My trio of GMs

16LT4 · December 17, 2022

For a nearly a year, I kept my ‘70 VW as a station car 200 miles away for work. I brought it back to my house this past Spring to swap chassis, redo the interior and reupholster the seats, swapping it with my ‘84 GMC. Both were driven each way.

The truck’s carb gaskets started leaking enough to smell and see fuel, so in October I swapped on a Weber 38 in place of the original 2SE. Unfortunately, that carb seems to be bad out of the box to the point I’m sending it back; I’ve only had an hour or two every few weeks to work on it, hence it now being December and it not being done yet. It also had developed a copious front crank seal leak. So, it had to come back to my shop. But, I already have 5 vehicles there and didn’t want a 6th, so one had to go… queue the K2.

The 442 drew the short straw… or rather the only straw. Which is fine, because it was mostly sitting for a few years, so now it’ll actually get driven, which is a good thing. Once the S15 gets back home, it’ll get a new timing chain, sprockets, all oil gaskets, distributor o ring, front crank seal, clutch, and possibly RMS. When I pull the pan I need to see which one this has; if the 1 piece, I’ll have to pull the engine and the crankshaft to replace the RMS. Its underside is 38 yr old black undercoat, no rust.

The Olds weighs 3600-3800 lbs plus a full tank of fuel, and the trailer is 2k lbs. IIRC. The S15 is under 3k lbs. As we all know, the 5.3 did fine. Unfortunately, I had to pick up the trailer and load the Olds in a snow storm, a little sketchy with trailer surge brakes, and now the Olds needs a full underside wash. Until I started hitting a strong 30kt E headwind, the truck was getting 15 mpg, kept in M5 and staying 60-65 mph. I only checked transmission temp when it was working hard(er): climbing the Taconic mountains, or NYC traffic, and only once did it hit 150*; every time I checked it was 142-146*F. I installed the upgraded T stat last year.