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buck fifty 720


tdc

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I have an 82 720 harness in my 71 510. I had the same weird issues caused by a trashed dimmer switch. Took forever for me to diagnose because the Mitchell diagram for 82 has the dimmer circuit drawn wrong. Finally tried manually bypassing the stupid thing and bam, lights worked fine.

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yeah, that dimmer was a pain. i do half my driving at night and it's held up for the past week, so i think my fix is going to work for now.

 

didn't get a lot of time to spend with the truck this weekend, but i finally got around to fixing the shifter. the shifter in the 81 was missing it's bushings and had always been super sloppy, plus it had a horrible rattle that annoyed anyone in the truck, so i put the 83 shifter in the 81 transmission since the long oval design with the plastic blocks was nice and tight. 

 

however, at some point someone had cut the shifter off to make it a "short shifter" and just stuck a cheapo aluminum shift knob on it. it looks like they were using the set screws at some point, but there weren't any in it when i got it and all the setscrew holes were stripped. the knob was always coming off in my hand when driving around.

 

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in the 81, i put a skateboard wheel on the shifter since the stock knob was super gross and nasty. it spins and i really liked it, so i decided to do the same with this one. it was pretty easy, i just cut the head off a bolt and tack welded it into the hollow end of the shifter. i didn't get a picture of all that, but it's pretty straight forward.

 

while i had the shifter out, i popped off one of the plastic bushing blocks with the off center hole and noticed there's a spring in there. i decided to flip the blocks over to put the pivot hole at the top of the rectangle hole, shortening the throw of the shifter even further. i wasn't sure if it would still fit in the transmission and shift smoothly, but i figured i'd give it a shot.

 

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the shifter sits a good half inch or so further into the transmission now, but it went back together no problem and shifts fine. there's a noticeable difference in the shift throw, too.

 

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here's a picture of it back together.

 

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i don't like the shift boot much (it came with the truck) and it's still a mess inside, but i'm still working out the little kinks before i go through and give the thing a deep clean. there's literally a plant growing out of the carpet on the passenger floorboard. 

 

i also picked up a set of belltech nitro drop 2 shocks from a friend who got out of the little truck game forever ago. the fronts are still new in box, he ran the rears for a few months before he crashed his truck. i need to get those on eventually.

 

well, that's pretty much all i got done this week. hopefully more next!

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

thanks guys. there'll be more coming for sure. i know that low trucks with pokey tires isn't everyone's thing, but i've kinda always wanted a ratty one and i'm having fun with it. and for how little money i have into this stuff i'm not feeling too bad for indulging this guilty pleasure. sometime soon (i hope) i'll be putting tires on the 15x10 wheels, then i'll have to figure out what flares look best on a 720 see how low i can go without bags or cutting holes in the bed. 

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weather's been terrible the past couple weekends so i haven't had a chance to do a whole lot to the truck. it likes to diesel pretty bad when i shut it off sometimes, so i'm figuring the cylinders must be coked up pretty bad. i think i'll pick up some seafoam this week to run through it and see if that helps. i was gonna do the water down the carb trick, but i mean this isn't the 50s and they make stuff you can buy to do the job now, so yeah. 

 

i've been meaning to ask but keep forgetting, does anyone know what this little shock hooked to the rear of the 84's original tranny is all about?

 

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  • 2 months later...

hey guys! so i'm at a crossroads.

 

i have a pretty big project i'm wanting to get going on, but to do that i need to free up some room and equity. this means it's time to either sell my dodge a100, or the 720s. i really hate the thought of selling any of them, but i have so many projects that i want to put my attention into, i need to give up some of the more finished things and refocus. 

 

after much thought and weighing of the options, it's a smarter move to sell the 720s. i could get more money out of the van, but the van is more special to me. i won't find another one like it without dropping a ton of money, while these little 720s come up all the time around here for pretty cheap. besides, the trucks would be an easier sell as the one is super reliable, runs great, and easy to drive while the other's pretty much a whole 2nd truck for parts or to fix. the van is a handful to drive and takes some practice to get the hang of and has a lot of little quirks that i would either have to fix or go into detail about for any prospective buyer. 

 

ANYWAY, i love these little trucks and i for sure see myself picking another one up in the future. i got them both really cheap, and i'm not really looking to make money on them, just the money back that i have into them. i know there's a lot of guys on here in the eugene/oregon coast/northern oregon area, so i figured i'd offer them up on here before going to craigslist. 

 

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asking $1000 for both clean titled and tabs paid up trucks or best offer, can probably deliver them as far as eugene. if you only want one of them, i could probably work that out too, but i'd like both of them and all the extra parts to go together.

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i think i've changed my mind about selling. i've been daily driving my 720 lately and still haven't gotten around to putting a sign in the window or putting it up on craigslist, i just really don't wanna get rid of it. 

what's the best place to find an lsd for these trucks? i think i'd like to make both tires spin with some mild upgrades and keep it as a toy hauler toy for now.

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i think i've changed my mind about selling. i've been daily driving my 720 lately and still haven't gotten around to putting a sign in the window or putting it up on craigslist, i just really don't wanna get rid of it. 

 

what's the best place to find an lsd for these trucks? i think i'd like to make both tires spin with some mild upgrades and keep it as a toy hauler toy for now.

 

 

At the end of the rainbow.  :)

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Easier to swap in a different aftermarket supported axle, like a Toyota. Lsd all over the place, disc options if you want them, still fairly narrow and come in the correct lug pattern.

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i don't know if swapping the rear end and dealing with everything that comes with that would be easier than just welding my spare diff, but obviously that's a better choice. if i ever get around to doing anything with the rear, it'll probably be a welded diff. it's cheaper, i already have everything i need, and if it explodes the whole rear end into a billion pieces, i can just go back to stock and then think about a proper swap. 

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driving the truck to portland this weekend for a moped rally, there was a short list of things i had hoped to get done before it was time to go but i'm kinda out of time. one of the important things, however, was new tires, as the tires on the wheels that came with the 83 were mismatched garbage.

 

the stock rims on the 81 (the truck that started this thread) had ok tires, but the front end was out of alignment forever and so 2 of the 4 were pretty much shot. i bought some 15x10 steelies for this truck a few months ago and was planning on putting tires on those, but i'm still not sure i want to go the 10" wide tire route. i ended up just putting tires on the ugly wheels that came on this truck.

 

so yay, new tires!

 

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still hoping to do the wheel bearings and valve lash/head torque before i go, but we'll see

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oh man, i've always hated photobucket, but apparently i was using it to host the images on the first page of this build thread! no idea why, i've been using imgur everywhere else for years. anyway, i went through and replaced all the broken images with imgur hosted images. 

 

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truck news! the portland trip went flawlessly, but i'm having some weirdness going on with the truck. it's always dieseled every now and again when i shut it off, even when the engine was in the first version of the truck. i did one of those pour-seafoam(or whatever)-down-the-carb-while-it's-running things a while back to decoke it, and that seemed to help a lot. however, that was months ago and the dieseling's back, plus now it backfires like crazy on decel. spirited driving down the twisty part of 99w coming back from portland in the dark made for some fun flames shooting out my exhaust on downshifts. 

 

while up in portland, i tried down jetting my carb a bunch since it was acting rich, but that made it impossible to drive. i went back up to the jets i've been running. we checked the timing forever ago, and rechecked it when the dieseling became real bad the first time, but i'm starting to think i need to check it again. i also want to go in and do my valve lash and retorque my head bolts. i don't think that will help much, but i'm honestly kinda stumped as to why it's being so weird.

 

i'm hoping the weather is nice this weekend, i plan to do the valve lash and rebuild my exhaust, assuming i can find the valve cover gasket locally. there's a bunch of little things i have lined up to do too, but finding the time to do them is tough. i got new wheel bearings and seals for the front, i want to replace the door windows and regulators with the ones out of the old truck (these are in bad shape, glass is super scratched up). 

 

there's also this beat up hardbody down the road from my house, thinking about hitting the owner up to see what they're asking; maybe there's a ka swap in my future? hehehehe

 

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anyway, i'll leave this with another picture of my lil dude in portland hauling around my silly puch moped.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

driving the truck to sacramento next weekend for another moped rally, so i figured it was time i scratched a bunch off my list of stuff i've been putting off. i thought the valves were sounding noisy, so i decided to do the valve lash, retorque all the head bolts, and replace the valve cover gasket/half moons. the valves were in spec (not too surprising since the engine doesn't have a ton of miles on it really), so i'm guessing my ears were playing tricks on me and the noise i was hearing has to do with the huge exhaust leak.

 

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yeah, that exhaust leak. i realized that was probably the source of my backfiring. i decided to finally do something about the horrible exhaust on this thing as a whole. i'm not sure if i ever talked about how the previous owner had cut the pipe off in front of the muffler and did a really bad job straight piping it (i'll get pictures of the job tomorrow when the sun's up), as well as put a dorky twin pipe tip on the end, but it's pretty bad. to make it worse, they cut side of the bed around the tip and even spot welded it to the side of the truck, which obviously didn't hold. the cat is hollowed out as well, so the truck is pretty obnoxious. look at this sick custom exhaust tho

 

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you can also kinda see the exhaust tip and bed trimming in this picture i took of this guy's amazing parking job (when someone parks stupid next to my truck, i take pictures of how they were parked and their licences plate, just in case i come back to a huge dent)

 

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so to finally start fixing this mess i cut the exhaust right behind the previous owner's splice and unbolted the mid pipe from the front of the empty cat. that left me with the manifold and y pipe, which goes back to about mid-cab to meet the cat. 

 

i didn't get any pictures of the rest of this because the sun was going down and i was trying to wrap things up, but i ended up putting a couple "clearance" dents in the exhaust so that i could wiggle the manifold and y pipe past the transmission and torsion bar and out from under the hood as one unit. i didn't want to split the two because i don't have a gasket for that juncture, and those nuts are hard to get to and are lookin kinda rusty. didn't want to break one off and be stuck trying to deal with that before my trip.

 

turns out my exhaust leak was a dime sized hole in the crotch of the Y pipe. i should have gotten a picture, but again, the day was on it's way out and i just wanted to be done with it. i welded up the hole, found a crack on the manifold and did my best to weld it up too. got the manifold/y pipe combo back on the truck with new gaskets at the head and called it good for the night. took it to the store to get dinner and while it's super obnoxious right now, there wasn't any backfiring at all, so hopefully that's fixed!

 

still need to figure out why it likes to diesel so much. maybe it needs a fuel solenoid to shut off the fuel when the truck's turned off?

 

tomorrow i'm going to run to a parts store and pick up a cheapo glasspack and maybe a length of exhaust tube and see if i can't put an exhaust system on the dumb thing. i'll try to get more pictures.

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idle's where it belongs, there is no solenoid currently, but i'm thinking of adding one. as the truck shuts off, the mechanical pump's still pumping gas into the carb, and the engine will keep fueling itself until it finally dies. cutting the fuel flow before the pump would at least stop the engine from fueling itself as it tries to diesel. 

 

driving the truck around with the hole in the y piped welded up made it 100% better as far as the backfiring goes. it hasn't dieseled yet either, but this same engine dieseled in the last truck, so unless that header also has a hole in it, i don't think i've fixed that yet. i don't think i have enough exhaust tubing in good enough shape to build my own exhaust, so i think i'm going to take it to a muffler shop tomorrow, along with the $20 thrush glasspack i picked up, and have someone else do it for me. 

 

oh, look at this mess 

 

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this was the shortest, cheapest glasspack my local parts store had. it'll do

 

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more later!

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Mine used to diesel pretty bad, what I have found is almost all vehicles with Weber's diesel if the idle screw is more Ethan one turn in. What you got to do is first make sure the main idle screw is in the right spot then mess with the one that pushes on the throttle linkage.

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finally went and got exhaust put on my truck. i was planning on doing it myself in the driveway, but i'm driving 7 hours to sacramento tomorrow and didn't have time to get it done, so i had my brother's buddy's shop do it up for me. my truck's pretty silly in general, so i decided i wanted a silly pipe on it.

 

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i'll get better pictures of it as well as some of the underside soon for posterity

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The fuel pump does not keep the engine running. The idle circuit does as long as there is fuel in the carb. If you shut the fuel off at the pump it will idle for 5 min to empty the carb. Get an idle cut solenoid that shuts off the fuel at the idle circuit or hold the brake and let the clutch up slightly to load the engine down and then turn the ignition off and it will stall.

 

Only the Z24 engine needs the head gasket re-torque. No harm done. 

 

Don't lower your truck, those rims have the wrong offset.

 

Setting the toe in is easy to do in your driveway with some stakes and some string.

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