Maxwellvis. A 20 year old with a 1949 Chevrolet truck.

[78C10BigTen]

A quick walk around from the day we first laid eyes upon it...

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And then a cold start when it is around 32* in the morning...

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Wow she pops off nice when cold! I think a set of motorcycle tombstone tail lights would look awesome on that! Or an old school set of round red ones that say stop in the glass! Sweet score @Maxwellvis , also glad you decided to keep the 55!

 

[78C10BigTen]

Dont I know that.
Same here. Every one of my toys I've paid for with my money, no help, but as of now there all on my folks property. Luckly dad doesnt care, at all. He "gave me" one square acre for all my stuff. He said only 3 rules; has to stay in the acre and not spill into the home yard, and everything has to be in a neat line, like a parking lot, and it has to get mowed and weedwacked come summer. Aside from that, he said do whatever you want.
Ma doesnt care really either, but whenever I bring something new home or start talking about "the next one", I always get that look like "really?". Gotta convince her it's a good buy, and I will do somthing with it.
So far I'm doing okay. Keep em neat and mowed, and they still fit on the acre, haha.

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Wish i had that arrangement!

 

[RecklessWOT]

Wish i had that arrangement!

lol my thoughts exactly. I remember I found a couple different second gen T/As when I was in high school for dirt cheap (my dream car back then, took me until last year to finally get my hands on one), they were crappy but ran and drove and I could afford them. My dad's response was always "you're not parking that POS in my driveway!" I missed out on several awesome vehicles that way, stuff that I know I will never find again in this day and age. The fact that I had two vehicles in high school drove him crazy, but he wasn't about to start a war by having one of them towed off lol.

 

[Catbox]

So junior cheesebag has been working on this one nonstop since he picked it up.
He is always doing stuff to it.
It got an electric wiper set up installed as the stock wipers were almost totally missing, so it was a no brainer.
He put a simple heater in there to help defrost the brand new front & rear windows that also were put in with new seals.
So much easier to see through now.
He has done some upgrading with the things we have on hand as well.
Since he has a fancy steering column for his Bel Air, the old one has been pressed into service back in the truck.
This gives him factory on the column turn signals and an era correct steering wheel.
There is a bunch more that I have forgotten, but he has put a bunch of cash into it since he got it.

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He has also installed a B&M Mega shifter in the truck on a custom mount.
The mount was built out of an old set of bed frame angle iron to raise it off the floor for easy reaching.

 

[Catbox]

On Feb 5th at midnight, he calls me.
Uhhh dad, I blew the driveshaft out of the truck.
I need a tow home, can you come get me?

Greaaaaaat.
So I went to him a few miles away from the house and it was just past midnight so not much traffic at all.
He was able to coast most of the way up the off ramp to a safe place and parked.

We hooked him up with a tow strap and yanked the little dead thing home.
Once home we went back and picked up the pretzel drive shaft from the side of the highway he was on.

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It was easy and uneventful to get it home.
The engine ran fine and he had heat, steering, brakes, and lights on the way home.
The Suburban had no issue with the extra weight of the truck.

Next day the discovery was made that the output shaft of the trans now has movement in directions it is not supposed too. Last I checked they are not supposed to go side to side much at all, this one now has plenty of motion.
So the metric 200 trans is toast.

The decision was simple.

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He had already purchased this fresh rebuild 307 and turbo 400 transmission and it was just sitting waiting.
Out came the 305 and metric 200 and in went the 307 and turbo 400.
He wants to run headers on this engine and so the hunt for the correct set began.
A set of V8 swap headers for an S10 were purchased.
No dice.

The truck combo will not allow these to work as two of the pipes have to go wide for steering shaft clearance.
Turns out, those work with the stock angle of the S10, not the stock angle of the 3100.
On the 3100 the column comes out higher than the relationship of the stock S10, so no dice.
Simple small block headers don't work as the S10 frame is pretty dang tight and the suspension gets in the way.
We have several examples of those to test and none of them work on the driver side.

The closest ones that might work are the set I have for our Suburban.
With some cutting, heating, bending and welding on the front tube they should work.
But I don't want to give them up.

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So we will keep an eye out when we go to the PIR Swap meet in a couple weeks.
I will also be looking for cheap headers so we can chop them apart to make what we need if the first plan does not work.

 

[Catbox]

But, my friends.
She-it hit the fan.
With the combo of the 1968 307 being an early small block unit with no accessory bolt holes and needing to run the manifolds for the near future.
We had to improvise.
The alternator now has no place to be.
Can't bolt it to the heads and the bracketry we have works for only for headers, not a set of F body manifolds.
Just the stock Ram horns that are now on a buddies Winnebago.
It won't work mounted low as the chassis is in the way.
Fykk.

So crafty dad starts brainstorming with a grumpy kid in the driveway who just had his Cheerios pee'd in.
There are several sets of Vortec heads here at the house, but none have been checked for cracks.
So those are out.
He was about to start looking into buying a set of new Summit Vortecs for it as he can run those on a 4" bore engine as well.

Yeah, but that is not cheap and there has to be another way...

We just yanked a good running 305 out of there.
How about we run the numbers and then pull the heads off the 305.
Check them out and then clean them up.
They are the correct valve size to fit the bore and the chambers are smaller than the ones on the 307.

He got busy and pulled the heads from the 307.
That lets us see what the rebuilder used for pistons and also what machining they had performed.
It had new four valve relief "rebuilder" style pistons in it.
They also have a chamfer around the edge.
When measured to see how far down they are in the hole, he found they were down .035.
Some research shows that the common rebuilder pistons have a reduced piston height of .020 to account for decking of the engine during the rebuild process.

The rebuilder that did the work, did not deck the block at all, so that is why the pistons are so far down the hole.

With the chamber volume of the 307 heads, the negative space of the pistons, and the .039 gasket it was running, it had a monster deck height of almost .080, not good for flame propagation in the chamber.

So the 305 heads will give it a compression bump and with some maths we figured we will run some steel shim head gaskets that are .019 for a much better deck height of .054.
That is within the acceptable range of .040 to .060 to keep it snappy and furious in the chambers.

The compression will be a touch high at 9.7, but he is a youngster and does not care if he has to run premium gas.
It will be spiffy.

Here is the 305 in front of the truck.

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Later here is the 307 nestled down in the frame rails...

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[Catbox]

With this, since we are now removing the engine again.
Here he is pulling stuff off the 307.

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It is now getting a new camshaft.

So I introduced him to the Duntov 30-30 cam.
We looked at things on youtube that had 283's running this cam and he was sold.
It provided all the right noises and performance he wanted.
Granted the 307 is simply a stroked 283, this will be just fine.

I sent him to do research on the subject to see if it was truly what he wanted to do.

He came back to me a day later and said that he was going to go with the L-79 cam from a Z28 350.
This works out to be very similar to the Duntov 30-30 but instead of being a solid lifter setup, it is a hydraulic setup.
So simpler to run this one with nearly the same performance since we are not running it to 8,000rpm.

With this change from the little "RV" cam that is currently in the block, we now have to change the torque converter.
The Turbo 400 has a shift kit and the stock 1968 convertor on it still.
So I pointed him towards the B&M page and told him to find a unit that stalls at 1900-2200.
I have used one in the past and it was perfect for my application that will be about the same power levels.

That part came in the mail just the other day.
So now we are going to start the assembly stuff and will be taking photos along the way.

Max has all the photos on his phone of what he has done, but he is not here currently for me to post them.
Loser.