Charlotte - A Stock 1970 K10 Build

[Love 70 Chevys]

Sorry I have not posted pics in a while. I design medical equipment for a living and ever since Covid started, time on the truck has not nearly been what I would like. Waaay too many hours at work. I did get her running though and she purrs like a kitten even after all these years. Never stopped taking pics, so I hope to share some soon!

[LT7A]

Although covid has kept you busy, hopefully it has been profitable for you and the value of good medical equipment can certainly not be overstated. I'm enjoying your attention to detail and look forward to checking back in when you have the chance to update.

[Love 70 Chevys]

I continue to make steady progress on Charlotte, but have not posted in quite a while! In fact, as I look through my pictures, I don't have the immediate memory to do a good job of step by step, but I will add the pics anyway in the hopes they can help someone else. First topic is the steering column rebuild. I have all the before pics (Which were very important for putting it back together!) but not of when it was all done, painted and pretty. I'll get one on my computer and insert it later to update.

[Love 70 Chevys]

Removing the steering wheel and in cab disassembly. Used the threaded center section from a universal puller and made the rest of it myself out of some scrap bar stock to fit our application.

[Love 70 Chevys]

More disassembly.

[Love 70 Chevys]

More pictures. Some of the things I remember from doing this was that I had a lot of fun making the turn signal switch useable again. It was sticky and yucky, but once I cleaned all the gunk out, filed the contacts and then put in a little conductive grease, it felt like new again! Probably much better than buying a repro. Also, the lever was very dingy, but with some polishing and cleaning, it looked like new again, and much better than a repro. Since I was a newbie at this, the best advice I can give is take TONS of pictures at each disassembly step. I did not include even a fraction of mine. All the parts are cylindrical, and even if you remember the right order, the orientation of each one is not obvious. The rubber gaskets both inside the cab and outside came back to life with some cleaning and tire cleaner black. Looked like new and better than repros. All of my bearings were still good, just cleaned the gunk out of them and added a little grease. Have fun if you do this: I did! Note: One thing I just remembered that might save you some time if you follow the same path as I. I decided my steering wheel was not repairable. (Others may disagree!) Since they do not make a Sandalwood repro, I went with black. I paint all of my black parts semi-gloss, so did the same with the column. When I put the new repro black wheel on, it is very shiny and at least the in-cab portion of the column needs to be painted gloss black to go with the wheel. Mine is already back in the cab, but I will have to do some repainting of the upper portion to make it look better with the steering wheel.

[Love 70 Chevys]

Next is dash rebuild. In this case, I do have the before and after photos. These are always my favorites. Once you are all done, it is hard to remember how crummy something was before you started! Another very satisfying sub-assembly that I had a lot of fun with.

[Love 70 Chevys]

A subset of the pics I took. Hopefully they help others. Found an original tag, and put it back in. Although I do not have documentation, am convinced the 36,856 mileage is original due to the many "clues" I find in the truck. (Hardly worn original seat cover, hardly worn original foot pedals, original heater core, original hose clamps, likely original starter, alternator, PS pump, original carb and still present 1970 smog control, history given to me by the PO and much more.),

[Love 70 Chevys]

The manual throttle is a cool function of the K10's. I wanted to make it operational again and did. The cable was frozen up, but a ton of soaking in evaporust and moving and soaking and moving eventually freed it up.

[Love 70 Chevys]

Other pictures of the disassembly and repair. There is a place where the cable needs to peened to "catch" in a hole that is in the lug on the end of the cable. I was able to do that with a nail. The operation of the manual throttle is really cool. There are some spring fingers that interface with a threaded portion that the knob secures to. You can pull or push, overcome the spring fingers for gross adjustment, or rotate the knob, not overcome the spring fingers and get fine adjustment of the throttle. Obviously for use with the granny gear of the four speed only, as it is all mechanical and nothing to lock it out like there would be in a modern vehicle.

[68bowtie]

Looking good. What is your plan for the steering wheel? Do they reproduce that color?

[Love 70 Chevys]

They don't reproduce that color. I bought a black one. Stock 1970, but black and smaller diameter. I know, not factory, but I felt mine was too far gone and I have long legs with knees that bang on it when working the clutch. I like the smaller diameter for that reason. Also have power steering. I do like the look of the big old wheel though.

[68bowtie]

Looks great

[Love 70 Chevys]

The most exciting thing I have done so far was to get her running again. PO said 2005 was the last time it ran. I had previously made sure the motor was not frozen up and squirted some marvel mystery oil in the cylinders, but that was all I knew. Three years after buying it, I finally checked the compression and all 6 cylinders measured correctly and were all about the same. I rebuilt the carb (documented in previous posts.) Fabricated a new fuel line from the pump to the carb. Installed new PCV valve and hose. Installed new points, condenser and distributor cap. Installed a new coil, plugs and plug wires. Installed a new fuel pump. Installed a temporary small auxiliary gas tank and plumbed into the new pump. Installed a new radiator, hoses, thermostat, flushed out the block with a garden hose and put in new water and anti-freeze. I have a new wiring harness, but didn't really want to get it out of the box yet, so made my own temporary ignition and charging circuit harnesses using some nice diagrams I found on the internet. I had previously rebuilt the alternator and I re-used the old voltage regulator. Used the new ignition switch from my new harness, as the old one had some melting of the internal housing that did not give me a warm fuzzy feeling. I re-used the resistor wire from the original harness that goes from the ignition switch to the coil. I changed the oil and filter and added some marvel mystery oil to both the new gas and oil to help lube things on the first start-up. Adjusted the idle and mixture screws on the carb to nominal. Put in a new battery and battery cables. Didn't do a thing to the old probably original starter, but it ran and did not complain when I hit the switch. I really did not expect it to run right away, but the minute I hit the switch it fired right up!!!! In fact, it was so quiet, I did not even realize it was running at first. (It still has a downpipe and rotted out muffler on it that still quiets things down a lot.) I will attach some video files, but I don't think they will play. Funniest thing was seeing all of the brown mouse nest stuff blow out of the exhaust all over the driveway! It is nice to be able to drive her in and out of the garage under her own power. My driveway has a bit of a downward slope and to date I had been using gravity and a winch to get her in and out.

[Love 70 Chevys]

When she ran, the valve cover gasket (which I replaced and did a little "body work" on the bent flanges of the cover) and the oil pan gasket did not leak a drop of oil. However, my likely original, but newly repainted power steering pump and gearbox spewed all of the ps fluid in the system onto the driveway within minutes! (Rebuild of their bearing seals in a later post.) In fact, if this thing continues to run without the need of a rebuild I may not touch the oil pan as even my new vehicles leak! Out of all this work, the oddest thing that held me up was getting the fan belts (2) right. I had lots of posts and lots of help on this forum and three Rock Auto orders before I finally got it right. At least they are cheap v-belts, not like a modern serpentine. Also found a Chevelle factory manual that finally helped me get it right.

[Love 70 Chevys]

Took the old gas tank out of the cab. It still had some gooey gas down in the bottom and always made things smell. I'm just going to put in a new one, they are not that expensive. Kept the sender, plumbing, wiring and everything else for future reference. It was pretty self explanatory to get out. Take out the bolts and pull and tug some to get the filler out of the cab gasket. Had to ruin the cab gasket, but it was pretty dry rotted and would have gotten ruined anyway when it comes body work time.

[Love 70 Chevys]

Power steering gear box seal and bearing replacement. As I mentioned in the "get it running" post, the gear box spewed fluid all over the driveway. There are two bearing seals. One at the input (rag joint) and one at the output (pitman arm). On mine the pitman seemed OK, the input was shot, but I replaced them both while I was at it. You can still buy the rebuild kit. In good old "fix it until it is broken" mode, I damaged the Torrington roller bearing on the pitman shaft when I was taking the gearbox apart. Luckily the Torrington part number was on the bearing and I was able to find one on E-bay. Pressed it back in with an arbor press and all was good. I didn't include every photo. Last picture is with new seals in, everything cleaned and painted-up and bolted back on the frame with new hardware. I found a great video on how to do this on line. Made this job not scary at all.

[chev-obsession]

Very cool truck, and your work is very thorough! Nicely done!

[Love 70 Chevys]

Power steering pump bearing seal replacement. You can buy a kit for these also. One seal on the pulley shaft bearing and all of the internal O-Rings. Also found a great on line video for this. Lots of stuff to take apart and a few tricks for popping the case apart and how to draw it back together without damage. If anyone would like that info, please let me know and I bet I could find the link if I dig for it. Just realized I do not have a picture of it all nicey-nice and done, but I will take one and come back and add it!

[Love 70 Chevys]

Grill update. I did some previous posts in this thread on the front grill restoration. I also belong to the Finger Lakes Classic Car Club and one of our members is in the process of restoring a '69 El Camino that we get together on Thursday nights and help him out with. I was assigned the job of restoring the grill like I did on my truck and learned something in the process. Many of the Chevy's of the era had an argent "highlighting" on raised areas of the black plastic insert. The '69 El Camino did and so did the '70 C10. You just don't see it very often, because back in the day it sort of wore off during washes in the first few years so even mint survivors often do not have it. It also does not come on reproduction grills. In fact, I first noticed it in the 1970 brochure and thought maybe it was something that was deleted before actual production started. It had long worn off on my grill insert. Anyway, that is the way they were and I added it to my truck. It was really fun and the feature is authentic, not often seen today on many trucks and seems to "float". I used an oil-based paint pen all by hand without masking and covered everything in clear coat. Very fun and satisfying while listening to a Buffalo Bills game on the radio on a beautiful fall afternoon! Last picture is from the '70 brochure. The picture is a base model K10.

[Love 70 Chevys]

Front seat rebuild. This was a fun little winter project. Did lots of research first, and it really was not that hard to do. The three things that paid off the most:
1. Using zip ties instead of hog rings to slowly "inch-up" on stretching and placement. (Someone doing this for time/money would never do, but great for the hobbyist!)
2. Buying a carpet remnant and adding it under the existing foam to help better distribute loads across all the springs and to make the cushion fuller and firmer for better comfort and wrinkle free stretching of the new vinyl.
3. Encasing the foam in heavy duty plastic garbage bags to allow the new vinyl to slide and stretch uniformly to really get the placement and seams in the right places.

I promise to post a step-by-step for this as I just finished this and it's fresh in my mind. For now, I will just post the before and after.

[68Gold/white]

Look’n good in the NY hood!!

[Ol Blue K20]

Doing some nice work and looking good.

[Love 70 Chevys]

Started the seat project by removing the seat tracks. My seat had not been adjustable due to the missing cable between the two tracks that disengages the lock bar. LMC makes a replacement cable and I used that one. Wire wheeled them, soaked in Evaporust, primed and repainted. Added a thin layer of synthetic grease to all moving parts when I reinstalled them at the end. (Bottom photo.)

[Love 70 Chevys]

Before removing the seat cover I took pics of placement of all the hog rigs as I am sure they were strategically placed at the factory. It was cool that there is an obvious "dip" in the attachment bars at the center of the seat on both the top and bottom frame. That helped a lot with alignment. I pulled out the old reinforcement wires in the hems to re-use in the new vinyl. I love finding old date codes as I pull things apart. There was a metal tag on the back of the top frame with a 8-18-69 date, and 5-69 printed in a repeating pattern on the inside of the vinyl. I really liked finding the 8-18-69 date as it really narrowed down the build date of my truck at the Tarrytown NY plant. I have the original bill of sale as it was a '70 model purchased in September of '69 in Rome NY.