[Whitbread]

Yes the project is still going! Had some slow downs and changes of plans, but a very hot 4-53 with lots of boost is still going in a square chevy. I've hit the point in life where a regular cab truck didn't make a whole ton of sense anymore with a daughter and pooch, so I sold the red chevy. To replace it, I picked up an 82 k30 454 4spd truck from california with 110kmi and all original minus new carpet, headliner, and 88-91 grill swap. My compound turbo vw diesel swapped ford ranger has become the wheeling toy, so I no longer needed a dual purpose rig, I need a straight up hauling rig. The truck runs and drives as is, I'm going to try to build the 4-53 over the winter and get it swapped in on mechanical power. Once I get the motor in and running, I will do the ddec conversion.

Here's the new recipient

 

[Whitbread]

Some buddies showed up last night, some beers were opened, that led to the shop getting reorganized, which led to the detroit getting pulled out and worked on .

Crank plastigauged right at .002" and spins like a dream.




Need to get make a trip for stainless bolts for the front cover, oil cooler, and air compressor brackets. Slowly but surely!

 

[A310]

Some buddies showed up last night, some beers were opened, that led to the shop getting reorganized, which led to the detroit getting pulled out and worked on .

Crank plastigauged right at .002" and spins like a dream.




Need to get make a trip for stainless bolts for the front cover, oil cooler, and air compressor brackets. Slowly but surely!

Nice to see you working on it again.

 

[Whitbread]

Collecting more oddball parts, I was able to track down a starter drive for my air starter. Figured it was a good night to crack a beer and mess with it. HD starters all run the same mount pattern/ring gear offset, you just change out the pinion gear to match your ring gear. I needed to swap to a 8/10 pitch 12 tooth gear according to the chart from Ingersoll.



New vs old

 

[A310]

Very nice, love those air starters.

 

[Whitbread]

The man, the myth, the legend Wayne himself came out this past weekend from NY for the semi drag races at Onaway. He brought a few goodies with him for my project and assisted in getting the pistons/liners in the block with the oem setup tools.


Wayne had a run of custom flaps made, so naturally a set will end up on this truck


DDEC 4 8V92 ecm that Wayne reflashed to a base file for a 350hp 4 cyl with 3400rpm limter.


Set of 4 dyno tested only injectors from a 550hp 8v92 to get it started on while Exergy builds my big injectors.


DDEC 4-71T engine harness


Since half the reason anyone does a Detroit swap is to have Jake brakes, they're definitely going on. However, I refuse to pay ~$1k/cyl that they sell for. I bought a 3 axis cnc that's due for delivery in the next 2 weeks, so I'm going to make some. Wayne was kind enough to leave me with one master and one slave to measure up. If they made these things back in the 50's, absolutely no reason they can be re-made today in a cnc and be made publicly available for affordable prices.


Lastly, Wayne helped get the pistons/liners assembled and dropped in the engine with use of his special tools be brought out.

 

[A310]

That DDEC is going to be nice.

 

[neomadic]

I've been following this thread for a looong time! So happy to see you making progress. I just posted about machining up some Jakes today. Strange world.

 

[Whitbread]

Been using the old girl for work all summer hauling junk, but I've collected a few key parts over the last few weeks. The plan is to tear the truck down and swap it this winter.

12klbs of concrete blocks on friend's trailer


Eaton truetrac for front end


Dana 3.54 gear set for the front 60 that came with the truetrac. Also ordered all bearings/seals/shims/king pins/joints/35 spline outers/yukon locking hubs.


As I don't want a 205 transfer case to be the fuse in my driveline, I hunted for something bigger. I found a Rockwell T223 from a ford F650. That should hold up to my planned uses and already had 1480 yokes on all 3 flanges. Needs a good cleaning and a few seals.

 

[Whitbread]

Guess I should make an update of the small bits of progress that have slowly been happening.

The guts of the rockwell T223 make a np205 look cute

There's a special place in hell for the asshole that decided to weld this flange on instead of replacing an $8 snap ring

After an hour of die grinding, the war was won.

After another hour of elbow grease, we have a clean case!

Between ebay and rock auto, all the transfer case bearings are on the way! If anyone else ever needs the generic numbers for a T223 they are:
1x - 308 ball bearing
1x - 1828S149 ball bearing with snap ring groove. 6211 is the industry number, but it won't have the snap ring groove.
1x - 3307 ball bearing
1x - 208 ball bearing
2x - 31521 cup
1x - HM89449 cone
1x - 25520 cup
1x - 25821 cup
1x - 25584 cone
1x - 31597 cone
1x - 02476 cone

Also picked up a ford disk brake dana 80 from an 08 e350 ambulance to upgrade over the dana 70 currently in the truck. One of the last to have 8x6.5 bolt pattern, just need to turn the pilot diameter on the hubs down slightly.

The pile of oddball parts on the shelf is starting to accumulate.

Camshaft came back from Colt Cams, it's now a custom grind for some extra breathing.

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[Whitbread]

Bearings showed up so it was time to get to work!

In this case, bearing preload is set by shims between the case and bearing cap. Book says 3-5 thou for input shaft play, but with all the shims I had there was zero play. As rockwell parts aren't falling off trees, it was much easier to take a 5 thou cut out of the bearing cap to create bearing clearance so a measurement could be taken.

5 thou cut out

Anerobic sealant on each side of the multiple thin shims

Removed one 2 thou shim and landed right at 2.5 thou clearance, close enough.

Now onto fixing the damaged snap ring groove. Aluminum bronze rod was very carefully tig brazed to build up the splines that were ground away. Chucked it in the lathe and cut the OD of the new bronze spline ends to match the other side of the groove and then recut the groove to 1/8" wide.

Used some small files to square up the sides of the new bronze splines so the flange would slide on.

Ended up here for today

 

[mikeycee]

I literally made an account just to tell you how impressed I am with this build. I actually just bought a 78 C30 with a 453t swapped into it already. Spicer 5052 with a D70 rear. I'll make sure to post pictures when it arrives by carrier. Thanks for all the knowledge sharing. I know the post write ups must take a bit of time, but the journey will for sure be worth it.