Hi all, I'm Andrew. I live in the south bend, Indiana area, and I just bought a 1977 4x2 a couple weeks ago. I picked it up as a 3rd vehicle, because my wife has a Saab and I have a volvo, and I'm screwing around with them a lot. When i take one off the road to do anything, it's good to have a backup vehicle. As a side bonus, It's nice having a truck to haul stuff and tow stuff. My friend Aaron (vjz on here) found this truck near us and went to look at it with me. I handed him $400 and he handed me the title and keys. Once I got it home, i got to thinking about it, and since I love tinkering with stuff and want this truck to be reliable, so i started playing the "what if" game. Now, I have the truck in my garage with the motor torn down to the block and am getting ready to pull that tomorrow. Glad I did it...the valve cover gasket was shot, and the head gasket was a mess. Glad that parts for this truck are so cheap! So far i've bought new rear drums, shoes, and hardware because one of the brakes was sticking. I've also bought a complete head gasket set for it, oil pan gasket, timing cover gasket, timing set, water pump, header, weber carb, and enough purple power to get everything clean. I generally like fixing things right the first time, which is how i wound up with everything completely apart. I plan on painting the block and valve cover, and cleaning everything up nicely before reassembly. at least once all this is done (and by the way, this engine is a cake walk compared to building a volvo motor) I should have a very clean and reliable truck that will last me a long time. Once i get the motor done, I plan on fixing some things on the body. the cab corners are gone, as are most of the rocker panels. There's also a couple bad spots on the passenger side door where a mirror gor ripped off. The bed is in amazingly good shape....I'll probably pull that off when the weather gets a little nicer so i can POR-15 the bottom of the bed and the frame and put in a bedliner. While I have it off, I'll check out the condition of the rear brake lines and wiring for the tail lights. A previous owner put on 7 wire hitch wiring, which I plan on removing in favor of a standard 4 flat. None of the 7 way works, and from looking at things under the bed, there was a lot of "hillbilly wiring" going on. I've seen a couple household wire nuts under there....yikes. Anyway, thats all for now. Hopefully I can get some good pictures of this engine build up soon so people can see what i have goin on. I think this is gonna be a fun little truck.
Here's where I'm at so far: Most of the engine parts are over at my friend's house after some quality time in the parts washer. They came out GREAT, especially when you consider that there was 35 years of accumulated crap all over them. More to come.
