93, #309

[Ryan]

I've had this truck since April 2000. Some time in 2003 I pushed some coolant and decided to pull the motor to mildly build the bottom end and put new heads on. Long story short, the motor got pulled for rebuild and then both the truck and motor sat in storage for 15 years.

Last year I asked a friend who owns a local auto performance shop to start piecing this back together. It was quite the job after sitting for so long having nuts and bolts get lost over the years. Even worse was when we found out the crew that I had asked to pull the motor for me decided it was OK to cut wires and bend lines to get the job done.

Truck is back and runs strong. I don't facebook so I'll be posting project updates as I work on it here for the hell of it.

 

[Ryan]

About a week after getting the truck back on the road putting break in miles on I managed to have the drivers side fender cladding rip off. It was pretty loose and had a large crack in it. Luckily it was a back road and I was able to find both pieces that split in half. All the tabs were still attached to the truck. I also had a few cracks and a large hole from when a fox ran out in front of me one night and I hit it head on and it destroyed my lower cche.

 

[Ryan]

I used west system g/flex to get the tabs reattached and upol 7061 for the body filler. I've never done body work before and I'm sure it shows.

 

[Ryan]

After my stint of body work that seemed to take me weeks to finish I went back to putting more break in miles on it. Ran into an issue where I couldn't get more than a couple pounds of boost. To narrow things down I pulled the cat to see if it was plugged, looked great. Catless still no more than 4psi.

I threw a boost gauge on the turbo outlet as well as after the throttle body and I could see it was 15psi pre intercooler and 4-5 psi at the intake. The throttle body wasn't opening completely and after fixing that it was still only about 6 psi. So it pointed me to the stock intercooler as having an issue.

I pulled the IC off my 92 to make sure and first gear pull had 10-12psi so I called the test confirmed that the IC was clogged. I soaked the IC overnight in mineral spirits to the brim and rinsed it out and let it sit for a couple days but still no real improvement.



My dilemma was to try and have this fixed at a local radiator shop, maybe even re-cored. Since I've had plans to run an air to air at some point I just decided now is as good a time as any to go down that road.

This aluminum core support showed up in about 2 days after I ordered it from deviance fabrication. It's a nice piece.



The plan is to run AC still as well as the stock style turbo outlet with this a2a and it shouldn't be a problem. Mocking things up right now.

 

[Ryan]

While I wait for some intercooler pieces to show up we started mocking up a new downpipe.

The cutout needs a bit of help to clear a crossmember. It's not the prettiest work and all we had at the time was a mig but I think it will work just fine.

 

[Adam#0213]

Wow that's awesome. Sucks you had some body damage on the cladding.