New owner (of sorts) '78 21' Chevy

[jwreding]

Sorry I don't have any pics as of yet, but we just brought our '78 Clipper back home from sitting in a field for the past 5 years.  I am the proud new owner of it because my parents hate it and told me it was mine and to do whatever I wanted with it (although I told them they'd still have to pay the property taxes  :lol: )  Anyway, it doesn't seem like sitting has hurt it too awful bad.  There are several things wrong with it but most of them were wrong with it before we parked it.  I was expecting a lot of rust to form, but it seems all that happened was the part of the hood right above the grille has formed some surface rust.  The frame still looks great, which makes me happy I won't have to work on that.  The springs are shot though and sagging something horrible.  The interior is still halfway decent, although I plan on completely going through it and re-upholstering, new carpet, etc.  The roof has a small leak that drips right into the sink (kind of handy and ironic at the same time).

Well, right after I brought the Clipper home I also brought home a 1995 Chevy G30 1 ton van with a 6.5 L diesel engine and 4L80E overdrive transmission.  I made a post several months ago about a diesel conversion and have decided I'm going to do it.  The current 350 in it doesn't do squat for acceleration or gas mileage and I think the diesel will do just the trick.  Plus, the overdrive trans will help with mileage on the highway.  I have another truck I'm swapping a diesel into right now so hopefully that will teach me enough to where the Clipper diesel project will go somewhat smoothly (wishful thinking I know).  All in all, I figure on spending the better part of 2 years and about $2500-$3000 on the project but I know I'll be more than pleased with it when it's done and I finally get to enjoy it.  We first bought it in 1993 and took one trip to Arizona with it, where the stock 400 proceeded to throw a rod and had to be replaced with a 350 since there were no 400's to be found.  Needless to say, that left a bad taste in my parents' mouth, especially since about 300 miles from home the master cylinder went out as well.  So there it sat, in our driveway for about 5 years, then we moved it to my cousin's house and put it in his back 40 where it sat for another 5 years.  I've been wanting to bring it home for a long time but we haven't had the room.  Just a couple weeks ago the cousin called and said he was selling his house and we had to come get it.  So now she's back home and ready for surgery.

I'm out of town on vacation right now so I can't take or post any pics but I will be sure to as soon as I get back.  I plan on trying to do a write-up on the diesel/OD conversion but as many of you know things never go as planned and sometimes you have to spend all your time working on something and have no time left to document how you did something, fixed a certain problem, etc.  But I will try to get the major ideas down on paper with pics to help anyone else who might be considering doing this.  Just thought I'd check in and will be posting pics soon!  Thanks.

Jonathan

[bigray]

Good luck Jonathan I'm waiting to track your progress! I think you'd be the first so far!

[Rastaman]

Well Jonathan...here was i thinking I had a huge project ahead of me...but compared to your plans....i  am skating down hill....good luck with your plans....keep us posted

[jwreding]

Thanks guys.  I'm on vacation right now but when I get home I plan on getting my ACOC membership.   Some things I need to buy off the club are the front and rear decals and a complete set of window gaskets.  The Blazer diesel swap is going to come first though so I can learn from my mistakes, and I'm also going to do all the body and interior restoration before I do the engine, so I imagine the actual swap won't occur until next summer or so, but I will definitely continue to post updates as things occur.  I've already gotten many good ideas from reading the posts here.