Excellent work, John! Now, just park it, put a tarp over it, and look at the videos. Driving it will just destroy it, and plus in 20 yrs it'll be worth, like $100 BILLION DOLLARS.

Seriously.... Drive the wheels off. Sorry I will miss your/its debut at Clay City.

Lou

_________________
Home of Slant6-powered fun machines

Looks awesome! Great job!

thanks guys

so far, the D-150 has been to:

* Slantzilla's Slant Six reunion, about 275 highway miles there and back,, stopped on the road once due to a HEI feed wire getting loose from its connection,
** Drove it to work this past tuesday and wednesday,, about 25 miles round trip,,found the brake lights not working on the drive home tues... seems that the tail lights are on the same fuse as the dome light,, and I had added a glove box lamp, map lights and a convenience dash light,,, to the dome light circuit.. untill I get time to do some re wiring I will limit my use of the additional cab lighting to times when the tail lights are not on,, other than that ran fine in city stop and go traffic..

next trip is this weekend to Clay City,, and the slant six action at MPD

Enjoy! I bet your smile is a mile wide drivin' down the road. Can't beat the feeling after a project like that.

Lou

_________________
Home of Slant6-powered fun machines

Congratulations! You should be proud. Nice work.

during this extended winter,, finishing up some projects that were still open on the 83 D-150

one was,, in one of my pull a part visits I had found a D-150 with a front sway bar,, my FSM indicates that a front sway bar was an option in 83. I had it blasted and powder coated probably two years ago,did the install on it today.

the studs that fix attach the sway bar to the front struts were corroded / rotten,,I could not find replacements, so I substituted in a 1/2 in x 3.0 inch grade 8 bolts. I have them fixed by a jam nut,,one of these days I'll have a welder and will need stuff to practice with,, so instead of spending 20.00,, to get them tacked, I threaded the bolt shaft and ran a jam nut on it.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/13718356@ ... 034609074/

the D-150 was running today,, 1st time since around Thanksgiving...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0XDZlTAyhw

Beautiful truck. Nice work!

thanks,, going to have the slant six guys that are around for the Indy Cylinder Head swap meet help lift the bed back on,,
then,,,this spring tune the distributor and carb,,, plan to drive the wheels off it this summer

with a little help from my friends...
got the bed set,,

https://www.flickr.com/photos/13718356@N02/12893427185/

left to do
1) windshield install
2) bed coating
3) bed cover
4) engine tune
5) drive the damn thing! if it ever quits snowing

update on the 83 D150,

from April to October of 2014 I have put 7100 miles on the 83 D150, including running it at the slant six drags at Clay City.

across the 7K miles
I can average 20+ highway MPG when keeping the MPH at 60 to 65
running 70+ averages 18.5 to 19 MPG

the truck will easily run 85+,, far cry from back when it was stock,

I get a lot of compliments from random folks ( at gas stations, on the street, at MPD,) on how the truck looks, I like it to.

still have afew things to finish up: the under hood AC, recovering the seat, headliner... but I think I will let this project rest through the fall-winter and I will move on to the next one.

it has been good and I like driving it, plan to drive it some more

Will the next project be the barracuda?

over thw winter, between working on the 68 Barracuda projects I built up five electronic slant six distributors,, each with different levels of aggressive mechanical weight springs and with either 15R or 9R regulators and with either vc 208 or vc 239 vacuum cans,, all have new magnetic pick ups and new or excellent condition reluctors,,gaps carefully set to .008 max..
The spring are from either bigslantsixfan or a Crane slant six distributor kits or a combo of both..the chart has the details..

disregard the cap covers,, thet are there to protect the innards, I painted the bases to be able to easily tell them apart,,
they are:
Blue
Black
Bronze
Grey
Plain

here are photos and descriptions of what is in each one,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/13718356@ ... 327253765/

for all, since the brick of a D150 with the overdrive tranny, and 3:21 axel gives about 1800 rpm at highway crusing speed (65-70 mph) has 5 to 7 inches of manifold vacuum, I have the vacuum can adjustment all the way in to the right, to get the vacuum advance to pick up asap at cruse.

over time I will post results,, todays news is,, on a 400 mile trip over the past two days, with 90% highway driving, running 70 to 75 mph, with the "plain' distributor installed,, got 20.98 mpg.

I had hit 20 mpg over a large segment of consecutive highway miles before,, but to do that I had to keep the speed < 65..

the change here was bringing the vacuum advance in at a much lower vacuum start point. b4 I swap in a different distributor I'll chart out how the 'plain' distributor advance is operating.

Nice progress, John! I hope to see you at Mason-Dixon with that sucker.

Lou

_________________
Home of Slant6-powered fun machines

turned 10K miles on the 83 D150 today,

when I was going through the re build on this truck had the odometer re set to zero,,

https://www.flickr.com/photos/13718356@ ... 896180488/


it has been good, fun to drive, gets a lot of looks going down the road,, about every time I stop and get gas,, someone walks up and says,, that's a cool truck, what is it,

get a lot of comments ,, like,, 'nice clean lines'
folks are always surprised after hearing the exhaust and I pop the hood and show a slant six,,

fun stuff
..