OK, here she is. 81 J-10 Laredo Build

[Mars]

I'm pooped, and the rain aint helpin

Okay so I tore the front end down a bit.
Doing a little detective work as I went.
I can only imagine the cooling issues this truck had with that puny radiator.

And it looks like they were getting desperate.
This fan is like suspended midair.. and wired in with two grounds..


I wasted no time cutting that thing out and pulling all the bubba wiring.

btw, you like the wasp nest? That makes number 8, no joke. And theres some kind of Mud Dauber Community on the side of the rear diff..brake parts cleaner is your friend! hehe

Started getting into the face panel removal.
Yanked the bumper, still thinking about the 3 piece I have in the bed. But the mounts are way different.


And started clearing nests and bug condos.


Wiring was a little stiff and brittle so I took my time and was as careful as I could be.
Pulled the condenser and the drier.

Toast..

Had to cut the lead to the left turn signal. One wire came out from the back of the plug and then a good amount of green powder. I didnt get pics of it. I'm sure you all have seen crusty terminals.

Finally wrestled the core support out. That looks so strange..
And I can say that air tools or your friend. I've done the front end tear down three times now. The previous ones were in a driveway under direct sun with hand tools. THIS time, I had shade and air tools.. so much faster and easier on your hands.


I stopped after that to hit the nearby hardware store for some new core support bolts. The ones I took off were crusty.. and I didnt feel right re-using them.
The rain picked up and threatened to drown out my little radio, so I closed the door behind me, hence the darker pictures.

I decided to reuse the face panel I had removed from the truck because the other didnt have the mounting tabs for the muscle grill. The other is ready for a boobie or razor grille, and should I decide to go that direction ( probably ) I'll hang onto it. Without another thought I chucked it back into the bed of the truck and bolted the original face panel back on.
Guess what?

I6 and V8 Face panels are different too!
Ask me how I know?
Wait I'll show ya...
After the all day sucker this job turned into I thought I was almost to a good stopping point for the night so I go to drop my radiator in.. *thunk*

Uh oh..

another angle..


That's the chunk of the face panej I needed to remove to clear the v8 radiator. So we're gonna consider that a custom face panel now

After a little more trimming and some eyeballing I finally bolted in the radiator.

You can see the cut turn signal wiring there... I'll deal with it tomorrow.. so a 20 minute job of dropping in a new radiator turned into about.. 6 hours? plus run time for hardware and the extra cost of it.
Meh..
Cold, damp and tired I shut down for the night and headed home..


And in my best Borat impression...

GREAT SUCCESS!

[Strode]

The GMOD strikes again, and again.....

Good work, it's nice to make progress.

I see the one face panel is blacked out. I'm wondering if being blacked out would look better behind the grille instead of the red. Mine was red too and I'm wondering if I should black it out.....Just wondering outloud on your thread.

[Mars]

I blacked out the other one because I had a decent razor grill on it and I wanted it to pop.

I have a ton more pics and a couple movies to post. just trying to find the motivation.. I r tired.

The GMOD strikes again, and again...

Huh?

Okay so after dinner and a little nap I'll post the rest of the progress.

Here's a Vid of Startup

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GBXVn14OkA&feature=youtu.be

That's not a cold startup but pretty close. After I put my phone back in my pocket I let her run for another 40 minutes or so burping the air out of the cooling system and power steering system.

I discovered that I needed to clean out my heater box... I was sitting in the cab pusing buttons and figuring out what worked and what didnt when I kicked on the heater.
What can only be decribed as an angry growl filled the cab, and small chunks of shredded leaves cam spewing from the defroster vents.. covering me the dash and pretty much everything else.
I shut off the blower and tried to move the heat selector only to find that it moved maybe a quarter of the way from cool to warm.. the cable is fine the door is jammed.
I would guess the leaf sprinkling and the jammed diverter are related.
Feeling the hoses to and from the heater core tells me that it's getting hot coolant and hot coolant is coming out, so it's not obstructed.

Disapointed that I apparently didnt flush the system well enough as the running turned my nice clean bright green coolant into a muddy mixture. Good news is that it's better than what it had and good to thirty below zero.

Here's where I was just before calling it a night sunday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ6UQfEUZWg&feature=plcp

Picture time.
Tire that came off.

Yeah these had about 20 feet left in em.

Vito, the guy who has the body shop next door told me that the rims on my truck are off a chevy truck, and were only made two years.
I guess the blazers and suburbans were still the old square body for two years after the pickups went to the new body in 88 or 89.
And these rims were on those. Interesting.

Had a couple close calls today.
The truck started to fall off the rack toward me. It was slow and I was able to grab the bumper and shove it back up.
I mounted the wheels and put it on the ground.
If I had to guess, when I had it running and revving it up the whole truck would move, maybe it shifted forward a little.

And the second was a rookie mistake. And very nearly a costly one.
Here's the pic.

That is the test light I was using sunday night to poke at the headlight harness.
When I fired the truck up today to pull it forward off the rack I heard a strange noise and the truck shut right off.
I came out to find this.
Nothing was damaged, I would be so screwed if that had hit my brand new radiator.
I unwound the light and it still works fine but decided to call it a night after two close calls within a coulpe hours of each other.

I'm more tired than I thought.

Mike

[crispyboy]

Your making that into one fine looking pickup - good work.
You may want to dump the flex fan for a factory clutch fan setup if your doing mostly on-road driving. I remember flex fans being noisy and won't help your fuel efficiency.

[Mars]

Your making that into one fine looking pickup - good work.
You may want to dump the flex fan for a factory clutch fan setup if your doing mostly on-road driving. I remember flex fans being noisy and won't help your fuel efficiency.

No doubt, it's on the list of things I want to get done. Either a clutched fan or an electric one. Either way that wood chipper needs to go

Anyway I need to update to here goes.

After my close calls I went home and got a good night's sleep.
I came back the next day rested,focused and determined.
Detective work on the front harness started in earnest.

How hard could it be right?

If you you watched my video I posted a link to "Electric Voodoo" I was demonstrating a wierd grounding issue I was facing. Thinking this issue and the non-op headlights were related I dug right in.
What I discovered was the headlights and the turn signal/markers are "seperate" systems in as much as one will continue to function after the other fails. And turns out this issue and the headlamp one was not related.

Now the Signal/markers are interesting in how they are wired. When the running lights are on both the low element and the high element in the turn signal bulb are energized and the side marker as well. The Marker and the High element are in series, with only enough power to light the lower amp bulp, actually using the high element to comlete the circuit. When the signal is activated it switches the ground, cutting the marker off and allowing the high element to light and the marker "blink".
Isnt Ohms law fun? Pretty slick imo.

I eliminated the crusty turn signal plugs that go up into the face panel in hopes of removing unwanted resistance and to get a more reliable connection to the socket. I was trying to reuse the wanky junk sockets that were original to the jeep. And after cutting and soldering the new connections I turned my attention to the socket. I say with a wire brust and a top post terminal brush and made the insides of that socket shine like new. My best result was a flickering side marker due to a poor connection in the socket with the bulb ( part of that curcuit remember? )

I was willing to live with this result, not happy with it but it was better than what I had, at least it kinda worked. ( Sounds like a Jeep motto )

After getting the markers and signals functional ( sorta ) I started in on the headlamps.
Almost instantly I had a terminal snap off in my hand.

Me being the cheap bastage that I am.. I soldered the puppy right back on!
Take that!

Sadly that didnt magically fix my headlight issue.. the shop didnt fill with a holy light and angels didnt sing.. darn

My sacrificial test light ( yes the one the fan ate ) told me I had a tiny trickle of power coming through on the low beam circuit, and reversing the test light to ground to the positive terminal of the battery told me my grounds were solid. So I went upstream.
The fact the markers and whatnot were getting power told me the headlight switch was getting power and the source was a common one so I concentrated on just the headlamp circuit.
Next stop was the dimmer..



Bingo!
It looks like the terminal hot way hot when the dimmer failed.
I didnt get a good pic of it but it looked like it had been sitting under water for years.. green, crusty and needing to go away.

I wanna thank Bill for the suggestion, He told me to just go ahead and buy a new dimmer switch, I'll probably need it.. So just off the frame of that second pic was a brand new one sitting in the box. Two screws and a plug and I had low beams... But still no high beams.

Test light said.. ( yes that one ) that I was getting good power through both leads and it was switching properly.. but the lamps were not lighting..
Reluctanty I pulled a head lamp and using the battery charger I started testing the lamp..
NO high beam.. Element must have been burned out. okay new lamp needed. Tested the other one.. same stinkin thing.. How in the world could both high beams blow out? Maybe that's what cooked the plug and the whole system blew? Who knows. But it's something to watch out for.
I will be going back and dunking that whole switch in liquid tape to seal it up.

There's also a hole about 6 inches above the switch just below the fuse box where PO's were running mass wires through the firewall.. I think that needs to go too.. you don't need a hole you can stick your thumb into for wires..

Anyway..
I'm about to button up the front end after getting new lights, and having everything I should have, nice and bright.
And I'm clearing out some extra bits off my tool cart when I pick up a turn signal socket off of a recently scrapped 95 Tahoe (I keep stuff remember?)
I'm turning it over in my hand.. then pick up one of the jeep's front turn signal housing.. I stick it in and it fits and locks in!! HOLY CRAP!!



Neat eh?
Here's a side by side comparison.

It doesnt exactly LOCK into place but it fits nice and snug and the foam gasket on the plug keeps it firmly in place.
It also uses the same bulb the Jeep uses so there isnt any voltage issues.
Here's how you wire it.

Black to black, that's your ground.
on this one I had a brown and a light blue lead.
So brown to white
and Light blue to white with the black stripe.
But ALWAYS black to black and you can check yourself by turning on your running lights.
If the high element just barely lights up you've got them backwards.

Connected and shrink tubing

Buttoned up.
And these are used on a TON of GM cars/trucks easily replaced from a parts store and really easy to wire up.
I call that a win on all fronts.
Here's the other side..

I would also like to point out that me being a pack rat paid off again.. I found these buckets with unbroken tabs in my pile!
The ones I removed were held in by RTV.
And let there be light dangint!

Nice and bright and no flickering markers!
So I buttoned up the front end and moved to the back.
My tail lights and running lights worked fine but I had to take them apart to fish out my side markers.
What came off vs what went back on.. Again bits from the parts pile.
These I think came off a 77 f-100 I had. Those side markers were in use all through those years and were on the econoline vans up into the 90's.

Now this side was a bit of a pain.. notice the lack of holes?

Bondo. there was a skim coat of filler on this panel. I used my pick tool and poked them out from the inside.
Meanwhile the Side marker and I would play peek-a-boo for a little while.. usually dropping back into the bedside only after putting the tail light back in..

I fixed it wagon.. pull back through NOW you little..
So I got the back end buttoned up and even installed a plate light! (didnt have one)
Cut out a ton of butchered and frayed trailer wiring and got some lunch.

Now here's where my wiring OCD kicks in..
I was probing with my meter and noticed a HUGE voltage drop between the battery and they body, and between the battery and the starter solenoid.
I condiser 2 volts to the body and 1.4 volts to the starter huge. Who wouldnt right?
So...
Who does this??

At some point I suppose the ground lead broke.. so bubba just took the smalles wire he could find and duct taped it on.. ugh.. but one thing at a time..
Here's where I got medieval on the battery terminals..
Cut cleaned and tinned the wires..

Had to put a lot of heat into that wire to properly tin it as evidenced by the shrink tube further down the wire.

[Mars]

Apparently my original post was too long.. by 600 some characters..
SO I'll continue here.

After tinning the wire I cleaned and clearanced the terminal.

I filled the void with solder ensuring a good connection and installed the terminal.
Voltage drop was only the natural resistance of the wire and not enough to mention.
I then moved onto the negative terminal.

I used a 10 gauge wire for the body lead and replaced the negative cable entirely.
Then cut a notch in the insulation to allow the wires to lay together more smoothly.
I tinned them and gave the terminal the same treatment.

Voltage drop was again just the natural resistance in the wires so I was very happy with the work and it looks sweet too
At least now the battery will be pushing the starter and not the wires.

I've noticed some drips under the jeep after moving it around.
I've got fuel and coolant dropping.
Upon closer inspection I've also got the beginnings of a power steering leak. Seems to be leaking from the back of the res but the lines are tight and dry..
The coolant was a defective clamp and easily fixed.
The fuel is dropping off the bottom of the pump and I can't seem to see where it's coming from..
I guess I'll clean it and replace all the rubber lines and see if it returns.

That's it for today!

Mike

[Mars]

I got to drive her today. For whatever reason the fuel leak seems to be getting smaller? Odd. Still can't find the source. So I figure I'll just nuke from orbit, it's the only way to be sure. New pump, lines and filter.

But that is for another day..

I GOT TO DRIVE MY JEEP!!!
And I'm still grinning like an idiot...

Yeah pictures..
Both my girls

"Little Red" on the left. 95 S-10 who was purchased new in 96 as a end of year orphan. She Just turned 256,000 miles original engine, trans and axles.
Part of the family.
And I guess "Big Red" on the right..
It's been a hilarious day for me today, the guys down at the shop never understood my jeep fetish and I've never tried to explain. Everyone who's seen the jeep these last few days all comment on how badGreat Googley MoogleyGreat Googley MoogleyGreat Googley MoogleyGreat Googley MoogleyGreat Googley Moogley she is. Maybe we have some converts.
Here's a second shot after my little ride. She hit 60mph like it was nothing.. and considering it was in a 35mph zone.. yeah I got to test out my new brakes right away

sitting like a BOSS!
And I made a vid of a walkaround as she sat there runnin.



I've secured a new engine and trans for the M-715 so that's next. But probably not till after the snow falls.


My poor 715.. I'll get it in soon

I've still got interior and dash issues to tackle so I'll keep updating this thread.
And the feedback has been a real motivator.
Thanks for reading.

Mike

[Strode]

That's sweet you got to drive it. Way to get after it.

[Mars]

Thanks man! I know this isnt a major build, just more or less putting it back on the road but it's huge for me. And when you have a month to sit and plot and plan things come together fairly easily and quickly.

[OutrageGIS]

Nice Job!

Nice work. Really a good looking truck. Now you just need to strike oil on your property to fuel it! (coming from a guy who dd's a 79 QT cherk - 12K last year!)

[Mars]

Nice work. Really a good looking truck. Now you just need to strike oil on your property to fuel it! (coming from a guy who dd's a 79 QT cherk - 12K last year!)

hehe youre not helping!!

[Mars]

Found my fuel leak!
Thankfully it didnt find me.. I had a clamp loose on the return side of the fuel filter.. That could have been a disaster.

Also.

Guess how much fun I had today?

Actually quite a bit. Once I got things sorted out.

Someone stole the gas outta my jeep. Left me with enough to start it and putter it halfway around the building where it promptly croaked.

Went to start the wrecker to drag it around ( Cause I am not pushing this thing uphill in gravel! ) and the batteries are stone dead..

Get the Wrecker started and grab the jeep.. boom no fuel.. Wrecker got hit too.

So.. I put the wrecker back on the charger having *just* enough cord to get the charger out to it. ( about 60 yards ) and proceed to hunt up cans for gas and diesel. Of course none to be found.. So I drive home to fetch cans..
Mind you the jeep and wrecker are locked together at the side of the road out in front of the shop.. thankfully on the same side of the road so I didnt have a cord going across the street.

And since I'm a thinker I decide to chain the charger to the truck so it don't wander off.. And proceed to drive the 15 miles one way to get some gas cans.

I get to the house and grab my diesel can and my gas can. They aint where I left em.. so I start to hunt.. and just before I resign myself to transporting fuel in a dixie cup I find them. The gas can is full of water, and the diesel is full of gas and 2 cycle oil.. Really?!?
I get it sorted and head to the station. And promptly realize I left my wallet on the toolbox at the shop..

Fine, whatever.. I drive back down and grab the wallet and head back out after various fuels.. then proceed to spend the next 25 minutes purging the air out of the wrecker and finally... FINALLY getting the jeep hauled around to the bay door.. remember the jeep? sheesh..

Stuff the jeep into the garage with the wrecker and park it.. not gonna deal with it anymore today..and finally get to work on the jeep.

I snapped those heads off pretty quick and a moment of panic set in. Still a little from the start of my morning, now afternoon. I'm looking at my options, considering all I wanted to do was get rid of that annoying tick from under the hood.

I decided to take a break.. a long one.

Coming back to it fresh ( as it gets at this point ) I started hunting for easy outs. I found one, and tapped it gently into the hole through the bolt ( I Kroiled the poop outta these bolts ) and promply snapped the easy out in half flush with the bolt..

So there I am, bent over into the engine bay, ducked around the meathook of death staring intently at the shiny little stub of metal that used to be an easy out.. blood boiling.. as if the hate I was feeling would somehow remove it..

Then I got smart.. or desperate..

I fired up the mig welder!
Kicked it up to 11 and fixed that bolt's lil wagon.
Took all of about 15 second once I got the area clean enough to weld and got the welder setup. I went ahead and used flux core wire since I havent had time to plumb up the gas yet.

And best of all.. no more tick from under the hood

[OutrageGIS]

Easy Outs...

Sounds like another satisfied Easy Out customer...

[Mars]

Don't get me started on the easy outs..

But anyway, drove her around a bit more today went and got gas... Got stopped by a fella that wanted to talk jeeps for roughly 30 minutes..

Washed her, and went and got something to eat.. and got stopped by another guy who wanted to talk jeeps for about 30 minutes..

Then headed home and decided to pull off and grab a six pack, and got stopped by another guy who wanted to talk jeeps..

I guess she gets attention.

Brakes went out pulling into my neighborhood, right to the floor.
After having great brakes all day I can only assume a couple things.

Either I've popped a line or the master is out. wierd.

Mike

[Mars]

Yep it's the master cylinder, no loss of fluid.

Fortunately my local place has a reman on the shelf for 20 bucks.

I was hoping to be doing other things on it today..