1989 Chevy K1500

My wife bought us a truck yesterday, from a friend of hers. She was very sad to see the truck go. The truck's name is Earl. Earl is very rough, but treated the PO very well. Earl must be upset that he has new owners too, because he quit running about 4 miles from where whe bought him, lol.

Here's the truck, just a few miles from the PO's house.


I got a couple closer pictures before I left this morning, after getting it home late last night.



It's an '89, with TBI 350 and 700r4. Both have been rebuilt, the trans more recently. Silverado trim level but with manual windows and locks. All the typical cosmetic rust for an Ohio rig, but actually pretty clean and solid on the underside. It's an old farm truck, complete with a baked and dusty interior along with a bed floor that has been beaten to death over the years.

@bucket ...I know better than to ask,.......but why???

idahovette said:

@bucket ...I know better than to ask,.......but why???

Click to expand...

Besides being super cheap, there's actually a legit reason besides simply wanting it, lol. We've got 5 drivers in the household now and I'm not willing to give up any of mine for a kid to drive. My oldest daughter has been driving our '00 Burb for a few years now, but she's going off to college this fall and we want the Burb to stay at home. So my oldest daughter will take this 1989 truck to school with her. My second oldest daughter will take over driving the Burb, until she has enough money to buy herself an older model Jeep.

Good stuff as always Andy.

I forgot to mention what may be wrong with it. When I first started driving it, it ran decently smooth, but the exhaust note made it seem as if there was an ignition issue. When accelerating it was kinda popping, sputtering and cutting out for split seconds at a time. After a few miles, I got on it just a bit after leaving from a stop sign. It made good power, but then started badly cutting out and then petered out and died. It would crank over and kinda sorta try to fire at times. Pretty sure I smelled fuel in the exhaust. The next morning, while on the trailer, I cranked it over for sh!ts and giggles (no time to diagnose). It fired right up, but then sputtered and died after about 10 seconds.

My hunch is a failed ignition coil or ignition module. When I get home again, I'll check for spark. I don't *think* it's a fuel issue, it didn't particularly seem like it.

bucket said:

Besides being super cheap, there's actually a legit reason besides simply wanting it, lol. We've got 5 drivers in the household now and I'm not willing to give up any of mine for a kid to drive. My oldest daughter has been driving our '00 Burb for a few years now, but she's going off to college this fall and we want the Burb to stay at home. So my oldest daughter will take this 1989 truck to school with her. My second oldest daughter will take over driving the Burb, until she has enough money to buy herself an older model Jeep.

Click to expand...

kids/she's/college......you got a handful bud lol.

The truck is up and running pretty well now. It turned out that it didn't have spark. There was a remanufactured distributor in it, that I'm guessing had a failed ignition module. I didn't bother replacing just the module because oil was somehow wicking up the distributor shaft and the top of the shaft was also badly machined which caused the rotor to fit VERY loose.



So I replaced that with a good used GM unit.

It fired up and ran after that, but then had trouble starting again and eventually refused to fire. That turned out to be a failed coil wire. Well, the terminals on the wire. The wire boots did not fit well which caused the terminals not to fully engage. After being like that for so long, the terminals corroded.

But anyway, after a new coil wire it fired right back up again.

I also replaced the IAC motor so it would idle properly again. The old IAC was also an aftermarket part that had failed.

Looks like the module was upside down.

Derick C. said:

Looks like the module was upside down.

Click to expand...

Yeah I noticed that too! The metal plate is where you put the thermal paste to keep it from getting cooked.

Nah, it's just a tin cover that is often on a remanufactured dizzy. The cover has stamped into it "warranty void if removed".

In other news, I've driven the truck a couple hundred miles now and it runs fantastic. I've been working on getting some creature comforts working again, like the dome lights and the power outlet. Now I've gotta figure out what's wrong with the gauge cluster. When you turn on the lights, the gauges quit working and the turn indicators light up solid. I'm guessing it's a ground problem, whether it be the dash harness or the cluster itself.

Also, it has low oil pressure when warmed up. Like, just a few PSI when warmed up and in gear. I've verified this with a mechanical gauge. Accelerating and driving, it's fine. I'm just not going to worry about it, lol. I'm sure it's been like this for a while and will continue to be ok. There's no funny noises at all. The engine is a light gray color, so I'm assuming it was a Jasper reman.

The gauge cluster issue did indeed turn out to be a ground connection issue. The problem is the gauge cluster itself. I remembered I had a gauge cluster that I had saved from a customer's vehicle about 20 years ago. It was replaced because some of the backlighting bulbs were inop. So anyway, I plugged it into the truck and the problem was gone. However, in the last 20 years, one of the turn indicators had also failed and that's not going to fly with my daughter lol.

So I went to work on the original cluster. Once I removed the tin backer cover, I found the issue:



^That's the connector on the back of the cluster. The far left pin is the cluster ground and had a bad solder joint. The two next to it also have failing solder joints, but apparently are still connected.

I'm terrible at soldering and don't have the proper equipment to do a good job, so I improvised. The cluster's tin back cover has a screw that also grounds it to the ground on the circuit board. So I simply hooked a wire to that screw and ran a dedicated ground wire.

I forgot to take pictures of this, so I have the test cluster as an example.





^The eyelet mounted to that screw, under the tin cover, then the wire came up through that rectangular opening. I stripped the wire back far enough that the bare wire strands could also make contact with the threads of the ground screw. That wasn't needed at all, but I figured it couldn't hurt.

The new ground wire just follows the headlight harness, then grounds out on the steel dash frame.

bucket said:

My wife bought us a truck yesterday, from a friend of hers. She was very sad to see the truck go. The truck's name is Earl. Earl is very rough, but treated the PO very well. Earl must be upset that he has new owners too, because he quit running about 4 miles from where whe bought him, lol.

Here's the truck, just a few miles from the PO's house.

You must be registered for see images attach

I got a couple closer pictures before I left this morning, after getting it home late last night.

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

It's an '89, with TBI 350 and 700r4. Both have been rebuilt, the trans more recently. Silverado trim level but with manual windows and locks. All the typical cosmetic rust for an Ohio rig, but actually pretty clean and solid on the underside. It's an old farm truck, complete with a baked and dusty interior along with a bed floor that has been beaten to death over the years.

Click to expand...

does your bed tip or do you have tamps?

AuroraGirl said:

does your bed tip or do you have tamps?

Click to expand...

It's a hydraulic tilt.

When we got the truck, the girl pointed out that there was a random wire that went from under the hood, through the door jamb, then up into the dash somewhere. She didn't know what it did, so she never messed with it. Well today I figured out what it did, and that another previous owner was an idiot. They obviously knew that the cluster had a bad ground, because that janky wire went from a front fender bolt, to the gauge cluster. The only problem was, they had the wire attached to a cluster mounting screw... which is a plastic cluster, mounted to a plastic dash. Idiots, lol.