I purchased the truck Friday a week ago. Got it registered on Saturday and then drove it to LA Sunday. I had described the rear end as “wallowing” when starting off to a friend. I checked the tire pressure before heading to LA… 15psi… aired it back up to 32psi. That solved that.

The trip was 270 miles (I’ve done it a couple times already). The truck has a 30 gallon tank and used 19 for the trip: ~14.2mpg. I think that’s pretty good for a 350 in a big truck. 30 gallons means it could go 425 miles nonstop. I cruised at 70mph most of the time. With the 3.25 rear end that’s ~3100rpm. The water temp didn’t get above 200degF the entire trip.

The electrics worked fine when I went for the test ride, but there has been lot of weird quirks since picking it up. Most of the problems are the result of the “wireless” door-jam connections. They’re not properly adjusted so the connections are either weak or non existent. Right now the switch for the rear door doesn’t work. The key-less entry wasn’t working either… which is a problem on a car with no door handles. The truck only starts in neutral, but the sensor doesn’t always realize it’s in neutral.

Jeff and I pulled door panel and kickpanel and played around with the wiring. We got the the keyless working, but the range is really short. I also found the emergency push button for opening the driver door when the keyfobs fail (previous owner didn’t think it had one). Once I get back to Las Vegas I’m probably going to have a friend’s shop replace all of the wiring in the doors. Right now it’s a whole mess of crimp connectors and multiple wire colors. I turned up the charging system since it was only running at 12.3volts before.

The engine is really cold blooded. It starts fine but you have to baby it for at least 3 minutes before it will idle by itself. Then it’s probably another 5 minutes before you can back it out without killing it. The previous owner told me he had wired the two electric fans direct because he thought the temp sensor had failed. I think the thermostat might be stuck open as well.

It has a Holley 650 double pumper carb that runs pretty rich on idle (makes your eyes burn). I might play with that. As for driving, it feels really smooth as is. No hiccups of anything when accelerating. I’ll probably switch it to fuel injection eventually. There’s enough room under the hood for a blower, but I think I’d go for twin turbos.

I hit the headlight bucket on the post of Ryan’s garage. I kept wondering how I could be so negligent… till I climbed into the driver’s seat again and noticed that I couldn’t even see the passenger headlight. I’m not in too much of a hurry to fix it anymore. A friend pointed out that I was bound to screw something up and that I should just drive and enjoy it.

I bought an iTrip for my iPod. The truck has a cheap CD player, but I’ve only got 2 CDs in my house. The radio reception is terrible since the antenna is in the headliner on the right side. I was worried I’d have to velcro the iPod to the roof in order to get good reception, but I found out I can stow it right next to the radio’s chassis and get perfectly clear sound.

I took the picture above to show how much the truck has been channeled (body lowered over the frame rails). If it was still stock, the door sill that the marker is sitting on would be level with the truck floor.

Best of all: the old lady across the street thinks it’s “pretty boss”.