Anyone know anything about Chevy trucks?

Buy a kit that replaces the starter mounted solinoid with a Ford type that mounts to the fenderwell. No more heat related starter problems.I think marine eng. use this set up too.

 

not necesarily, if the header is touching the starter it frys the starter as well. this is what sucks about most 390 FE headers, you have to wrap and heat protect them....

 

I thought we talking about a stock Chev. p'up..? No headers. Heat soak is a common problem with some GMs. I do think he has a bad starter tho...

 

just saying the starter itself can get soaked with heat and fried, moving the solenoid may not be the answer...following the subject of possible fixes

 

I didn't have a problem with mine in the truck I built a 390 for.


As for moving the solenoid, it's an option, but I never had the problem after I put the heat shield on mine.

 

It has the heat shield. Maybe I need to wrap the starter in header wrap or something. I'll look into the Ford solenoid thing as well.

 

I'd wrap as much of the starter as possible and then the heat shield in it as well.

 

yeah my old headers were WAY clear of the starter. dont know what brand they were but the new Hooker ones are actually on the starter. my old school buddy says he bought three diff brands and they all did the same thing. the old ones didnt have a welded lip so i may put one on them and put them back on...what brand do you run andy? what part #?

 

I honestly can't remember it's been so long.

But they were bought at Jegs for a 66 F-100. I think they were Hooker, but I can't remember exactly

 

So, I was at Pull-A-Part the other day, taking a walk through the newest set of cash for clunkers vehicles, when I came across a beat to hell '92 Blazer. I mean, if there was ever a vehicle that deserved to die by sodium silicate, it was this thing. Papers I found inside of it said it was from Michigan, it was rusted out and beat to death, 325,000 miles. I looked inside, and noticed the dash was identical to the dash in my truck. Then hey, look at that gauge cluster! Has a newer looking cluster with built in tach that fits in my dash! So I ripped that bad boy out and headed home.

After a few hours of pouring over wiring diagrams, splicing the '92 harness connector and control module in to my '89 harness (all soldered and heat shrink covered splices), I managed to get 'er done.

Out with old "half moons":



In with the, well, slightly less old:



I love it. The older clusters are notorious for problems. Every time you drove the truck, you had to pound on the top of the dash to get the speedometer working right. So far the new cluster has been working excellent for the past few days. Only issue is the trip odometer is messed up, the mechanism that makes it work is broke. So I'll have to keep an eye out for another one of these cluster in the junk yard to swipe a trip odometer out of. But the regular odometer works great, was showing 325,465 when I put the cluster in. The one in the old cluster had been stuck at 238,000 for quite a while. No doubt the mileage on the new cluster is probably in the right ball park for the truck.

I also had to clean out the glove box to see the decal on the bottom so I could see what the axle ratio is. That way I could reprogram the control module so the speedometer would read right, since it was all calibrated for a 4.10 geared 4x4 Blazer to begin with (this truck has a 2.73 rear gear :16suspect No wonder it only turns like 1700 RPM at 70) .

Found this in the bottom of the glove box. I was like, what the heck?



What are the odds, that Terry's uncle originally bought the truck from someone named Jamie? I kid you not.

 

new cluster looks good!

 

+1 use to drive around an old work truck every now and then with the half moon dash I hated driving that thing it always use to irritate me

 

Jamie, are you sure about the 2.73 ratio? Doesn't that truck have an overdrive tranny?

 

At this point I'm positive. It sounded crazy to me at first too. It kicks into overdrive at 50 mph, really lugs the engine down when it does. the code on the sticker in the glove box decodes as 2.73, and that's the gear ratio I used when doing the math to figure out which pins to move around when I re-calibrated the DRAC module. I paced our Lincoln LS from 30 all the way up to 75 mph and the speedometer is reading dead on.

Here's a little WOT video testing out the new gauges.



I'll bet a set of gears would really wake that thing up.

 

My old Z-71 had the half moon dash and I never had a problem other than the gear for the odometer broke. You'd be better off finding a whole new dash like what you got to replace it with. I tried replacing the gear in mine and it broke also.

My 94 Suburban has the dash you installed and I like it so much better.

The Z-71 had 3.73 gears with OD and 33'' tall tires and it would only turn 1700 at 70ish. How tall of tire are you running?