Sport Truck On 'Roids -- Our Chevy S-10 Gets The V-8 It Should Have Had!

Today, we're in our brand new shop with part two of our sport truck on steroids.

We'll drop a Chevy V8 Drive train an Rs 10

and we'll do it all for under 10 grand.

Welcome to drug

and a brand new shop here at the Power Block Tech Center.

We've got to be the luckiest guys on the planet. We've got everything it takes to tackle any job we could dream up and then a few more

Matt and this shop is amazing and we are so pumped to be here. The best thing is that we're right down the hall from Ian and Jessi Lou and Jared Mike and Joe and Courtney. But now I bet you're looking at this, wondering

what the heck is it?

This is our very own crane.

We called our good friends over at

Kall Industries told them we needed the biggest baddest crane they had.

So what do they do?

They brought over this awesome K track 15 ft tall with twin 43 ft bridges. Our Cundall Crane has two Harrington, one ton hoists which will allow us to lift engines, truck beds, even whole bodies and move them anywhere. We want.

Obviously, the new shops are work in progress and we'll be continually upgrading and adding stuff as we go. But for now we got a truck to build.

Now, you guys remember project S

10-K, our $10,000 budget build up that is going to transform this boring, worn out commuter vehicle into a reliable rock solid and great looking street truck.

So far, we've spent $1400 on our brake system.

350 bucks on our rear lowering springs and blocks

in about eight Bs on oe replacement shocks all the way around.

Then we went to Tyra

dot com's garage tool and picked out these trick looking 17 inch hoops wrapped in 2 45 45 17

for a very reasonable 1240 bucks with the B and M shift kit and whole shot converter. We dropped another 584 bucks

that eats up $3654

and only leaves us with about 6300 bucks left over which means we gotta start pitching pennies. Oh, yeah. Let me show you what I bought with my roll of pennies.

It's the GM performance 350 crate engine.

It's got four bolt mains, steel rods, cast aluminum pistons and makes 290 horses and 326 pound feet of torque.

We got some other tricks up our sleeve to wake it up a little too such as Hollies projection, dual plane intake manifold

and their high performance throttle.

Now, what this is going to allow us to do is to utilize the original wiring and computer in our S 10 and check out these valve covers from GM performance nice with headers and TB I injection. We're looking at a solid 300 horse.

Now, the good news for us since we're trying to save money is that all of this stuff is going to bolt right onto our crate. 350.

We're doubling the horsepower of our S 10, but we can reuse our pulleys brackets, power steering

and the AC system from the 4.3

your better auto parts stores,

they'll loan you most of the tools you need like pullers and installers if you don't already have them at home, now,

we're using air to save time,

but

all this can be done with basic hand tools,

cleaning these brackets won't make them work any better, but there's nothing wrong with making things look better and now's the time to do it

just because we're on a budget. It doesn't mean we have to look like it

when they say crate engine. They mean it literally comes shipped in a crate. It's a brand new long block from the heads down. This is not remanufactured

and nothing against Remans, but for just 1500 bucks, it's nice to know we'll get a full and long life out of this engine.

Hey, no. Surprises here, installing a new intake manifold, we're going to use stock replacement gaskets and some R TV for the front and rear seal. But the first thing I'm going to do

is get rid of those boring steel valve covers

a thin film of R TV sealant around the water jackets will hold your gaskets in place while you set your intake manifold

after your quarter inch bead is run front and rear,

gently set the manifold in place and finger tighten the bolts

R TV stands for room temperature vulcanization

which means that it cures in the open air

following the manufacturer's torque sequence. Torque the manifold to 20 to 25 ft pounds

as good as our TV is, it can act as a lubricant with court gaskets. And if you over tighten, you can push your gaskets out and cause leaks. Just use gasket glue to hold things in place.

Finally, we use a lift plate

that'll stop anything from dropping into the top of the engine.

That's never good.

All right. Next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna install the flex plate.

One thing we can't use off the 4.3 is the old Flex plate.

Our V8 Flex plate set us back 50 bucks.

We're going to be using this high torque starter from GM performance because it's going to give us more header clearance and it's not going to be as affected by the excessive exhaust gas temperature from the headers

and you guys remember last time we worked on S

10-K, we divorced our tranny from old

Lamo, but we still got some unfinished business up here.

That's right, Kev.

And with this new torque converter, we're gonna put this tranny with our new motor

and we've got a match made in heaven

up next. A new converter and serpentine pulley all on the cheek.

Hey, welcome back to trucks and our awesome new shop here at the power block tech center. Yeah, the next thing we gotta do is install our new torque converter into our tranny. Remember when we had this open, it was super clean and it shifted smooth.

So we added a shift kit that would handle the power of our 350. So the only thing we're gonna have to do today is change out the torque converter,

give ourselves a little more insurance by replacing the seal.

Now here's where most tranny leaks happen at

the front pump seal. A seal was shipped with our new converter so carefully pri the old one out

and see the new one back in place.

Before you install your new torque converter, you want to be sure to fill it with one quart of tranny fluid for lubrication.

Before your initial start up,

our new V8 makes 330 ft pounds at 3700 RPM

and this new converter will engage right at about 3200

giving us peak torque at the best place in the power band

we're trying to do as much assembly as we can out of the truck just because we got 360 degrees of access.

Great.

Yeah,

these made together perfectly. Now, we'll b the converter to the flex plate. It's nice to have somebody to help here too. And it saves time. Now, even though these are lock nuts, you wanna make sure you use thread lock as well.

All right, we've got our torque converter bolted up. Now it's time to put the dust shield on.

All right, our brackets are all spruced up. All the accessories from our 4.3 are ready to put on our new 350. The only thing we won't reuse is this water pump. We went down to o'reilly's and picked one up. But before any of this goes in place, you got to replace your balancer.

Yeah, I'll take that.

All right,

before you put your balancer on, you're gonna wanna make sure you use your new woodruff key

with the balancer on the front of the crane.

Use the mounting bolt to pull it up onto the shaft,

but not all the way until you put your crank pulley on.

Ok. With a pulley in place, we tighten down the center bolt and it seats the bouncer.

Since we're using the truck's fuel pump in the tank, we'll block off the mechanical pump port on the block.

Be sure to use the correct water pump for your drive pulleys. Our serpentine system uses a 1988 and newer reverse rotation pump made for a 350. Your engine will overheat if the pump runs the wrong way.

Now,

that's a cast iron pump, but we hit it with some aluminum paint and it matches everything else pretty good.

Now, this truck came with air and it's still going to blow coal because everything bolts right back up.

Yeah.

And if you wanna run a serpentine system, but you're on a budget,

you can use the factory GM, set up and save yourself some money.

Using a straight edge will help you keep your pulleys aligned.

A mechanical clutch fan is still one of the best ways to move air across an engine. And you still have the option of reusing the 4.3 fan with the SS 10 V8 swap.

If you want to drop your distributor in with the engine out of the vehicle because you've got almost no firewall clearance with this thing installed. Now, in order to drop your distributor in place properly, you've got to establish top net center on number one cylinder. An easy way to do that is to turn the engine over by hand while your thumbs over the spark plug hole.

And when you hear the air escape from the cylinder,

you know, you're there,

there you go.

When you seat your distributor, make sure the rotor is pointing at number one, we're using the patrons.

He, I with a separate coil because it has a much smaller cap

with the engine ready. It's time to stuff her in.

But before we do that, we gotta get the truck over to the lift and we'll do that during the break.

When we come back,

we'll wedge it all together and reset the pinion angle.

All right. Welcome back to trucks and our project S

10-K. Now, this is the time where we put our 350 V8 into our S 10.

But before we do that,

we're gonna show you how we got to this point,

we ditched the old V6

added a shift it to the tranny

bolted on a new torque converter,

married it to our new 350 B eight create engine

and slapped on all the accessories.

Now, all that work's got us to this point. Our 350 is put together polished and ready to go

since we're going from a V6 to a V8. Obviously, the stock motor mounts a could have cut it. But let me show you what will

we called stealth conversions. And they sent us this kit that utilizes these 2.8 L motor mounts along with their laser cut engine mounts. And this system will allow us to drop our V8 down into the stock S 10 location. Now, this is the most important part of this kit because as you guys know, when you slam a truck, like we've done. Your whole drive line gets thrown out of whack your pinion angle changes the relationship of your tail shaft and your yoke changes. So we also had them send us this transmission spacer,

this support bearing spacer

and this pin angle shim. Now, this is specifically designed for the amount of drop that we've got on Rs 10. It's going to get us right back on track. They also have an axle setback kit, all filter relocation brackets, even these spacers to create your own rad hoses for your conversion. Plus they've got this awesome manual that covers both two and four wheel drive S 10 VA conversions.

You ready? Yeah, let's get these on cool.

The 2.8 was a V6 used in S tens and a lot of other GM cars in the eighties.

And since our 95 frame is the same as the older ones, these motor mounts will bolt right into place.

Yeah, I know. Not everybody has an overhead crane like our cundall,

but

everything we're doing here can be done with an inexpensive cherry picker and a good set of jack stands.

Whoa,

whoa.

Hey guys, this is exactly why we put the distributor in over the table because there is no clearance between the distributor and a firewall. That's right. The wrong move. You'll bust that cap off in a heartbeat.

That's no good. That's never

good.

This is really a two man job and it'll probably take you 45 minutes to an hour.

Once the engine and training are in place,

the engine plates go in between the mounts and the block

and then all the bolts are hand tight.

Now with all the bolts in,

jack your engine up to the highest adjustment,

then snug it all down

that way, you'll have the best clearance between your oil pan

and cross member

has a look.

Looks good,

man. We got tons of clearance here. A lot of things lined up good.

There's a couple of real good reasons you want to use headers on a project like ours. The biggest one is that the left bank cast iron manifold is going to give you a fit problem and this header is designed so that our steering shaft goes right through the primaries like that.

Now, painted headers are fine, but they're only painted on the outside. And eventually over time, they're going to rust through from condensation on the inside.

These ceramic metallic coated headers are coated on the inside of the tubes as well as the outside. They're going to stay looking as great as they do right now. And since these Patriots are only about 100 bucks higher than the painted headers, guess what we're using.

You know, I really like those headers we got, but

you're gonna wanna make sure you put your plugs in before the headers go on because you know what a bear they are to get to, especially that number six plug.

You should always pre gp your plugs before you throw them in.

Never assume they're gapped right from the factory.

The passenger side is no sweat. There's plenty of clearance and it bolts right in

the driver's side, takes a little surgery.

The dust boot goes away because the headers will melt it.

The steering box is unbolted from the frame while it's still connected to the pitman arm

and the steering shaft is unbolted at the rag joint

and then the box is set aside.

Now, on the driver's side head, it will slide right in place.

Oh man, those headers look awesome. Paul.

Yeah, they do.

When we come back, we're gonna make sure the rubber meets the road by putting our drive shaft in this S 10 stick around.

Hey, here we are back at trucks

and our S

10-K project,

we've got the motor and the tranny installed. Now let's get this drive line in

and to make sure we got the correct angles. We're gonna use this P alignment shim set up

ready.

We're dropping two inches up front and four inches in the rear and that changes your drive line angles. The result is that the pinion tilts up at the U joint. This could cause extra wear and even force the drive shaft into the floor as the axle wraps under hard acceleration.

The sea clamps are a good way to keep all the leaves in place while we're working.

Now, we can finally install the drive shaft.

We could go have a one piece shaft made if we were gonna go race this truck.

But

there's nothing wrong with a two piece shaft for the street.

And our rear axle is the same one that GM uses for most of his va Camaros.

So

they'll handle the extra power of our V8. No sweat.

All right.

Let's, uh, get her on the ground. Let's do it,

man. We got a shift kit. We got headers and it's dropped into the weeds with a 350

we're still under budget.

There. It is. Check it out, man.

First motor in the new shop. I can't wait to break it in.

Hey,

it's like that giant crane on top.

You guys are wondering what the hell is this?

Well, Kevin and I are gonna tell you all about it. That's right. Goat boy, this is,

this is Kellerman's 2005, 2500 series four by four. This baby is sitting on a 12 inch straight axle conversion lift kit and it's got a computerized air ride system with three different ride height settings. This is the highest setting, but check this out.

Two compressors feed 23 gallon air tanks to keep the bags happy. While dual bill stains on each corner are gonna absorb any bumps that you might feel

crushing small cars of these 40 by 15.5 by 22 inch mitos

as awesome as that truck is. You could get a Kelderman air ride for your ride.

This is their 10 to 12 inch air ride suspension lift kit.

It replaces your factory coils with these big old long travel high capacity air bags. Your factory trailing arms are replaced with these longer ones to keep the axle in the correct location

and check out this massive sway bar.

You get all the hardware you need. and what's cool is these kits require a minimal amount of cutting and drilling when you consider a 12 inch lift, that's pretty impressive.

Options include Billstein shocks and various different controllers. Kelderman air ride kits start at about six grand.

These may be small but they're mighty. These are jammer injectors by edge products.

Edge has worked with a major OEM manufacturer to make an injector designed from the ground up for high performance applications.

These can flow up to 83 pounds per hour

yet idle as smooth as silk and they fit almost any engine that uses a stock Bosch

or GM connector.

How good are they? You ask?

Hennessy uses these in the world's fastest Street Viper.

Now they come in both long and short. So take your pick, they'll both run you about 65 bucks.