched unlike my 67 that had been butchered by a PO some time in the past. I would guess the truck spent its early years in southern California by the AAA of So Cal sticker in the rear window. It is the exact same sticker that is in the rear window of my 68 Camaro that I bought in LA so it was probably put on there when the truck was new.

I scored a new windshield, a complete set of doors with hinges and a tail gate shell minus latch parts for a decent price a couple days later so now all I need is the windshield gasket, a set of hood hinges and the tail gate guts. I am building a gauge cluster for the 67 C10 so I have the stock cluster from it to use.

Turns out somebody in the past had put a correct vintage open knuckle drum brake Dana-44 4x4 front axle into the thing to make it a 4x4 with the truck arm rear suspension still in place. I wondered if this was possible when I was thinking about the 4x4 conversion project I am doing to my 67 C10.

I took some quick measurements and it looks like the output shaft of the transfer case will be about 14" from the truck arm crossmember. With a little luck I can run a one piece driveshaft in this thing. Don't know where it will be in relation to the center of the crossmember opening yet but it should be pretty close to right.

[68 TT]

The doors I picked up are in fair condition and will take just about as much work to make them nice as the doors on my 67 C10 but this way I can keep the 67 cab enclosed and looking complete to keep my neighbors relatively happy. Once the 69 is together and I don't need anything else off the 67 I will send it off to a new owner.

Most likely I will be putting a new skin on both the 69 doors so I might as well play around with fitting them with power windows while I have the skins off and have full access to the guts.

I have a set of dented but complete spare square body doors sitting around so I have the parts on hand to do it with GM parts. Shouldn't be too difficult to do as long as there is enough width in the door profile for the motors to occupy.

We will see how that works out some time after I get the 69 all put together & running and have it torn back apart for paint & interior work.

[68 TT]

The factory A/C parts are amazingly complete for how little I paid for the truck. Only thing missing is the compressor, lines, dryer and blower motor at first glance. We will see how bad off the parts are when I get to cleaning things up and painting the truck.

It has a little housing damage but I plan on retrofitting some newer truck R134a parts into this thing so I can repair the housing as I expand it for the larger R134a component.

[68 TT]

The bed sides on this thing are a little rough and it came off of a 67 but the bed floor is in far better shape than my 67 C10's bed floor which has cancer issues since it spent most of its life in Seattle.

I have a spare bed side that I picked up for the 67 C10. I will probably take both beds apart and put together one bed with all the best parts and the best of what is left will go back together for the 67 C10 to still have a bed.

I am considering making a matching trailer out of the other bed that I can tow behind the 69 to save wear & tear on the 69's bed. I always liked the matching trailer look too.

[67-72crazy]

Nice project truck can't wait to see how it turns out.

[68 TT]

This truck also came with a non-tilt column shift steering column so that saves me the hassle of trying to retrofit one since my 67 column was from a manual trans truck.

Original steering wheel doesn't look too bad other than the color and fading. I have seen and repaired much worse but I will most likely put a smaller diameter more sporty looking wheel on there instead of fixing this one. It will probably go on my 67.

It looks like the glove box door was replaced or painted black but they removed the SPID label so no luck there in figuring out how this truck was optioned from the factory. By the aftermarket amp meter under the dash I would guess this truck did not have one in the cluster. Kind of funny that my 67 C10 only has two options on the SPID and one is the ammeter-oil gauge, the other is a deluxe air heater.

The glove box liner is only partially there but it is enough to let me see how it should go. I think I will build a replacement one out of aluminum and see if I can hang my PCM off the bottom so I have easy access to the chip for tuning.

[68 TT]

By all the grease on the retrofit drum brake front axle, suspension & frame I would guess it has been in the 69 for quite a while. They welded the rear spring shackle brackets to the frame and welded the front spring buckets to the front body mount brackets. Not the prettiest welds but it looks like they held. I will definitely weld up, reinforce and bolt the areas so they are very solid.

I have a spare set of 10-bolt axles out of the 84 K5 Blazer parts truck I picked up for the 67 C10 4x4 conversion project that were not used so they will be going into the 67 and the 3.73 geared disc brake Dana-44 front axle that is in the 67 now will be going into the 69.

The stock 69 C20 monster of an 8-lug rear axle will be coming out and the six lug 3.73 geared truck arm 12-bolt that came out of my 67 C10 will be going in.

I will keep the 3.73 geared leaf spring 12-bolt that I will be pulling out of the 67 in case I decide some time in the future to convert the rear suspension in the 69 to leaf. I have a spare set of rear leaf springs and hangers to go with it too.

Don't know what gears are in either of the axles that are currently in the 69 but if the rear one has 4.10 gears I have a buyer for it. I may have a buyer for the front axle too.

The front wheels on the 69 are from what I have been told fairly hard to find original 4x4 wheels. I have a buyer for those too once they come off.

[68 TT]

The local pull it yourself yard finally got a 67-72 in, actually two. A 67 Suburban and a 69 GMC truck. Got a few parts I needed off of both.

Scored a good set of hood hinges, the tale gate hardware, the door striker bolts & shims, an ash tray, a gauge cluster & housing, a battery tray clamp, a good condition windshield seal with stainless trim, the under steering column trim panel, a gas tank to cab seal and a heater blower motor out of the newest rig they said was an interchange.

Also grabbed the hood lettering off the Suburban as my 67 is missing them.

[68 TT]

I also grabbed the glove box door out of the Suburban just because it had so many options listed on it. Special paint vehicle with a straight six and three on the tree with speedo & fuel gauge only.

They listed a bunch of stuff on there I had never seen listed before.

The first pic is the 67 Suburban SPID and the second is my 67 C10 SPID for comparison.

[68 TT]

Spent most of the weekend shoveling snow but made a little time and got the doors bolted up, installed the hood hinges and installed the tail gate & latch parts.

Ran out of time and didn't get a chance to adjust the doors or hood so they fit right but at least they are on the truck now.

Blower motor looks like it will fit but the fan portion from the 91 K2500 donor is too deep to fit into the 69. I need to dig around and see if I have another one that will fit or go back to the wrecking yard for another one.

[68 TT]

I have been accumulating parts like crazy for this thing so I now have everything I need to put it together without taking a single part off my 67 K10 project except for the engine, trans & transfer case.

I even scored another set of doors with the chrome vent windows and factory tinted glass. The same truck donated a pretty nice set of black door panels, arm rests, dash pad, visors, glove box door, power brake booster & disc brake master cylinder / prop valve, high hump tunnel, rear view mirror, the cable style throttle pedal assembly, tail gate hardware and a few odds & ends.

I was going to go with a blue interior but these black parts have changed my mind. I think I will depart from the typical look of a body color dash and paint the whole interior with semi-gloss black.

I am going to coat the floor of the cab with the rustoleum roll-on bed liner material. Depending upon the noise level I may skip the carpet & sound deadener.

[68 TT]

My biggest holdup right now is that the outer rocker panels I ordered were the wrong part in the boxes. Right part number on the box and on the order form & invoice and the right part on the web site when you look it up but what is cross referenced on the companies bar code label on the box is a different part entirely.

Not getting any love from the company so the way things are going it will be several weeks before I get the correct ones I should have gotten in the first place. They even tried to get me to pay for return shipping on the incorrect parts they sent me. I'm waiting on return shipping labels at the moment.

[67chevy1series]

nice score on the truck parts

[68 TT]

Originally Posted by 67chevy1series

nice score on the truck parts

I got lucky and was one of the first people to pull anything off of it.

The engine & gauge cluster were gone and that was about it.

[68 TT]

I have been piling up parts for the build and doing research over the winter while I was recovering from two separate physical injuries but am recovered enough now to get back to work on the truck.

I started an 8-lug disc brake conversion to the 6-lug drum brake Dana-44 front axle in the 69 C20 over the weekend.

Ran into a few snags but for the most part it is a simple parts swap with common square body K20 front brake and axle parts.

[68 TT]

One of the snags I ran into was that the brake donor was missing the calipers so I found a G10 van with 1.25" thick rotors and D52 calipers thinking they would work. Wrong. Turns out the brake hose boss on the back interferes with the steering knuckle just enough to keep the caliper from seating all the way so it can be bolted down.

After finding this out I went back and found another K20 truck that just arrived and pulled the proper calipers off of it. Different casting than the G10 rear wheel drive calipers.

The 78 K20 calipers clear the drum brake Dana-44 housing like they were meant to be there. Tight fit but clear everything even at full lock.

[68 TT]

The only other problem I ran into with the 6-lug drum to 8-lug disc swap on the front Dana-44 was that the inner wheel bearing on the 8-lug rotors is larger than the 6-lug part so the spindle needed to be swapped too.

None of the articles I read about the swap mentioned that so they must have been using 6-lug rotors in their swap. No big deal, just another trip to the wrecking yard and a couple more hours of wasted time.

The first two pics are of the small bearing spindle and the second two are of the large bearing spindle.

[68 TT]

The wheels that were on the drum brake Dana-44 front axle look to be factory GM wheels but I can't find any markings on them.

They are 15" wheels that are about 9-1/2" wide with about 3" of backspacing.

Can anybody tell me if these are GM wheels and what they came on if they are?

[68 TT]

Pulled the covers off the front & rear axles to see what gears I am dealing with.

Dana-44 front has 45 : 11 tooth count on an open carrier so it has 4.09 gears. Kind of odd they would not use the stronger 41 : 10 tooth count and have the more common 4.10 gear ratio.

The Eaton 10.5" ring gear full floating rear axle has 41 : 10 tooth count on an open carrier so it has the hard to find 4.10 gear ratio. Doesn't look like the cover had ever been off of it. The gears look good but the oil was a little brown. A guy I bought some parts from when I first got the truck wanted the rear end if it had 4.10 gears so I need to call him up and see if he still wants it.

Plans are to put in a 3.73 geared Dana-44 I already have up front and pick up a 14-bolt for the back. I just picked up a set of 3.73 gears with pinion support assembly and matching carrier for a 14-bolt so I just need the housing & axles now. It will get disc brakes with the Eldorado parking brake calipers I already have.

[68 TT]

After getting a chance to think things over while I was injured and check out what I was dealing with as far as the PO half-way converting the truck to a 4x4 I have decided to turn the 69 C20 truck back into a rear wheel drive truck but it will become a half ton with the 6-lug truck arm 12-bolt that was in my 67 C10 and the front suspension from the same truck plus some 93 vintage 2500 LD 6-lug disc brake parts for good measure since I have them on hand.

It will also get the 396 & T-400 out of my Camaro to make room for the 6.0 liter LSx & 4L80E swap that the car will be getting. No sense letting a good engine go to waste. The 69 C20 will also get chopped down to make it a short bed. Eventually it will get a step side bed and a 67 / 68 front clip to complete the transformation into what I want it to be.

I am going forward with the cab swap as I originally purchased this truck for so the 67 K10 will get this factory A/C cab so it can more easily get A/C. The 69 C20 will get the 67 cab which will get the rust repaired as needed.

Probably start a new thread for the reversion to C10.

[68 TT]

Good timing for an update. Post #2000

The 69 C20 chassis is now back in 2wd configuration with the front frame section off my old 67 C10 chassis installed to eliminate the hacked up work the PO did to the frame to convert it to a 4x4. Too much butchery to bring it back.

The 93 C2500 LD 6-lug disc are in place but I still need the 3/4-ton lower A-arms and the rest of the C2500 front end parts to get it finished. It is just loosely held in place with the stock 67 parts that don't fit properly for now.

I have swapped out the cab mount brackets for the set of C10 brackets off my old 67 frame as well so the C20 brackets which are the same as the 4x4 brackets can go onto the modified square body 4x4 conversion 67 K10 project to give it the flexibility it needs.

The 67 cab is also in place on the 2wd frame but I need a couple more rear cab mount bolts to get it locked down. No pics of that yet.

I will be boxing in the frame and doubling up the top & bottom flanges of the frame rails to give it more strength and resistance to twisting so it can take the HP of the big block soon to occupy the frame rails.

I decided to see how the semi-gloss paint would look so I cleaned off the outside and gave it a quick coat. I like it.

[68 TT]

Another change of plans. The big block out of my Camaro will be going into the 4x4 conversion and the 400 out of my Malibu will be going into the C10.

I got the T-350 installed into the C10, moved the engine frame mounts back to the rear set of frame holes and installed the high hump trans tunnel I had sitting around just for a little extra clearance and easier access.

Swapped out the square body steering wheel for a Vega GT 4-spoke wheel I had on the shelf so I could put the square body wheel onto the K10.

Need to find my power steering gear box for the C10 and get it installed so the thing is steerable.

[project 67 sub]

those look like some baby moons painted black and missing the center caps

[68 TT]

Originally Posted by project 67 sub

those look like some baby moons painted black and missing the center caps

They are, the paint is coming off in a few places so you can see the chrome through those spots. 15x9 if I measured right.

Too bad I only have the two.

Not sure what I am going to do with them yet.

[68 TT]

Pics of yesterdays work. Got the 69 core support brackets bolted in place. Still need to clean up the extra material left from the PO's pieced together front spring buckets but that will be easier with them in pace on the frame. Also need to weld up the crack in the passenger side bracket while I am at it. Ran out of cover gas for the TIG and ran out of wire for the MIG so that will have to wait a bit.

Got the engine stands bolted in at the rear position and drilled the matching lower mount hole that they needed. Should hep a little with the weight bias as the engine & trans will now be 2-5/8" further back than they were before. Should help with header clearance too.

Put the trans mount on and bolted the tail shaft to the crossmember and blocked up the front to keep it in place.

I need to finish the brake plumbing and paint the front portion of the frame before I can yank the 400 out of the Malibu and drop it in.

I'm going to see if the Malibu headers will fit the C10 chassis with the engine back all the way while I am at it.