New beast on the block! - '69 GMC 90" window

I - And the GMC - isn't dead!

Far from it, the job has been nice and stable, and money has been rolling in.

The company also provided a moving package, so the van will finally make its way down to LA... Along with a set of new springs.

LA, is that Los Angeles or Louisiana?

Like my location says, "Los Angeles".

Got a job here almost a year ago, finally getting around having all of my little things moved down here.

OK, so I'm not the most observant guy...Smell-A!

And let's get the vanning party started!

The rest of my gear is hopefully arriving Tuesday, and on December 11th, I've also had another delivery.

Thanks to Joe Van's post, I finally got myself a 6-lug setup! Courtesy of MC - not on forums - who has a '68 G20 back in Ohio. He's doing an all out modification, with gnarly tires 4X4 tire and axles, like a 3" raise or something, and will be fitting a 428 under the hood.
Price was very good, shipping was horrendous, but whatever, I have it now, let's get into it!



Before we begin, this gem... Left rear drum, and I have to say, this is the most ruined drum I have seen thus far.



On the other hand I managed to make a nice chip into the front drums all by myself, as I was trying to PB/torch/hammer the drum off. I'm pretty sure that that can be balanced out though, so I'm not too worried to be honest.



The GM 12-bolt 8.875" rear differential, in all of its overexposed glory. As MC was sorta sure that it's a 4.11, but maybe it's a 3.73, I knew I had to crack it open to see what I had in store.

I counted the ring first, then noticed that the ratio wasn't stamped into the ring. With closer inspection I noticed that the pinion had "10 67 9 37" stamped into it. Huh. So this is likely the original 37:9 RPO, which is a 4.11

We'll see how much of an acceleration increase I will have once I hit the road with bigger tires compared to my current 3.06:1 ... Probably not much.



Condition wise it's a good axle, the inside surfaces are clean and free of rust and the ring gear has only minor surface rust. I'll first clean the axle out and drive it around to see what it does, as this is another "not too concerned" item.

Between the clean inside and heavily corroded outside it's safe to say that the van it came out of has been a life-long East coast van.



Left axle shaft. There isn't a deep grove per say, so it's not a dead axle. It'll definitely have to be replaced sometime eventually.



Right axle shaft is A-OK though.



The axle shaft gear shims though seemed to have a bit too much rust build-up. I have a feeling that all rust developed after the van had been parked, as this rust has not marred the differential or the axle shaft gears.

I'll be likely replacing these even though I scraped off the intruding rust. I'd rather save a differential if I can help it.

Glad they made it to you safely nice way of crating them they look good maby one axle down the road and replace that one drum (available at Car Quest Auto) ..!!!.. I would put a set of outer bearings and seals one drum paint it and let it ride..!!!...I appreciate the "Thanks" for posting them I spend a "LOT" of My Time looking for Van's & Part's and Rarely get any Pat's on the Back..!!!Keep us posted Looking Good.. .

do u also realize there are a rear axle ="bearing repair" type bearing for these gm axles/ relocates the seal & larger bearing in different location on axles - saving a worn axle.Most any good ="KNOWLEDGEABLE"?? auto parts has /knows about these!!

Many moons have passed... I think it is time for an update.

In the recent months I've had to do all kinds of stuff to the van just to keep up with things getting old.
Now a while ago I manged to paint up a set of tires. Those rims? 15x8 smoothies with 215/75R15's. Them suckers turned out pretty big!

Another thing that needed immediate attention back in March/April were my leafs. As I was driving down one of the bumpy main drags my left front had this sinking feeling when I hit a bump. I was waiting for the rebound that didn't quite come.

So instead of wrenching on the axles - which BTW took forever! - I swapped my front leafs out.
I had to use 2 car lifts to get the van up straight as one-at-a-time was not stable at all. The jack stand wanted to rotate out from underneath the van.



The leafs themselves! Woohoo!



This time around the axle sat on the ground while I slipped in the new springs. Since I've swapped my front leafs for slightly less used leafs everything came apart easily.



The U-bolts I got fit like a glove! Woohoo for quadruple measuring things!
On the other hand there are 2 things I did mess up. The new U's were freakishly long, and they are also one size smaller than what I could fit.

Eh, no big deal. I'll get beefier U's later. For now this will work just fine as the load bearing bolt is in the front.



And everything back together!



This was a slightly later occasion, I was curious why I had such a nasty oil leak... Well, a good coupe of drips, still irritating.
After I took off the fuel pump as it seemed to seep a lot I noticed that the gasket wasn't quite right.
That's right folks, that ghetto gasket was over a year old at this point of time. Tris made it when I was assembling the engine.
Whoops.

I also stripped one of the bolts when I was reassembling.
Double whoops.

And to double post things as they are that big... I finally swapped the axles.

So I swapped my axles on the GMC. I've thought of several names for this weekend.

The two top are 46 Hours Of Le Wrench and Operation Axle.

The ultimate start and finish of the Operation 11:30AM Saturday and 8:10AM Monday.
This includes moving everything into position, and attempting to pretty up some of the brake-fluid induced marks with acetone at clean-up.

It was also an operation as I had only the given time-frame of between work hours. This meant that by ~8-9AM Monday morning everything had to be gone.
The plan was straight forward too. Front axle first, then rear axle..... And that doesn't even begin to describe this undertaking.

Smaller side-notes are included with the pictures.

DAY 1

11:30AM
Setup wasn't too painful. I quickly figured out that sadly the lift-points are at the complete opposite ends of the van. That 2-post lift? Not as golden as I thought it was going to be, still made things a lot easier.



Some of my tools and the previously mentioned wheels. Those are big guys! Of course I got a 4 + full spare as I didn't have any other option.



2:30PM
Before I began dissassembly I took off a brake hose. I checked online and it claimed that they were the same fitting size. I was pleased to note that this turned out to be true.

Front axle came apart like butter this is the 3rd servicing of the axle under my ownership. I ended up using the 2-post lift as a half-lift and I just left it neutral. Even if I wanted to no chalk would stay in place as the epoxy floor is somewhat slippery.



This is how it my axle swaps went so that I didn't throw my back out and kept the floor somewhat scratch free. I still tore it up a bit though.
1. Raise chassis, lock lift
2. Push dolley under axle
3. Raise and remove tires
4. Lower dolley
5. Swap axles and perform steps in reverse



Also had to go to Lous to pick up some T25 drivers as the fellow who put my palate together used T25-headed screws.

Assembly was just as fast, then the tires went on... They rubbed.
Options included 1/2" of body cut, cutting the leaf-pack center bolt, or making spacer blocks.
I even went to Lous again to see if they had Alu cutting disks, which they didn't. I ended up using Metal disks.

11:00PM
About 5 hours later I had finally fabbed up the four spacer blocks. This was the 1st major delay.
Far Left is original caster wedge. At first all I was going for was a spacer, thinking "Man, this tire rubbing into chassis is !!bad news!!".

The it was just a spacer, but it is flat and lets face it, that will f*ck with caster and make it incorrect... What To Do?

I pirated some more scrap Al and started working on my own caster wedges... After not too long I gave up, too much effort.
So I just busted some notches in as I didn't find drill-bits big enough and bam, offset spacers are born.
Also, pizza. Pineapple BBQ chicken, yum.



The axle went together just fine afterwards... Time to head home.




DAY 2

Hopped on the bike and back into work. On the way to work I saw another orange van like mine, 108" model. =D

Noon...
Now it was time for the rear axle. The anchor ends, which are bushings with a 1/2" bolt through them, were a f*cking bitch.
One anchor let go after a bit of impact wrench usage... The other one?
I wailed away at it for a good 3 minutes and got quite hot too. Finally *Paclick*, something hit my visor that I wore during grinding and under the van. It was a missing chunk out of the impact bit.



After a lot of screwing around including going to Lous for the 3rd time, I cut the bolt head off then struggled to remove the bolt.

4PM
Extraction was a complete pain... This is how I extracted the bolt. I would've needed a 5-ton press if I wanted to just push it out it was so tight.
0. Clamp to prevent the flanges from widening.
1. Insert bolt from other side
2. Tighten bearing press
3. At full tension, rotate bolt working its way forward.
4. Repeat for an hour



4:30
Half-way there... It's only a 3" bolt too!



Finally loosened out... Mercy that took too long.



7:30
It was time to focus on the 12-bolt axle... Mind you guys, this was Sunday, 7:30. By tomorrow morning the place was supposed to shine like I was never there.



9:45
By this time I've finished off the fiddy bits on the 12-bolt and it was time to transfer over minor items from the 10-bolt. Of course nothing is ever easy, so I ended up having to skip parking brake cables for the time being.
It was pretty funny though, not only did I have the backing plates backwards I also had them upside down, and the wheel cylinders were also mirrored.

In the far right there's a spring still stuck on the axle. Those U-bolts did not want to let go, even with the impact wrench on them. This time I let the bit cool though, so I didn't break anything. Still, I was impressed how tightly they held on. Not surprising though, 40 years of 125 ft-lb's of torque is just enough to semi-permanently seize them together.
Let me repeat that, an impact wrench didn't cut it...

It finally occurred to me that I can just cut the suckers, and that's exactly what happened.



Midnight, Sunday -> Monday
Finally the axle is prepped... Finally.



Another I hitch I found is that my Grade 8 bolts were too short! Thank god I found some Grade 5 bolts that were the right size and length, threw some washers on there and used those.

By this time I've been working 11 hours that day, and 26 hours in total.



DAY 2.5

Between midnight and 6AM I reconnected everything, torqued all the wheels, springs, and generally buttoned everything back up. I had little will to take shots at that time as it was a matter of just lining everything back up.

Unlike the front, the rear lined up more or less perfectly which I was very happy about. At this time it was also obvious that when the manual said 8.15x15 is the bigger tire size, that is really about the biggest tire you can fit in there.

At 6AM Monday I almost got everything together. Almost...
I was unable to bleed the brakes and gave up just in time to start the clean-up process. This meant cleaning up the mess I made in the main hall area, around the lift, and put everything away. I also returned all the tools and moved the van outside with an electric car mover. It was trippy moving an old school van through the studio.

One of the guys in the shop even helped me out an we finished up everything 8:10AM.

I hopped on the bike, went to the store, picked up a pair of jeans and shirt, took a shower in the locker room and went to work at 9AM.

Between the work and having to OT I clocked in my record of 37.5 hours awake. It was a rather miserable day to work and I will never again will I do that, it's pretty terrible and the chemistry has to be just right... Like it was here.

Report

Overall this is the most amount of work I've done on any vehicle in such a short time. When the brakes are bled, she should be OK to roll, slowly and carefully. Still, there is a laundry list of fixes due to constraints...
- Straight Alu-blocks in the spring packs, makes for incorrect caster. Hopefully she's not too bad too drive.
- No parking brake
- Grade 5 bolt instead of 8's for the rear-leaf anchors.

Those can all be taken care of one at a time though, and since everything is fresh it should take a lot less time.

To be honest at this point of time the van has a much more "Grrr, nasty" look to it instead of the VW like "Old school, somewhat cute" look to them.

I think it's more balanced this way. =D

Hats off to a gigantic effort !! I like the way it sits to.

Nice work and enjoyable post to read...parking brake will be a breeze after this...make sure all the parts are there, the bottom equalizing levers, return springs, cable pulleys, etc. and getting a NOS cable can be hard to find too....good luck!

Congrats Xelmon! Looks great! Can't wait to hear how she drives.

Well Worth the effort Xelmon! You must have slept like a Baby Monday night!!!
Love the stance on it!

It has been many months, and I think it's about time for a full update on the state of the... Whelp, union. XD

The very first thing I noticed after the breaks were bled the following weekend - end of May - was that the van was freaking undrivable. Up to 20 or so it was fine, however above that it didn't want to go straight and wanted to steer.

That gents, is the dead giveaway for negative caster and that the axles were leaning forward.

Can't have that! Off to the machine shop!

Took 3/4" forged aluminium and milled it to have at least some kind of caster.
A few hours passed watching this as I wanted low tool stress.



The end result. This thickness I was still comfortable with as it can't really flip out.





All is better, the van is even more or less drivable now!
Well, somewhat. I could definitely feel that the leaf pack wasn't as strong as it was before as it was no longer on the center of the pack. So the spring feel yet again squishy.

Either way, good enough for now, let's hit it!



Until about a week later when I wanted to go in and work on some BS. On the way there I stopped by my fav thai place on the way to work for breakfast, and when I made a turn over a bump I just heard a "BBBRRRMM"

I thinks to myself  " .... Was that what I think it was?"

Inspected at the thai place... Yep, the axle freaking slipped back and the tire was now hairs away from touching the body. I figured it would do this... You see guys, the spacers that I made had no center pins, and the axle is on the sloping down side of the leaf pack.  Under heavy breaking the axle was slipping off the leaf pack.
Yeah, that is not kosher.



So in I went to redo the position of the axles.
Numbers wise this first reposition and re-torque had the torque fall off to ~45 ft-lb on the front axle U-bolts. That is definitely not good!

It was obvious that a more permanent solution had to be done, and it was evident that I had to have the leaf packs remade. Also, note that since that time I've had to re-torque the bolts 2 times due to motion and slipping, each time getting down to about 60 ft-lb's. About 2 weeks ago in mid-July I did some stuff on the van, I finally measured out the leafs and that time I didn't have to re-torque.



A bit later I had to readdress another issue. Oil leaks...
I had to do a lot of ghetto gluing, and I am not proud of it.







Everything was fine until I got here... Notice something missing?



Yeah, somehow the port bolt got loose. Great.



At the end of the day though, she does have a nice belly.




And finally I started work on redoing my kingpins on my spare axle.



For the most part it was easy to take apart, until the kingpin itself.
Why won't it come apart? I even used that bolt thing below to try to hammer it out, wouldn't budge.



Dad later pointed out that there must be some bolt to hold it in place. I actually figured the same exact thing, however didn't see a bolt! So dad told me to take a damn wire brush and go to town in that area. ... Lo' and behold, pin is in there. Love ya GM, and PS, the Chevy axle did the same thing.




So what am I doing now?

* Being lazy about measuring out my wiring harness. I am thinking of doing it all PTFE/Tefzel, however I don't know how much it would cost.

* Finishing axle disassembly. Also gotta find a source for bronze bushings, not comfortable with using polyurethane.

* Getting a call back from the spring shop. They have to blue-print it, and will take a good month to build it. No idea on final price, it will be 5 leaf, mil-wrap, 1375 lb's. May as well have the capacity if I want that V8 in there.

And that last post of "quoted 1 month" was definitely an understatement for the leafs!

A week ago I finally went down to the shop to pick up my leaf springs. As said before, these are custom springs so I was anxious to install them and see how far off I was.



Mmm, so nice looking, they even have pre-load disks on them!
It is a 6 leaf setup with safety wraps. There is just something about having that piece of mind of not having the spring break underneath you completely.



Anyways, enough fawning, to work!



First order of business was an approximate inspection to see how close / far I was with the measurement... It's looking decent enough! Hopefully it'll be just as good once it goes in the van.



First order of business was shortening the center bolt so that the... Top piece can go over it. No bigs.



Next was to fit the bushing into the end of the leaf and... Cutting things... To size.

Oh hell... I got the wrong inner shaft size. Shackle bolts are 9/16" diameter, and I had asked for 1/2" sleeves. No sleeves in the urethane bushing are a death sentence for the bushing, and I also couldn't reuse the old bushing as apparently I have eaten through it. I do not understand how it got that bad is less than a year, but it did.

At this point I'm going to replace all of my bushing with sleeved urethane bushings. I'll go back to rubber if they are too harsh.



Queue resources at work, I looked the metal pile and found a pipe that was 5/8" inside diameter. Eeehhhh, it's not perfect, but I can't leave the van here either, so it sufficed. I had to press in the sleeve, so I will have to press it out once I get to that stage... Eventually.



Once I got the shaft length to where I wanted it, I cut down the bushings. Tough little buggers.



And now for installation!!
Once I rotated in the spring and put it in the shackle end I developed this nagging feeling that the leafs are really tall compared to the previous springs. I had to use the jack to push the spring up a bit to fit the caster wedge in.



And now that everything is secure, let's drop this van!
...
Oh man, uh... That is really tall. Like, waaaay taller than it's supposed to be.
A quick measure revealed that the roof seam the van as of installation was more or less level, 73.5"/74" front to rear. That's OK for now as the van has to roll. Long-term and especially if I put load into it, the rear will sink down a bit making for a rather unpleasant angle on the van, making for an "Eh" visual feel.



On the plus side the van rides... Modern. It has predictable rebound, and the 6 leaf / urethane combo makes it so that the ride is firm yet not harsh.

So to get the van "perfect" I have a few choices.
1, Take the spring back and have it slightly de-arched. Like an inch or so.
2, Get slightly longer shackles for the rear.

As of now I am still torn which one I'm going to do. Also, because of the tire's size, I will start having to add scrape surfaces/pipes to ensure that the tread isn't catching on sharp edge.

Will work on stuff in a week or so, just in time for Halloween.

So it has been over a year, that I even came around this area of the forum... And to be honest, it feels like I've barely done anything!

Well, it doesn't help that I acquired the Scout and did a ton of work on that rig too.

Overall, here's what happened...

Like I mentioned the leafs were faaar to tall and the centering bolt was just a bit off spec, so something had to be done. Instead of having yet another few leafs made, I decided to just have the hole 'bout half an inch and just put them back in.

Before shot of the wheel



The safety piece of metal



And the end result... Since then I haven't had one wheel-well scrape from regular driving and hitting bumps, so that was finally solved.



Next thing to happen was I added a bung to my exhaust so that I could finally get an O2 sensor in there. It ain't the prettiest, works like a charm though!





The O2 sensor thing really ticked me off though... The big-brand one that everyone has is ridiculously expensive in my opinion, considering that I actually understand how the things work! After a lot of search I stumbled onto this little site that has a variety of units, including a DIY kit that you build yourself!

In theory it's great and overall it wasn't too bad for assembly, as it turns out my unit is partially faulty, and I have yet to trouble shoot the darn thing.
Still, I like the fact that entire thing ran me ~40 versus the 150+.









And at this point... Well, things came to a crawl. On April rolled around I was ushered into simple jobs territory, and in May I was given the job to work on The Part. My final project before I had no evenings, or weekends for that matter was an attempt to fix the cooling.

Relatively small modifications were done to the flanges in the dog house to finally hook up an electric fan. It sorta did the job, and at the end of the day it ended up being a minor loss for cooling ability. On the plus side I no longer had a big whopping fan rotating when I did static timing!

This was the last big thing I did until mid-August... Nay, until mid-November actually! Always busy, always running about, and generally fearing for the well-being of the GMC's engine. Finally I had the time to dive in yet again, and so I did, this time replacing the downflow radiator with a crossflow!



Then things started rolling again... Both my will power and my urge to actually fix things!

First up the beginnings of a new electrical system. At first I thought about making it all original, however by the time I'll be done with everything, what'll be the point? There's relatively speaking a lot of new hardware running off of relays and such, plus there's others things I'll be adding that require a complete rewiring job.





Once that box went in, the first thing to get installed were the new fans. Rather massive units, and quite honestly a tad huge for this radiator, even though it's bigger. There's a gigantic Alu radiator waiting to have a few modifications done, then for that to go in...



Speaking of electrical, new alternator was installed too as those fans do draw quite a few amps. Even with the new alt I'll have to actually change the pulley so that it'll spin fast enough at idle.



With all of this electric nonsense going in one of my other peeves was fixed finally too... Fuel pump.

The mechanical one is more or less dead, as it had a very hard time starting the rig up after say, 2 days or so. Not even the choke helped, after a while it became standard procedure to spray carb cleaner into the intake to start the sucker up... Very ghetto.





Some time around this time I also got something back that took months to make the round... I disassembled my front axle ages ago, and tried to machine bushings into it, however never really got far. A coworker saw me struggling with lathing and basically hooked me up. 110 for machine work and honing for bronze bushing.



There's a groove running on the outside to distribute the grease from top to bottom better.



Before this I wanted to finally bolt down the rear seat, and some 2+ years after that fateful day it finally happened!



Due to the sheet metal shape in the floor though I had to make tiny stand-offs. They seem to work pretty well!







Onto the Big Kahuna!

I have been waiting to do this for a while now... A very long time relatively speaking. This last weekend, so March 19th, I did the Front Axle Swap, Again.



One of the detail items here were the rubber bushings. I finally took the time to replace the poly upper shackle bushings with rubber as they were in a bit of a hard spot to reach. To get the bushing to fit I had to do a bit of sanding. From what I can tell, it is a softer ride and it was necessary as the polys were all polys were too bumpy for me.

I should note that I have 1/16" wall thickness tubes running in my bushing. I've burned through a set of bushings with no tubes in only a few months, so I was aiming to avoid that in the future.

I may experiment with 1/32" wall thickness tubes eventually to maximize the amount of rubber in my suspension.



The lo-and-behold, it's finally in... Time to dress it up!



But alas, shennanigans! I pressed in the right spindle upside-down, so out came the axle, the caps, and I had to press the king-pin back out again.



Before I did that though I had supper and a beer... I still don't know how I managed to screw it up so bad.



After an hour+ of work, and a lot of toiling, things went in like they should, relatively speaking.
I had to cut a few corners as I didn't have things like the right bolts for the backing plates. I also reused the hubs with the old bearings and seals as the new ones needed too much cleaning and I ran out of time.



I faced many delays. Lacking new bolts and a few other things I had to do a fair bit of recycling off of the old axle. At the end of the day the swap went through, and I even drove the rig home at about 4AM or so. It was honestly the first time ever that I drove one of these vans that didn't have worn out kingpins, and it was a bit magical.

It tracks much better now and like I said pebbles don't feel like boulders anymore when I drove over them. The downside is that now I have to look at the steering box, as I still have about 15 degrees of play. Much better than 60 degrees that I had though.

Good forward progress! Looking Gooood!

Good to hear your getting some "Van Time"

Great! Nice to see a GMC...

Some Nice Work Going on there !!!!! Like it .....

Thanks guys! These days things are taking longer and longer as I try to avoid rushing in and ghetto-ing everything together.

That was a really enjoyable thread to read! Can't wait to see if my bumpers make it here on Friday!