I also like how you kept it simple and straight to the point. I bet its going to be a lot of fun to drive. Looking forward to some videos of this thing running.

Had a great day of work today in Brian's shop. Taking advantage of his lift has been awesome.

Pulled the rearend apart and installed the 31 spline 3.50 gear posi third member and got it all back together before lunch.

Got the tranny pan torqued

Pulled the converter loose from the flex plate and checked the clearance and it was in spec so I put that all back together.

Put on some DEI Heat protection on the tranny cooler lines above the exhaust.

Mounted the shifter cable out of the way of damage from the exhaust.

Filled the tranny back up with fluid and checked for major leaks. Non so far.

Fired the truck up and let it heat up. It got hot fast...faster than it should.

Pulled one of the heater hoses off and filled the rest of the motor with water and got it back together.

Started it back up and it was much better but noticed a lot of top end noise. Something is not quite right. So much that I was not going to run it any more. Pulled the drivers side valve cover and there was very little oil getting up there.

Not too sure what the problem is but hoping that its simple. I have oil pressure on the guage but doing some reading it might be the o ring on the pickup and the pump is sucking in air and sending that out with the oil.

By that time, I was exhausted...literally and was pretty beat from the last two days of work.

So instead of getting to see if the truck actually shifted into gears and moved on its own power, we figured out how we could tow it back uphill to my house.

Beyond deflated right now. :(

Ill try and screw with it this week if i can find the time.

Sean

Sean - Big day!!

Just FYI --- a LOT of these 6.0 motors had major piston flop... when they were cold you could hear the pistons going kerflop kerflop.... once the forged pistons got some heat in them they'd quiet right down.


Not sure that's the noise you're hearing.... but it's very unnerving and GM got LOTS of complaints about it... but of course it was "normal".

It doesn't sound like piston slap at all and did not go away when it warmed up....it seems like it got worse when it warmed up. My 5.3 has a little piston slap and goes away within just a few moments.

I am going to pull the pan tonight when I get home and see if the o ring on the pickup is cracked or broken. Sounds like it could lead to aeration on the pressure oil side.

I am really hoping that it is something simple.

Sean

Just not working on it last night was good for clearing my head.

I also managed to shoot the exhaust top black and about a 18" of the exhaust. It looks pretty sick. Better than I imagined it would turn out as far as what you can see from outside the truck.

http://i1133.photobucket.com/albums/...psngb2lwma.jpg

The 4" looks kind of small out the back like that, just looks like a tip. Wonder if I should have run 5" :D

Sean

This may not be correct so take it with a grain of salt....but my engine made quite a bit of valve train noise when I first started it up as well. I was pretty worried at first but I had good pressure. In the end, I attributed it to months sitting in my garage and who knows how long sitting in the salvage yard without oil circulation.

In my case, it cleared up after about 15 minutes or so of running if you count all the times I had it started and shut off.

You can hear the racket in my startup video on my thread.

Every time I started it up, I'd wait for the sound to go away before reving it. Eventually, it stopped making that noises on startup.

Like I said, you may have a real problem but then again, you may not.

Thanks for the advise.

I came home after work and started it up. It would actually get a lot worse after the initial startup and it got worse quite fast. Within a minute it was ticking fairly bad....I could tell I had a problem.

So I had stopped by the stealership on the way home from work and grabbed an o ring for the oil pump pickup like I had read about on some other posts.

I jacked up the truck and got to work pulling the pan. Its a ****ty job under there. Pan and pickup have to go in and come out together so your literally working inside of the oil pan.

Pulled the pan and found the problem. I had unintentionally chopped a good section of the o ring off and it was inside of the oil pickup tube causing what I would guess a massive air leak on the suction side of the oil pump.

This was all speculation at this point though so It was clean everything up, install the new o ring and put everything back together.

New oil filter got installed, pan got reinstalled, oil drain and feed lines reinstalled.

Filled her up with 5 quarts of 5w30 and turned the key......:ohsnap:

Within 5 seconds the motor was dead quiet. I could instantly tell that I had fixed the problem.:headspin:

So onto other things, I put it in gear for the first time and it moved on its own power about a foot forwards and a foot backwards.

Tonight should be more testing, leak checks and maybe even see if it will go down the driveway.

So relieved at this point though.

Sean

Oh what a feeling!!


Good for you! My guts would have been churning....

You and I must be wired alike. It was the biggest sigh of relief in months..well weeks.

I was giddy like a school girl when I heard it quiet right down. It now sounds like an ls should.

It did highlight thought that I hate the muffler I put on it. It just sounds raspy and loud to me not deep and throaty. Probably be cutting that out this week.

Also reminded me that I have a deadline coming up and I need to keep my eye on the prize. Its time to button up all the little loose ends and get this thing on the road. I still need to get it to the tuner before the show and it will have probably a week at the paint shop getting work done on it there buttoning up some wet sanding and polishing.

Here is my little reminder about how not to put this together the next time. Pretty surprised that the little piece stayed inside the oil pickup tube. It was literally inside the pipe when I pulled it off.

http://i1133.photobucket.com/albums/...pszsxsmdr0.jpg

Sean

Very kool build..:thumbsup: