The build seems to be slowing down... a lot of my spare time gets eaten up by planning and debating what to do next.
I decided to get some sound deadening stuff for the floor. It's tough to narrow down all the options, but for now I'm planning to do partial coverage with CLD mat, and then cover with 1lb mass loaded vinyl. In the back I'll glue some actual flooring vinyl on top of the mass loaded stuff to make it more durable/truck like.
engine progress: pistons installed, oil pan sealed on, cam gear installed (with heat), cam installed... I'll put the short block in the truck before installing head; mainly because I'm using head bolt holes as lifting points with eye-bolts.
starter rebuild: It had a 1968 reman tag and was working ok... but since I've never re-built one, I thought it would be a fun endeavor. re-surfaced the commutator- Surprisingly, the stack teeth had ~0 runout during initial measurement, but the commutator had ~8thou. This allowed me to use the core-stack as a reference to align the 4 jaw. The commutator end was held in the 4 jaw and the other end supported by a bushing in tailstock chuck. It cleaned up after removing ~.01" all around, milk cutting fluid & small round tip HSS cutter, ~850rpm. Setting it back in V-blocks, the runout measurement is now down to ~2 thou. Good enough. Then I knocked edges off the grooves with a triangle file and polished 400, 600, 1500 sandpaper, then 5000 emery.
For starter motors, some say the mica should be flush with the commutator... but unfortunately in the process of getting all the copper gunk from between the commutator bars, I ended up with a healthy sized undercut and it seemed like a bad idea to turn it down that much, which would result in more copper needing to be cleaned from the grooves. My oem toyota starter is undercut, so I figured it can't hurt.
