[POWERSTROKE]

Steve - Yep, LIGHTING-STRUCK. HE posted lots and lots, I posted a little as POWERSTROKE. Last time I checked the NLOC site there was maybe a post a week to a post a month on the Gen 1 forum. But there's actually a resurgence. Somebody lured Jeff Sparkman out of his lair, and he's cleaning his PC's at home posting stuff about his Big Block truck. The last F-1 race at Indy, Curt & Jeff pulled a funny on me. Jeff & his wife Cheri met Curt & I at a Bob Evan's for breakfast. Then we went to their house for a bit, the Curt and I had to get to The Speedway. I was ushered into the Big Block truck when we walked out of Bob Evans, we drove around a bit looking for a straight stretch of clear blacktop. Jeff stopped, manually shifted the column shifter into lo, brought rpms up a bit then smashed the gas and released the brake, at the first blink of the shift light slipped into 2nd, blink and into 3rd, and blink again and coasted to an intersection, Jeff said we were at about 120-125 when he backed out of the gas. Seemed like only about 5-6 seconds passed.
Anyhow, Curt stopped by this AM, I told him you reached out yesterday. He says Hi.
His Lightning amazed me with it's durability. By their nature, they get run HARD. He had his 8-9 years, was 6 yrs old when he bought it with 64,000 miles, had over 200,000 miles on it. He parted it out, bits and pieces all over the Midwest. Still have the transmission here. I'm finding out E4OD's needing a rebuild don't sell well at ANY price.

One other possibility for a GMC diesel repower, would be a GM 8.2L V-8 Fuel Pincher. I drove one in an F-700 Ford single axle semi-tractor for a year. Delivering freight with a 45 ft trailer. It really did pinch a Dollar's worth of fuel amazingly far. But after 3-4 weeks it would start missing on one cylinder, then 2 cylinders, and 3 cylinders after about 3 months. It would go to the dealer for a tune- up, guy who was a factory trained tech on them explained to me once what goes wrong with them. They normally win Top Honors as worst diesel engine ever. Only ever had one guy on another forum say they had one on a farm truck that never gave a problem. I actually see a switch back to gasoline engines in light and medium duty trucks. Diesel fuel is higher priced than gasoline, and many say a diesel has higher cost maintenance, I don't quite agree with that, but diesel repairs are generally more expensive.