Class 6 Off Road Race Truck D-50 build out. Chevy. 4.3L V6

[camoit]

Ok everybody I have listed a bunch of parts. New, old, big, and small. See the parts page for info. Early bird gets the part.
PLEASE only call between the hours of 9:00AM AND 7:00PM Pacific time.

[camoit]

UPDATE. I got the yellow “parts / template” truck pulled out of the side yard. Ripped off the bed and cut it down to just the fenders. If I can’t fine fiberglass fenders I’ll build them. Any ideas where to find them??? It looks like I need to give my truck a small suspension lift of 17 inches to get the correct ride height I’m looking for. I need somewhere around 26 inches of wheel travel. My new 6-speed transmission checked out ok today. It has already been upgraded from aluminum to steel shift forks. WOOHOO I should have the yellow truck down to the frame tomorrow. And the cab parts ready to ship out to you guys by Monday if it doesn’t rain. I came up with a seccond 4.3L V6 for free. Should have it on the 15Th.

[camoit]

Well I just scored a frame from the neighbor behind me, Phil. He is a hot rod guy and has a 1932 Ford, real nice car he has put many hours in to it. I’ll get a pict up of it when I can. Well anyway he just gave me a 1996 Chevy Caprice frame it has 4 wheel disk brakes that came stock for the California Highway Patrol. So it looks like I have a new used front spindles and rear end. The rear end on the D-50 is 48 inch wide when measured from backing plate to backing plate. The Chevy is 56 inch so I will need to find some offset rims or do something to keep the truck some what stock looking. Well here is a pict what the ride height that I'm shooting for. Give or take 3 inch. If I can get a 6 inch supension drop and a 10 up travel fo a total of 16 inch travel I will be satisfied. NOTE the two 4 X 12 blocks under the cab. This puts the bottom of the cab at the heigtht of the stock bed. Now it's time to start building the roll cage frame.

[camoit]

Well the cab is now cleaned up and ready to start on the fabrication. I found a nice sharp air hammer bit trimmed the cab real easy. I just took my time and worked on the inside of a bend next to the line of spot welds or with a steel backer and she cut like butter. I cut out the inside of the doors in order to give my self 4 more inchs of elbowroom in the cab. Once the roll cage gets started things get tight quick. I will start with the doors by using some square and round tubing to re-enforce the door skin. The whole cab can be picked up one person now. I would guess it’s around 185Lbs. I’ll try to get a weight on it before to long. Building the front suspension is going to be a little harder then I thought, due to the narrow with of the truck. I might be forced to widen and lengthen the wheelbase in order to accommodate the new suspensions. The doors are made stable again. I used 1 inch round tubing across the top of the door panels. Tacked it to the tubing across the top, then used ¾ inch square across the bottom of the door just under the door latch to the lower hinge mount. Added in ½ inch square tube between the two. I found that the ½ inch square fits nicely in the stock window channel. It makes it easy to weld to the back of the door just above the door latch. Just gives enough room to remove the latch. Once the roll cage is installed I will be able to put the inside door handle back in.

[camoit]

Well I just picked up an early block 4.3L V6 it’s a 1992 out of a GMC Jimmy.
She is one ugly suv. It came from my neighbor who owns Collage Oak towing here in Sacramento.



It was over heated pretty badly. It melted the guts right out of the temperature sensor. Other than that it looks to be a good engine to rebuild. I now can see the real differences between the 1997 Vortec engine and the 1992 non-vortec. One difference is the balance shaft in the vortec.
other differences are the hold down and guides on the roller lifters. Then there is the timing chain cover and bolt pattern. The oil pans are stamped steel non-vortec cast aluminum vortec. The vortec came out of a Chevy S-10 the pan is about 1.5 inch taller. Looking at the back of the block the 97 vortec does not have freeze plugs in the bell housing area. The 92 block has a hole in the side for where a fuel pump would be mounted if it were carbureted. They just did not knock out the inner wall of the block casting. And of course there are the heads and the intake mounting bolts. Now I can use the Nascar manifold that is built for these engines. Oh and the Vortec engine had spun a rod. So it will make parts for the 92 if needed. Well I got the new older model 4.3 torn down and ready to go the machine shop. Every thing looks good inside this one. I should have pictures of the machine process when they get started on it. It will be a couple of weeks tell they get started on it.

[camoit]

Well I picked up the crank from the machine shop today. It was tanked and checked for cranks. It looks to be stock. I brought it home and de-burred it tonight. It took about 2 hours. It’s not a 32 Lbs crank but it is cleaner then just a cast. The machine shop has another 4.3L V6 there right now. It came out of a bush grand national car. The guy that owns it paid $18000.00 for the engine used. I’ll snap some pictures of it. It’s an odd fire unit. The estimate of the rebuild that they are doing sits at $14000.00. It will make 500 Hp when they are done with it. Here are some before and after pictures of my crank, along with a side by side of a stock crank.

[TotallyBalistic]

schweet...those busch 4.3's are some pretty cool motors...i was at the swap meet here in my area and one of the high end guys had one sittin on an engine stand. he also had a couple of small blocks that he claimed was from hendrix motorsports. anyhooters the crank looks great and im lookin forward to seein this build up

[camoit]

Well I took the vortec heads over to Rex Hutchison Machine. There are 2 major changes between the Vortec and non-vortec heads. One is the intake mounting. The other is in the intake it’s self. The pictures below show the two set of heads I have. The NON-vortec head the intake airflow is directed in from the side of the valve. The air then swirls in to the piston in a counter clockwise direction. To add performance to this head you would grind out the ramp that is pointed out in the picture. Then you would open up the pockets in the bottom. This would take about 6 hours of labor on each head. That would cost $750 per head. The vortec head has very little that needs to be done. There is only a little pocket in the casting that needs to be cleaned up. I'll get some better picts these are from my phone.
I have also included picts of the Bush engine they have.

[camoit]

Update. Well the machine shop, Rex Hutchison Racing Engines should start the block work next week. The block is good but there was one little crack in one of the Vortek heads. I’ll try to get some pictures of the work. But in the mean time I decided to go ahead and buy a front-end kit instead of building one from scratch. It should save me around 4 weeks of design and 4 weeks of build time. I’m going with a kit from Total Chaos. So I went out and picked up front spindles from a 2000 Nissan Frontier 4X2 V6. The kit is right at $3000.00. On a stock Nissan the kit will give 13 inch of travel. This is limited by the stock bump stops on the lower part of the frame. So after talking with Total Chaos I should be able to get the 18 inches of travel I’m looking for. Now I just need to go get stock frame bushing mounts and elliptical cam adjusters from Nissan. It will take around four weeks to send out the spindles and have the fabrication done. Here is a picture of their kit and some pictures of the first VORRA race of the season here in Sacramento. The trucks in the pictures is using the kit I have on order. Except for the one that did an endo...

[TotallyBalistic]

man that looks like it would hurt...be lookin forward to seein your suspension get finished, your truck is gona be pretty sweet when its all done