My 1992 GMC and 1996 Chevy Pick ups.

Well, it has been a while. I've been running my ass off earning a living and staying away from trouble as best I can. A couple years ago my daughter bought a 92 GMC short box and traded me that for my 1996 Silverado. After dropping in the new motor then a lot of troubleshooting problems like changing the fuel pump, swapping out the crank sensor, new plugs, wires, cap and rotor I finally nailed down that the coil was buggered (made in China MSD coil) the 96 was ready for the road. Let me tell ya...I didn't get it back in the same shape I gave it to my daughter in.

The 96 Chevy.

At this time the 92 is in the garage in the process of receiving a heart transplant.

From this 355 Small Block to

This 1971 030 454.

However, I digress..these will be stories for future posts as I decided it was time to start posting again.
Hope to see you all in the next little while as I dig back into my garage for some knuckle busting fun and games.

Coppertop.

Whatever Happened to AJGeneral.com

 What happened to AJGeneral.com

There are a lot of people that wondered whatever happened to AJGeneral.com. The site was my baby. I built it to sell restoration and performance parts. I decided to create a site that gave it's customers a better experience based on knowledge gained from first hand experience dealing with high performance and the restoration of classic muscle cars that came out of the 60's and 70's. I personally handled every email,phone call and request. I wrote articles for the site and even found technical information such as casting numbers for old school engines. I worked on AJGeneral in all of my spare time. Eventually I made a full time living from the website. I researched hard to find parts for people and was straight up about issues that other companies would B.S. about. If a part wasn't available I would say so,I wouldn't take a customers money and hope for the beast feeding them a line if they didn't get their order in time. I would spend countless hours chasing down parts for people across North America so that they could make their hot rodding or restoration dream come to life. I noticed something else along the way,soon all the other premier websites and companies like mine were following what I was doing, I have to say that sure made me smile!

One Fateful Day.

One fateful day I got a notice from my websites hosting company. My hosting fee payment was made out to Bright Builders and not eSilverBullet, the company that bought my hosting company. Before I knew it,I no longer had access to my website or any of my admin. I was locked out. By the time I found out my domain name had already been sold. The person that bought the domain name wanted a huge amount of money for it. I was very clear that the domain was useless to him as I owned the copyrights to AJGeneral. 

Moving Forward.

I was able to rescue all the tech info I had posted on AJGeneral thanks to a very good friend of mine and have it all posted on this blog. I have just started rebuilding a store on the site for those of you that are interested in parts for your project and I am in the process of posting more information based on experience from myself and others that submit it to me. The new store can be seen just to the right side of the blog articles and I will continue to bring the most up to date information I have on both the small block and big block Chevrolet. I will also be bringing myself and the site up to snuff on articles about the LS Chevy's as well. So while I'm in the process of doing so,I thank all of you that were loyal to AJGeneral and hope you can bare with me as I continue on with JWT Automotive.

Another 96 Chevy story.

Those of you that read this blog have probably figure out that I don't buy new vehicles. I buy used and spend far less working on them myself. Ya..you guessed it,here's another 96 Chevy story cause the truck went up on blocks again. Its been a long time coming and I figured once my daughter's Firebird sold I would get to the truck. Well the car's gone and I finally got the chance to get under the truck and have a look.

 This is a picture I took a couple years back after a trip to the car wash.

 Up on Blocks

 Well, so far the truck has over 450,000 klicks one it (297000 miles). The interior looks pretty good and for the most part the truck's body seams ok, from a distance. I've been grinding out small rust patches here and there and just spraying Rock Guard over it the keep the look. And that's worked very well. I jack it up,put it on up on blocks and have a look underneath to find the pan gasket leaks all the way around, the power steering pressure line leaks when it connects to the steering box, the passenger side header leaks and a whole assortment of other minor issues. So, I decide to make a list of things that need to be done and a few that I've wanted to do for a while. So inside of about 30 minutes, my list was compiled and I started pulling the grill and lower air damn,signal light lenses and so forth.

In the back of my mind,I've always wanted to black out the grill and change the appearance of the front of the truck. The of course I decided I want to pretty much change the appearance of the whole truck. Prioritizing though leaves me at,stopping the rust and repairing the other little things first and foremost. I've noticed small rust spots starting all over the truck and after any mechanical issues those will be my priority. And,as any gear head knows,once you bust one or two things open you'll always find something else you want to change or modify. That being said, I know I'm off on another adventure.

 The Front Grill 

As you can see,the front grill has a few miles on it. Years of winter driving,gravel roads and car washes have taken their toll. You can't see from the picture but, there is a few small cracks on the plastic joints that are easy enough to fix with some glue.

Now, when you're stripping the front grill be careful. This Chevy has 450,000 clicks on it so some parts are gonna be a little worn. This reflector lense was already repaired before I bought the truck 10 years ago. The plastic studs break fairly easy so maybe hit them with a shot of lube or WD-40 before taking them apart.

You can always buy a good stripped to remove the flaking chrome finish. I decided that I wanted to spend an hour or so with a gas powered pressure washer that kicks out about 2600 p.s.i. Cleaned'er up right nicely.

The grill turned out pretty good in spite of a few blemishes. I didn't bother to fill any of them simply because this was just a quick fix job. This truck is due for a full ground up rebuild soon so I just wanted to change the look a bit for the summer.