Picked up the motor today and started mocking it up into the frame. I will let the photos do the talking.

Motor is finally rebuilt and looks brand new. Excited to drop it in. The engine builder sent a video of the motor on the testing bench. Also picked up the transmission today. It also looks great. Hope to start dropping them into the frame in the next week. Started mocking up the a/c compressor and power steering pump, and the brackets. You can start to see the quality of the powder coated pieces and how it will tie together all the components and keep everything looking tidy and clean.

So about $1600 later, it sounds like the transmission will be done in the next day or so. Unfortunately they had to replace the torque converter, part of the transmission casing, and the overdrive drum; and new seals and soft pieces plus labor came to just over $1600. Hopefully we won't have to touch anything on the transmission for years to come...

The new heads for the motor arrived a few days ago and will be going to the engine builder in the next few days for assembly. Really excited to see both pieces come back together and be dropped into the chassis so we can finish putting the engine bay back together and drop the cab back down on the frame. 

One thing that I gleaned off the internet that I hope someone else will take a lesson from... We had the transmission crossmember blasted and powder coated. When we did that we removed the old rotted rubber bushings. Just about all of the bushings can be reordered for the truck... however the transmission bushing isn't on that list. 

I did however find someone on the internet who had a similar issue. Apparently the leaf spring bushing from a late 70's early 80's Chevy C10 will fit into the tube area on the transmission crossmember. So I ordered an original replacement bushing off of the C10. However when I went to install it, while it fit the tube hole, it wasnt the best length overall to fit into the mount area attached to the frame. There was about 35mm extra space that needed to be filled. 

After that I decided to take my own measurements and see if I could locate a universal polyurethane bushing that would do the trick. In the end I found that Energy Suspension makes the same bushing for the C10 and I could pair that with polyurethane pads to mimic the exact size and placement of the original bushings. They should all arrive in the next few days at we should hopefully be able to mount the crossmember without any issues.

Perfect fit!

Had the bed media blasted today along with the door jambs and a few other pieces. They came out as good as I could have hoped. Should make bodywork a lot easier going forward. The bed was unsurprisingly in really good shape; only a few small areas of body filler and a handful of small dents.

Got the new seat upholstery installed! It came out great! Love the way the interior is coming along. The templates from stockinteriors.com was near perfect fit. A couple of minor issues but I’m pretty sure we can only blame ourselves for those. Just need to reattach the sliders to the seat bases and they should be ready to bolt in.

Spent an hour this morning before work test fitting the new carpet. We splurged a little and got the plush pile with the mass backing. Really impressed with the quality; I wasn’t sure how good it would be after reading a few online reviews. The mass backing marks all of the cutouts for seatbelts and other mounting areas, all you need to do is cut them out. We had to fabricate a replacement rear carpet as the old red carpet simply wouldn’t cut it. I used the Kilmat material and applied two layers onto the back of the carpet to resemble the backing that was on the OEM carpet. It’s pliable enough to shape it to the contours but stiff enough to hold its shape. The new seat upholstery and sun visors also arrived today even though we weren’t expecting it for another 20 days or so and I hadn’t received a tracking number. But WOW! So impressed with the quality of the seats. All the carpets and seat upholstery was ordered from stockinteriors.com. Will definitely be leaving positive reviews for them once all is said and done. Can’t wait to install the new upholstery.