Stink 10 Two my second Blazer.

[vcho455]

This thread is about my second S10 Blazer. First off the name. My first little Blazer was originally for my wife to drive in conjunction with our beauty salon businesses. At one point she told me that she knew what the "S" in S10 stood for. Of course I asked and she said "Stink". I then I had to ask "What do you mean?" and her answer was that a couple days earlier a milk jug started leaking in the back seat and now the truck reeked of sour milk hence the stink. Not only did the name stick but as we discovered the smell did too!

Over the years if the carpeting under the rear seat got wet, the sour milk smell would reactivate itself? Yea! First photo is the original Stink Ten hard at work delivering a sandblaster to my friend's body shop.

After years of calling the Blazer "Stink Ten" it was natural to refer to its replacement as the Stink Ten Two. The second one came around after seeing it listed Craigslist for a couple of months for $7400. It had a 2nd gen LT1 and a T56 installed and although the pictures weren't the best and the information wasn't very clear I decided to check it out, who knows after it being listed for so long maybe the owner would be willing to deal.

The truck turned out to be more than the ad indicated. The LT1 swap was done well with all the factory guages working and the wiring done nicely. The front seats were from the donor Camaro the engine and transmission came from. The front suspension consisted of stock lower arms, non-adjustable UMI uppers with tall ball joints connected to 2002 ZQ8 Blazer spindles with the two piston calipers. The rear end was taken from the same 2002 Blazer, a disc brake 8.5 with posi and 3.42 gears carried by lowering springs and CalTracs. The downside was the truck had a real issue with the steering. It had about 45 degrees of play in the steering wheel which the seller said was from the steering box going bad.

In addition it was Green! Forest Service green, so I traded $7000 for the truck and some spare parts the seller threw in. The drive home was interesting with the steering but, nothing too scary. The wife started calling me the Wagonmaster after I lined my truck fleet for a photo op.(Last photo) Thus ends the first post. I have more to post of the progress over the nearly 3 years I've owned it.

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[vcho455]

I ordered a new steering box from Red Head which took longer and was more expensive than expected. Apparently manual steering boxes for these S10's are S10 only. Dang!

The truck being an retired Department of the Interior truck it's a no option truck which means crank windows, no AC, no rear defroster, and manual steering all of which I'm good with. Although having manual steering means a no performance ratio in the box. I did consider converting to power steering but that would make this a six week project and not a 6 hour project. And a lot more money. So for now I stuck with the Armstrong steering.

Once I had the box in hand I tore into the steering only to find the real culprit was that the urethane rag joint had disintegrated. I only needed to replace that to make the steering safe again but, since the truck has 220k plus on it I thought it prudent to install the new box too.

After the box was replaced I did a bunch of general cleaning of the truck. I made a list of things to pick up from the wrecking yard. First was a pair of unfaded marker lights.

A week or so later I swapped the marker lights. Much better. (Photos# 3&4)

[vcho455]

Next was to remove the subwoofer from behind the drivers seat. (Photo #1) It didn't work and it prevented me from laying the rear seat down. (Green arrow in photo #2 shows interference) For me having the rear seat down is the default position for me as I'm always loading things in the back. (Photo #3) I also felt that the subwoofer would be an invitation for some drug addled scumbag to break into the truck. During the removal I found the reason it didn't work. The remote control cable was mashed in the seat track. I may put it in the wife's Javelin at some point.

Then I replaced several missing screws in the dash hoping to solve some the the rattles. That lead to me finding a unidentified metal component deep in the dash that is loose and hanging free to bang around. I didn't have time to tear into the dash deeper to get to it that day. Along the with of fixing rattles I discovered leftover pieces from a now gone Pioneer stereo and 12 disc CD player. More stuff to remove on another day.

The last two pictures show how dirty the truck was. Fortunately it's been pretty easy to clean up.

[Vimes]

Those S10 Blazers are pretty nice. I've had a couple over the years. and would rather have one than the full size made at the same time or the RV size they make now. I never was a sound system guy so don't know for sure, but there should be enough room behind the rear wheelwells to install a pair of smaller subwoofers into the trim panels. I'd not put them into the tailgate since it's a movable piece, ie prone to vibration.

[vcho455]

About this time I got a couple nice surprises. First one was when I pulled the valve covers to check the valves as I thought they were making more noise than I thought they should. No factory rockers on this engine! They looked to be Harland Sharp's but upon close inspection to try and determine what ratio they are I noticed they are likely overseas knock offs judging from the pin in the roller tip. I had a set of rockers I know are Harlands to compare to although that set is 20 years old. I adjusted the valves but no noticeable reduction in noise.

The second surprise came a couple days later when the Gary the previous owner called to say he found a new headliner he had bought for the truck and forgot about and if I wanted it it was mine. While we were talking I asked about the receipts for the engine. When I picked the Blazer up he couldn't find the envelope with the receipts for the engine rebuild, so I asked if he had found those. He hadn't found them but, he said I should change the oil soon as it hadn't been changed since after the initial break in of the engine. I was caught off guard as he had originally put the truck together in 2004 and I assumed that's when the engine had been gone through. So I asked when it had been done and he said it was about 18 months earlier. Wow the truck just got even better. For once assuming something didn't bite me in the butt :

About this time I noticed the pinon seal had started leaking. At first I noticed spots the size of a half dollar but they soon got more significant. So I decided if I was going to have to deal with the seal I would change the gear ratio too.

The F-body T56's have a 2.66 first gear ratio which I'm sure GM chose due to fuel and emission concerns but, otherwise for me they're a real buzz kill. Especially in stop and go traffic in combination with 3.42 rear gears.

The truck's rear axle had 3.42's in it when I got it. There was a receipt for them being installed along with a list of new parts in the documentation that came with the truck. I wanted to put a set of 3.90's in but they were back ordered, so the next best option was 3.73's. I ordered a set along with a pinion spacer set to be used instead of a crush sleeve. Then I dropped the truck and parts off at Six States and had them install the parts.

I am pleased with the results as the truck is nicer to drive in traffic with less need to slip the clutch when starting out. On the other end now 6th gear is usable at 60 mph instead of 65. I still think 3.90's would have been the best compromise but I'd probably still be waiting for them to come off back order and leaving a trail of gear oil everywhere I went.

As a side note the shop reported that the reason the pinion seal was leaking was the pinion shaft bearings were loose and the carrier wasn't shimmed properly and it had slightly too much play. So a new set of bearings got installed too. Now the truck certainly seems smoother at this point.

[vcho455]

Those S10 Blazers are pretty nice. I've had a couple over the years. and would rather have one than the full size made at the same time or the RV size they make now. I never was a sound system guy so don't know for sure, but there should be enough room behind the rear wheelwells to install a pair of smaller subwoofers into the trim panels. I'd not put them into the tailgate since it's a movable piece, ie prone to vibration.

I will admit I didn't think I would like them much when I started driving the first one regularly but they're a great size for me especially when it's time to run errands around town. The 2nd one is even better with its point and shoot acceleration (Compared to the 1st one it way more fun). After working on tugboats most of my career my hearing is poor, poor enough for me to realize spending time and money on fancy stereo equipment is a waste.

[vcho455]

Other odds and ends I took care of was cleaning the air filter. The truck had sat quite a bit before I purchased it. The PO had developed knee issues and the clutch was painful for him to operate. When I first looked at the truck I had noticed a bunch of debris on the top of the engine from rodents and I was concerned about damage that they might of caused but everything electrical checked out. But obviously they had been in the air filter.

The headlights on the truck ended up being junk. They were Hellas but the silvering had failed and so they needed replacing. I sourced new housings and installed relays to ensure proper voltage would be delivered to the bulbs.

I went with Koito H4 headlamps with 60/55W Vosla +150 bulbs that I sourced from Daniel Stern.

https://www.danielsternlighting.com/.../products.html

I had become aware that the heater worked poorly and there was no defroster or vent air flow. After removing the heater controls and testing them with a hand vacuum pump I determined that the control vacuum switch worked. Further troubleshooting lead me to find the vacuum line from the engine was leaking. When I checked the line at the intake it appeared that it had been plugged with some glue. During the removal of the factory plastic vacuum line it snapped in two. Classic old GM vacuum line failure. Then while I was trying to figure out the way to fix that the line snapped off inside the grommet through the firewall. GRRRR!

After 30 minutes of trying to access the grommet from inside I gave up. There is no way to get at it without removing the heater air box and that meant removing the dash. I wasn't going to dive that deep now. So I found a hole in the firewall near the clutch pedal and ran a new hose from the intake to the switch in the heater control unit.

With a good vacuum supply from the engine now the heater worked better and I had a defroster too!

Unfortunately things didn't stay that way for long. The blower became increasingly intermittent in its operation. About half the time it wouldn't run after it was shut off. If I tapped the motor with my pocket knife it would start running or I could also just wait for the right bump to jostle the armature and brushes to get it running but, it seemed like that was requiring larger and larger bumps to do the trick. Needless to say that was getting old.

Replacement of the blower is much simpler on a S10 compared to my 67 Burban. Easy access to all the bolts and just enough room to slide the motor out and in without having to remove other components. Unless you have the ECM for your LT1 mounted adjacent to the motor. Fortunately it was easy to unbolt and slide clear.

All in all this should be a 20 minute job. My issues started when I bought the new blower from NAPA. Initially I bought the motor without the fan. My truck required the non-AC version.

I got the old motor out and the fan swapped on to the new motor and when I inserted it into the housing the fan would hit the back preventing the motor mounting plate from getting closer that about 1/2" to the heater box. So to make a long story short I ended up having to purchase the a motor with the fan included. Fortunately the nice lady at NAPA was able to work the numbers so it was a straight trade for the one that didn't fit.



It appears that the supplier to NAPA has discontinued the Non-AC motor and is only supplying the AC motor with a redesigned fan for Non-AC trucks. The annoying part is the redesigned fan is smaller than the old one. This means the blower is now less efficient and blower output will be reduced. See photo #1 for the size difference.

Another annoying thing is the motor is clocked slightly different so the vent hose no longer fits correctly. The hose is now slightly kinked and no longer sits correctly on the motor. See photo #2.

I can't recommend the NAPA replacement shown in the last photo.

[vcho455]

About this time the turn signal switch began driving me crazy! Half the time when I touched the control arm the wipers would swipe. If I hit a harsh bump the wipers would swipe.

Replacement of the multi-function switch or what is commonly called the wiper switch was the required repair. This component operates the turn signals, the high beam switch and contains the wiper switch components. There are several different versions of the switch depending on if you have a tilt column, delay wipers or cruise control.

Replacement of this switch requires removing the steering wheel, turn signal switch and most of the upper part of the tilt column. Once you have the column disassembled enough to remove the wiper switch you can pull all the slack in the wires down so it is easier to unplug the the switch wiring from the harness.

Once the connector is unplugged remove the wires from the connector so you could pull them up through the column. To release the connector pins from the connector I made a tool by grinding down a used Dremel grinding stone shaft so it fit in the connector. (Photo #6)

Before removing the pins I labeled the connector to make reassembling it easy. The pins are easy to remove if the tool fits correctly. You have to first push the wire in the direction of the yellow arrow, then slide the tool into the connector as shown by the red arrow. (Photo #5)

Once the pins are free of the connector I wrapped the wires with tape with a piece of string underneath the tape. The idea being when I pull the old switch out it will pull the string up the column. Then I can attach the string to the new switch's wires and use the string to pull the wires down the column. When wrapping the tape the idea is not to let the tape make the wire too bulky to pass through the column. The string is laid out next to the wires keeping the bundle flat. (Photo #7) I limit the number of layers of tape to two but, have about 5 inches covered.

When removing and installing the wires I keep light tension on the slack line so if I detect any resistance on the line I'm pulling on I stop and reverse direction to hopefully prevent the wires from getting stuck in the middle of the column. The 1st photo shows the string all set up and ready to pull the new switch wires down into the column.

Once the wires were pulled down the column I reassembled the column stopping before I reinstalled the lock plate. Getting the high beam linkage correctly installed and working smoothly took a couple tries. I made sure the moving pieces were all freshly greased.

At that point I reconnected the battery and tested the high beam switch function as well as the turn signal function. Once I was satisfied with the operation of the mechanical linkages I reinstalled the pins into the wiper connector and plugged the two halves of the wiper connector back together and tested the wiper functions.

Now that everything had tested good, I finished reassembling the column. At 3 & 1/2 hours I might of made flat rate. Much better than I did on the blower motor replacement.

As a side note I'll add that until several years ago I never knew there was a special tool to remove and install the lock plate. I've always used a clamp and two picks to remove the spring clip that holds the plate in place and a large washer with two small pry bars and the two picks again for installation. Shown in photos 2,3,&4

It's really nice to have properly functioning switch. Plus with everything freshly lubricated the switch is so smooth and easy to use I want to change lines more just so I can use the switch.

This link is to a PDF you can download that Jazzman columns has on disassembly of this GM column. I found it useful.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...A7AxPTOBQBRXGP

[vcho455]

Continuing on with an annoying repair that turned into great upgrade.

The clutch master cylinder had begun leaking, so not only more M&R but I'm pretty sure there's going to be damage the paint on the firewall.

This repair started out with me thinking that some re-engineering of the system would be good. The clutch pedal was quite hard and I'm sure I can make it better than it is. I've already had problems with my right knee in the past and I'd rather not have problems with my left knee too. So by changing the master cylinder bore size or moving the post on the pedal that the master cylinder hooks on to I will reduce the force required to depress the clutch pedal.

Using a mirror I was able to determine the current master cylinder has a 0.81 bore size. I know the 1995 Camaro used a 0.75 bore master cylinder. So the PO made a choice to use a different size. I took some measurements of pedal movement and there is no limitation that would prevent me from going to a 0.75 bore. Going to the smaller bore should reduce the foot pressure needed to operate the clutch.

I had obtained a clutch pedal from another first generation S10 from the wrecking yard so if needed I could modify it then just swap pedals.

Removal of the bad cylinder was pretty straight forward and I had it out in about an hour. Once it was on the bench I noticed there were a lot of metallic particles in dust boot on the shaft. A lot as in it looked like it was full of anti-seize! That must have come from wear on cylinder bore.

Once I cleaned the firewall and frame my fears about the paint were confirmed the fire wall and frame paint the PO had used had bubbled up and I was able to wipe it right off. I cleaned it as well as I could and rattle canned it for the time being. It was going to take removal of the inner fender well and the brake booster to do it right.

Once that was done I bolted up the new master cylinder and dry tested the movement of the pedal. And here's where things took a turn to dark side. Ugggg. Another day not making flat rate.

The failure had been caused by pedal and the master cylinder were not lined up with each other properly. When the clutch rod was disconnected I found that I had to pull the pedal actuator rod towards the drivers side about a 1/2 inch in order to hook it to the post. This caused the rod to rub on the side of the mounting bracket. It contacted hard enough to cause the rod to bow when the pedal was depressed As a result of this rubbing the bracket, at the firewall, the rod side loaded the piston inside the master cylinder. This was the cause of all the metallic particles I observed earlier as the piston rubbed the cylinder bore so hard both were grinding into dust.

I decided that there should be enough room to move the master cylinder to to drivers side to solve the problem. Fast forward an hour with the Dremel and I had the mount bracket moved. The PO's work on this part of the truck was definitely not as good as the other parts of the conversion. There was too much material removed, (Photo #3) although some of it must have been left over from the factory clutch mechanism removal. Making that better will be for another day when there isn't an engine in the way.

Back at the task at hand, once I moved the master cylinder I discovered that all I had accomplished was to change what part of the rod contacted the bracket. Before it was during the bottom half of the pedal stroke. Now it was during the top half of the stroke. That was no better than before.

The next day after laying on my back looking at the situation for 15 or so minutes I decided to get a straight edge and hold it up to the side of the pedal. Doing this revealed the second part of the problem.

The pedal assembly in my Blazer is different than the S10 I obtained the spare pedal from. In the wrecking yard truck the bolt that the pedal swings from also has the brake pedal swinging from it. On my truck the pedals are on different bolts. And it appears that the bolt the clutch pedal swings on is not 90 degrees to the driveline like the brake pedal is. This would explain the difficulty I am having getting a proper alignment.

To correct the misalignment I started adding washers to the driver's side mounting bolts to find the angle. After 4 tries I determined that 3/16" worth of washers would get me close the angle I needed. Then I made a crude shim for the bracket (Photo #4) out a piece of 3/16" flat bar. Once that was done and test fitted I found that It was close, but not perfect, but I decided it would work if opened up the slot in the mounting bracket a bit. (Photo #5).

At this point some issues with the new master cylinder became apparent. Every time I checked the angle by shimming it the washers meant bolting the cylinder and bracket in and removing them after checking. It was then I noticed the master cylinder mounting surface wasn't flat and the holes were not accurate. I flattened the surface with a file (Photo #6 &7) and found some plastic I could use as bushings to keep the bolts centered in the holes. (Photos #8) Doing this gave me nice alignment that was repeatable each time I bolted back together.

[vcho455]

Cue Paul Harvey. Time for the rest of the repair.

First is another photo of the bracket and shim. I circled the shim/spacer as it is hard to see. I used the two studs to hold the shim in place every time I installed and removed the master cylinder and bracket.

If you look closely at the slot around the master cylinder push rod you can sort of see how little room there was for the push rod to move side to side. (Photo #1)

The last thing I wanted to address was the pedal height. Previously the pedal was about 1 1/2" higher than the brake pedal, which meant that I really had to lift my leg up on every shift. There was plenty of adjustment in the actuator rod so I just shortened the rod with the lower coupling nut as the upper one was as short as it would go. Now I had two pedals that were the same height. All good until I pushed the pedal down. Then the upper coupling nut hit the clutch/starter safety switch. Now I know why the pedal was so high!

I ended up machining one side of the hex off of the upper coupling nut to make clearance around the switch. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of machining it down.

I noticed that the upper coupling nut was 3/8" NF thread for the heim joint and the other end was 5/16" NF thread for the all-thread. To do this the PO put a 5/16" heli-coil in one end to reduce the size from 3/8". Pretty clever idea from the PO. I would have gone through the work to make a custom one off coupling nut.

In the 2nd photo you see the clutch actuator rod with the two coupling nuts. Unfortunately it's all right hand thread, so no nice turnbuckle action. The arrow points to the area I machined off to clear the switch.

The heim joint on the pedal has been ground down on one side to make it narrow enough to fit on the post and have the keeper hold it in place. The odd part is that the keeper will only go on with the ground off part heim joint against the pedal and the keeper against the unmodified side.

The 3rd photo shows it all back together and working nicely. (Ignore the arrows)

The last photo shows how worn the cylinder bore and piston was on the leaking master cylinder.

Having completed the repair and driven the truck with the 0.75 master cylinder the clutch pedal is noticeable lighter and it is much easier to feather the clutch on launch than previously. A real improvement over the 0.81 master cylinder.

The redo of the linkage to lower the pedal which has translated into less foot movement so my shifts seem lightning fast now.

[vcho455]

The next addition to the Stink 10 II was a tachometer. I did quite a bit of searching for a tachometer as I wanted something that was low key and not obvious to keep the sleeper look intact. I settled on a Ecliptech P2. It sits almost invisible on the guage cluster but when driving it is quite visible. It has checked off the boxes I wanted in a tachometer for this truck.

Gary, the PO, said he had a tachometer installed it but it started acting weird, so he removed it. So to start I located his old wiring and tested it with my multimeter.

It was a 4 wire plug so it was pretty straightforward. 12v positive, ground, tach signal, and a wire from the dash lights. Things seemed to check out with the meter except for I had 12.8 volts at the battery and only 10.8 at the tachometer plug. My multimeter will test frequency or hertz and putting it on that setting I was able to rev the engine and see the frequency change so I felt good about that.

However when I did a temporary hook up of the new tachometer it didn't work. So I dove into the wiring harness. Which meant taking the dash apart to get at it. (Photo #1) I couldn't be sure of any of the wires as it has two different harnesses blended together. (S10 and the LT1 harness)

Starting with the 12 volt positive wire I determined it was working as it should once I moved my ground lead to a good body ground. This led me to suspect the ground wire was the problem.

Tracing the ground wire back I found that it went to a bolt that is part of a support for the bottom of the dash in the middle. (Photo #2) When I checked continuity from the bolt head to my good body ground there was about 1.5 ohms of resistance. Not great but not terrible either. I removed the bolt and discovered the support rod was loose on the other end. When I wiggled the support the ohms jumped all over the place. Obviously over years the bouncing of the truck loosened the upper fastener. Ahh, the joys of a stiffly sprung vehicle. It's no wonder his tachometer was acting weird.

The other unknown was where the tachometer signal was coming from. Just to be sure I removed the Red connector from the PCM (Photo #5) and located pin 13. Which is where the interweb said the tach signal originates from. Using a tone signal tracer I was able to quickly prove the that the wire in the 4 prong plug I thought was the tach signal did in fact originate from the PCM.

Now I was sure of everything, I installed the tachometer. I moved the other ground wires that were connected to the dash strut to the new ground location.

Photos 3 & 4 show the finished installation. A link to the shift light.

https://youtu.be/cH9OWy59pyY?si=jMKHe4FzpCpp8cAo

If you're not familiar with a tone signal tracer they are commonly used for tracing wires in hard wired phone systems and tracing circuits in large buildings. They consist of a tone transmitter and a tone detector.

Basically you hook up the transmitter to the wire you want to trace and touch the detector to the outside of the wire your tracing. The detector will beep when it comes close to the wire hooked to the transmitter. The video in the link shows how it works.

https://youtu.be/Y0HjaR0tj7Q?si=CW6_VaClHT3cF62-

Photo #6 shows the tracer I used. I used a paper clip to connect the generator to the the pin in the PCM plug. Using this method saved me a bunch of work trying to trace the tach signal wire through the wiring harness.

[vcho455]

Another project on the STII that needed attention was the tailpipe. The PO had installed 3" exhaust all the way when he put the truck together. Around the time he rebuilt the engine he put a set of CalTracs on but, he had to get the tail pipe rerouted to clear them. Unfortunately the muffler shop he used, cut the 3" pipe off and replaced it with 2.25 non-mandrel bent tubing. According to Gary the shop was a #ick about things when he argued that he asked 3" tubing to replace the 3" tubing they removed. He said it was easier just to refuse to pay and walk away. The 2.25" tubing measures about 2" ID on the non-mandrel bent bends. (Photo #1)

To make my own tail pipe I bought mandrel bent 45's and 90 degree elbows from True Mandrel. Fortunately for me they are local so when I called them on a Saturday afternoon the owner said he was home but, it would be no problem for him to run in and help me get me what I needed. 90 minutes later I'm headed home with more tubing than I can carry. Since he came in I bought much more than I needed.

https://truemandrel.com/product-cate...mandrel-bends/

Truemandrel.com flat rocks!

Cutting the old tail pipe off revealed the flow out of the muffler was further restricted by how the shop installed the tail pipe. The second photo kind of shows the issue. They used a reducer to drop from 3" ID to 2.25" OD. That wasn't terrible but, they left the 2.25" tubing way long, so long that it extended into the interior of the muffler about an inch basically making another baffle for the exhaust to worm around to get out. That part was terrible.

Cutting and fitting the pieces I worked my way from the muffler back tacking each piece together. Once all the pieces were tacked together (Photo #3) and it cleared the frame, shock, and fuel tank I welded them together. (Photos #4) I did have to use bottle jack to separate the axle away from the frame to be able to fit the complete tail pipe in place.

After welding I put air pressure in the tubing and sprayed leak check to find any pinholes. I found two which I ground out and rewelded. (Photo #6)

For pressure testing I don't have a regulator set up to regulate the air down to 2 to 5 psi for leak testing so I put a nitrile glove on one end of the pipe and slowly open the regulator until the glove inflates. That gives me enough pressure to find any leaks plus it also provides protection against over pressure in the tubing. (See photo #5)

I would have liked to of had the end of the pipe stick down another inch or two below the quarter panel but that's where the last 45 ended. I do like that it hides the exhaust size but, with the 3 inch tail pipe it no longer sounds like a V6. It's not as stealthy as it once was. I may have to find an exhaust tip to lengthen it.

Once the new tailpipe was done a test ride showed the engine was willing to rev past 4500 much more eagerly than before. Woo hoo!

[vcho455]

Early this spring while blasting past another forlorn prius on a freeway on ramp I broke the clutch on the Stink 10 Two. Since the truck was down for awhile I decided it was time to move forward with the modifications to the engine I had been planning to do for a while. I had a set of heads and an intake manifold that I had sent off to Lloyd Elliot for porting. I also got a new cam with a set of 1.6 rocker arms. The goal is to gain a 100 horsepower and still pass emissions.

Well things seem to have come to a halt here. Suddenly I can no longer load photos to the thread.

After several days and numerous attempts I can now post photos again. Will miracles never cease to amaze!

[vcho455]

It was sad times for the Stink Ten Two. Something in the clutch or transmission had broken. The engine ran but I had no forward or reverse capabilities. The clutch felt normal and there wasn't any bad noises or fluids coming from the transmission. At the time of the failure had been zooming down an onramp and when I tried to shift 2nd to 3rd at about 4500 rpm something failed and no more go go was to be had.

I got a trip home on a wrecker and next weekend my buddy Karl towed me around the block to my driveway in the back alley.

I got started on troubleshooting the problem that afternoon. After I put the truck up on the jack stands I was putting the floor jack back into the garage when one of the wheels broke off the jack. Of course! Well I'll need to add that to the work list. At least I got the truck up safely before it broke. I don't understand it's only 30 years old how it could have failed so soon.

First I pulled the slave cylinder hoping it was jammed and unfortunately it wasn't stuck in the clutch disengaged position. (So much for the easy fix!) Next I unbolted the drive shaft from the pinon yoke. Turning the drive shaft with the transmission in neutral didn't reveal any bad sounds and I was able to turn the output shaft easily with my fingers.

Then I put the transmission in 1st and I turned the drive shaft about half a turn and it clicked into gear. I then shifted into 2nd and it was immediately in gear. I then shifted into 3rd and I could not get the transmission to engage. It also had a bit of a rattle when turning the drive shaft with it in 3rd. I then shifted back into first and I couldn't get it to engage.

I was pretty sure my T56 was broken.

I got the transmission on the ground and out from under the truck the next day. I will say the bolts on the U-joints and the starter were WAY too tight. I had to get my bad boy 1/2" drive air impact out to get the starter bolts out and the U-joint bolts took all I could pull with a 20" 1/2" drive flex head. I was betting I would see more of same as the repairs progressed but those were the only things that were over torqued, although the bellhousing the bolts were tough to break loose I'm sure it was from the red loctite.

One upside I noticed is compared to all the videos on "How to remove your 4th gen F-body transmission." the S10 has lots more room around the bellhousing to get at the bolts,

Two days later it was time for tears as the carnage was defined.

First the good news I was the transmission hadn't self destructed. But the input shaft was damaged where the pilot bearing rides. (Not really good news but, not the worst case scenario. (See carnage in photo in the above post) I was going to put the shifter back on the transmission to do more complete testing but, now I that knew the input shaft had to be replaced I will have the transmission gone through completely.

The bad news was that the had clutch disintegrated. The drive hub had ripped off of the clutch disk. (Photo #3) In addition the pilot bearing was completely trashed with all of the needle bearings gone and only a few bits of the cage remained. (Photos #4 & 5) The outside of the pressure plate was rubbing on the clutch fork. (See the red arrows showing marks on fork and the silver circle on the red pressure plate. Photo #6) Oddly the throw out bearing was still in good shape.

I don't know if the clutch fork rubbing the pressure plate caused the pilot bearing to fail through side loading or if the bellhousing is not aligned properly to the crankshaft or maybe the pilot bearing was damaged when the transmission was last installed. I really can't say when the fork was rubbing the clutch was it during the failure or was it on initial start up when the clutch was installed?

There is no nice center hole to check the bellhousing alignment so at the time I was at a loss as to what the process to check the alignment. Fortunately the interweb had the answer for me.

[vcho455]

Getting the bellhousing off turned into a bit of an ordeal. The bolts were torqued tight and red LocTited and it was all I could do to get them loose with 30" 1/2" breaker bar. The 4 bolts on the top required a wobbly socket which I couldn't make work with the breaker bar so once again I had to use my 1/2" impact.

One of those 4 bolts just would not break free. After several tries that ended up with the wobbly socket blowing off the bolt and starting to round the hex off. I decided to remove the accelerator pedal and drill a hole in the firewall so I could get on the bolt squarely. Thirty minutes later after drilling several pilot holes, using a step bit and a die grinder finally I got a socket on the bolt and broke it free. One more thing to fix during reassembly. Fortunately I have already bought new carpeting for the truck so cutting the old carpet wasn't traumatic and certainly expedited the process.

One upside of making a hole in the firewall was removing the gas pedal. Which I will post more on it later but I will give kudos to the PO for using NutSerts to mount the pedal assembly.

Another benefit of this little project is that I believe I have found the source of the annoying backfire I have had when coasting in gear, mostly in 4th from 50 mph down to 35 or so. I discovered a 3/16 to 1/8" hole in the exhaust pipe just downstream of the manifold. That, possibly in conjunction with one of the manifolds having a bolt missing and a 2nd bolt being very loose would let air in to the exhaust making conditions right for backfires.

As annoying as it was to have to pull the transmission out, it turned into a real benefit when it came time to remove the camshaft. The core support has a center support that blocked the cam from coming out. By removing the drivers side motor mount bolt I was able to roll the engine up and over enough so the cam cleared the core support. I'm not sure how that would have worked with the transmission still in place.

I had dropped the transmission off for rebuilding the day after I got it out and in the meantime I got the bellhousing degreased and found there were some gouges that needed cleaning up with a flat file. Oddly there was no corresponding damage on the transmission front plate. It may have been from another transmission. I was told that the engine and transmission were out of a 1995 Camaro but, Jeff my transmission guy told me the transmission is a 1993. So who knows what may have happened.

On the upside is the transmission has been apart previously and it had the new style carbon fiber synchronizers installed. Plus all the bearings look good.

The down side is it will need to have the 5-6 gear set on the main shaft replaced due to worn splines. Which makes sense as sometimes when I shifted into 5th there was a slight vibration that would go away if I shifted down to 4th and immediately back to 5th gear. Jeff said that is usually caused by running in too high a gear and lugging the engine. That jives with the PO's talk about how his gas mileage. I'd bet he was driving around in OD every chance he could.

Additionally we're replacing first gear in order to get the later style (Viper?) larger synchro dogs for more strength. Just in case I want to bolt the slicks on the truck. There is some good news in that input shaft can be sleeved where the pilot bearing rides so I won't need a new one of those.

The aftermarket Hurst shifter that came installed had a mostly disintegrated dust boot and the wonderful folks at Hurst no longer sell those. One more bit of imagineering to complete before this project is completed.

[vcho455]

In order to check the bellhousing alignment I drove over to the transmission shop and got the front plate of transmission before everything got reassembled. I then reinstalled the bellhousing, flywheel, and the front plate of the transmission so I could check the bellhousing alignment. To do this I installed a crankshaft adapter (Photo #1) my friend Karl and I made, along with a long post, so the dial indicator can attach to the crankshaft (Photo #2).

Then after bolting the front plate to the bellhousing I found a combination of dial indicator pieces that allowed me to measure how true or out of wack the bellhousing was to the crankshaft. (Photo #3)

Grrrr! It's now, Pet Peave time! Why does every manufacturer of dial indicators and their associated adapters have to have its own special size of rods and clamps.
SO FRUSTRATING!

When I finally cobbled up the right bunch of pieces, I asked my wonderful wife to come out and turn the engine for me, so I could watch the dial indicator and record the readings. After rotating the crankshaft twice I found the closest reading and then zeroed the indicator and after several more rotations I was confident that the highest reading was .004 TIR or .002 of misalignment. I used tolerances I got from the thread linked below.

Bellhousing Alignment Specs:
Parallel Specs are: +/-.001" or .002" TIR
Concentric Specs are: +/-.005" or .010" TIR

Fortunately things were well within specifications and I did not have to replace the index dowels with offset ones. As part of the set up the bellhousing and front plate were torqued to 35 ft-lbs. I had also cleaned all the surfaces and dressed a couple spots between the bellhousing and the front plate with a file to get a accurate fit.

This was one of those jobs that took much more time to prepare for than to actually do. Mostly due to the fact I didn't have to mess around with replacing the dowels with offset ones.

Also once I determined there was only .002 of offset I felt confident that the parallel specifications were good. If I had found the concentric measurements to be out of tolerance I would have checked and corrected any parallel out of tolerance measurements before attempting to address the concentric part.

https://www.pro-touring.com/threads/...56+bellhousing

Next up was unbolting it all and do a final cleaning before installing a new pilot bearing. I was on the fence as to go with a bearing or a bushing. From what I have found Tremec wants me to use only a bearing, not a bushing. I went with a bearing as new one came with the new clutch. I did have some concerns about the condition of the machined cup on the end of the crank where the pilot bearing lives. It looked to me as there had been other failures and the cup had been damaged. (Photo #4)

I had been procrastinating over installing a new pilot bearing but, eventually I ran out of bolts to clean and it was time to look at what it was going to take to get a good installation of the pilot bearing. To my surprise when I actually put the new bearing up in the bore I discovered that what I thought was the crank bore was in fact actually the ground up outer race of the old bearing. Great news! Now to remove the remains.

As the ID of the remains were not very smooth or particularly round I had to make a custom punch to fit the bore out of piece of scrap aluminum. Due to the relatively loose fit of the punch I had made I decided that using grease to push the bearing race out probably wouldn't work. I decided to try the soggy paper towel method. Which worked fairly well but, was pretty messy. (Photo #5) Every smack of the hammer caused paper (pulp?) to blast out around the .015 gap between the punch and the race. Certainly glad I had my safety glasses on as I was soon covered in high velocity paper bits!

After having refilled the bore 6 times as the race moved out I successfully removed the race! (In photos #5 #6 the arrow points to the old race) Photo 7 shows all the paper bits on the floor pan. Oh boy more cleaning! Once cleaned up the crank looked great! Woo Hoo! Winner today.

The punch I made was pretty much destroyed by how hard I had to smack it to get the race to move. I went with aluminum for the punch just in case it got stuck. My thinking was it should be easier to get back out if things went badly and it shouldn't damage the crank, fortunately neither happened.

[vcho455]

My luck changed the next time I crawled under the truck. I installed the new pilot bearing and messed it up during the process. Grrr!

I had put the bearing in the freezer the day before and I heated the crank to 150 degrees which should have made installation a breeze but, the bearing fought me all the way going in and when it was all the way in I realized I had damaged the cage that holds the needle bearings. Dhoo! (See photo #1)

After staring at it for 5 minutes I decided that it had to come out. Once again I had to make a driver to fit the bearing before driving it out. Well maybe tomorrow... after a trip to the parts store.

[vcho455]

The next morning was great however. The wife got to see the neighbors tree, she has hated for years, get removed. It shaded her garden from the afternoon sun.

But more importantly I drove up to Vancouver and visited Garage Motorsports. I had talked to them at the PDX swap meet about a boot for the shifter and they said they probably had one. After meeting Sue and Ty, Ty took me back into the maze of an old school hot rod shop and then dug through a dozen or more T5 and T56 shifters on a shelf and found me the exact boot I needed.

After paying for the boot Ty and I talked while he was cleaning up a sixties vintage shifter for a customers Falcon. He asked me about what the shifter was for, and of course I shared the specifics about my hot rod truck. After explaining about the clutch breaking he asked what style of pilot bearing failed. I told him it was the needle bearing style and he responded "We never use those, we always use bushings". I promptly asked if they had them for sale and they were more than happy to sell me one of those too. It's hard to believe I didn't find these folks years ago.


http://www.garagemotorsports.com/index.htm

Another plus came apparent when I measured the bushing and the bearing and found the bushing to be .001 smaller. Not much but it should help with installation.

It was clutch day! I got the pilot bushing, flywheel, pressure plate, disc, and bellhousing installed this afternoon. I probably could have gotten the transmission in but, I ended up having to make a run to the hardware store for 3 bolts for the bellhousing. Three of the ones I remove had pretty iffy looking hex's. No point in using fasteners that are only going to be a problem later. By the time I got home it was dinner time.

I was a bit disappointed when I pulled the pressure plate out of the wrapping and found rust on it. I put some vinegar on it and let it sit wet for an hour or so then gently wiped it with a Scotchbrite. Most of it came off and I'm pretty sure it won't be an issue later.

As a side note the pilot bushing being .001 smaller made a world of difference in how easily I was able to tap the bushing into place.

The new clutch kit is a Ram 98516 that I'm running with the factory flywheel. The folks at Ram were very helpful with all my questions. And their web site has a ton of information on too.

[Vimes]

At least you now know why the clutch failed to begin with - the previous owner did the exact same thing you did with the pilot bearing, but they ran with the damaged bearing and you didn't.