Thread: Shop Truck (True Spirit) Project

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It’s been pretty much down time on the truck the last few of weeks. The TCI transmission I ordered the last week of December and was supposed to be to me in 2 weeks has actually been shipped and should be here Monday or Tuesday.

I stopped by the body shop and the cab should be ready to pickup next week also (seems I heard that a couple of weeks ago though ). All that leaves is fenders, doors, hood, and bed

On the bright side, I got the engine back from the machine shop yesterday. I spent Friday running a tap thru bolt holes, fitting the rings doing the final cleaning and painting.

I had planned on having the engine completely assembled by Saturday but it didn’t quite work out that way.

Just as I was getting started an old customer who I hadn’t seen in a few years stopped by. We BS for a while and I showed him a few of the projects. When we got to the truck he asked if I was going to be doing a Lil Red clone (he had looked buying this truck at one time while it was still in the Junk Yard with that intention but took a pass on it). I kind of laughed and told him how many 76 True Spirits were built and them mentioned that only in 1976 only 70 2WD Short Bed Step Sides were factory 440s and this one still had the original engine. He pretty much left here kicking himself for not buying it when he had the chance.

So I get ready to lay the crank in and when I open plasti-guage I find out that there is only 1 piece about an inch long in it. So a trip to town and finally find some at the 3rd parts store.

Anyway I got the crank and pistons in it by the time I quit on Sat.

It’s a pretty bread and butter build. It’s been bored .060, the crank turned, new cam bearings, rods resized and new ARP rod and man bolts. The Pistons are forged TRWs and with the little bit of head milling it should be right at 9:1 compression.

Frankly I could have lived with cast pistons had I been able to find some that would have given the 9:1 compression ratio. I also would normally have reused the original internal fasteners (rod/main/head bolts) if I hadn’t come across a few that I think were over-torqued in the previous rebuilt.