'Ole Green' - 1970 Chevy C10 Engine Rebuild

[schovil69]

Since I've bee asking a lot of questions I thought I should show you all what they're about.

Years ago my Dad bought this pickup because he needed a hauler. Purchased from a local interior shop we later discovered vinyl had been applied to the lower outer door skins to cover some serious rust issues. The color was a perfect match and went unnoticed until the bubbling under the vinyl became noticeable. So, plenty of rust in this one but still no interest in a full restoration. This is a work truck and it's doing it's job...mostly. The old girl didn't have much for compression in at least one cylinder. It was hard to start and sometimes just wouldn't start in the heat. The engine leaked oil and I'm not certain what the last straw was but one weekend the engine came out.

I took the engine home, tore it down and sent the big pieces off to my machinist where the heads, block and rotating assembly were prepped. The machinist cleaned everything and refreshed the heads with new springs and hardened seats, cam bearings were installed in the block, and the rotating assembly was balanced after installing new flat top pistons on the original rods. First step was to wash and paint the block. Then installed the crank using Plasti-Gauge to check main bearing clearances. Next came the rod/piston combinations, again using Plasti-Gauge to verify rod bearing clearance. This build is meant to be as stock as possible but I went with a roller cam and valve train for some added reliability and boost in performance. The cam specs I selected will provide a slight increase of power while still leaving the truck sounding stock. I used a pushrod length checker to get the necessary pushrod length ensuring a well centered contact on the valve stem with the narrowest pattern shown. The stock 4-barrel intake was also cleaned up by the machinist and reused.

Everything assembled received a fresh coat of Chevy orange rattle can paint. It's high temp and will stick for the lifetime of the engine, if my previous builds have anything to say for it. Ample use of the bead blaster and application of elbow grease has gone into refreshing all engine accessories. Although not part of the original plan we cleaned and painted the engine bay except for the firewall. The firewall looks pretty decent for what we're working with. The black overspray on the fenders is from a previous owner and some light effort went into cleaning it up but what's left will remain until 'one day.'

There has been a good amount of scope creep on this engine rebuild project. The grill refreshing, wiring replacement, shocks(F&R), and many many small items that seem to be endless at this point. I'm more of a 'git-r-done' kind of feller over the 'stop-and-take-photos' kind of feller but will share what there is. For now, that will consist of before and after photos. Both of which were taken at about the same point in the process, one during removal and one during install from about the same angle.