Well I started the truck

[MalcolmV8]

Exactly one month from tear down (26th to 26th) I started the truck and drove it.
I can't believe how excited and anxious I was when I fired it up. The timing was off so it started horrible. I set the timing to 10* BTDC. Not sure what it should be. Seems to run real smooth there.
I only let it run about 2 ~ 3 seconds and then would add more transmission fluid as it sucked it up. It took a full 13 quarts. Once the tranny was full I let it idle a while and made sure everything was good.

Issues on start up: I noticed transmission fluid leaking onto the floor. A few small drops from the cooler lines. I had to go around and tighten up the flares on the hard line I had fabed up. Before not to long I had that solved.
The other issue was the temp gauge did not work. After checking on the wiring I noticed I had simply forgot to wire it up. Solved that one in a few minutes.

I had the laptop hooked up to the baumann transmission controller and it has a live display of trans oil temp, speed you're traveling, gear selection etc. etc. Pretty nice. Well oil temp got up to about 100* while sitting idling. I eventually took it out for a drive. Seemed to work fine. I pulled off up the road and it shifted to second (rather firmly, will need to soften that), then third. I drove around the block, real short block, probably only 1/3 to half mile.

Now the bad news. Right as I was pulling into my driveway I noticed it slipped like it was in neutral and then suddenly pulled in. Humm that's odd I thought, so I backed up into the street and drove off again. I got to a stop light and turned up a hill. It just slipped like I was in neutral and was just barely crawling up the hill. I tried letting off down to idle and then just barely stepping on it just to make it far enough so I could turn around. I then turned around and drove straight home. It was slipping like that from pull off the whole way (only about 1/10th mile away). Oil temps jumped from around 112 to around 127 when I was slipping up the hill. Again it slipped while just pulling into my garage from the driveway (flat ground).

It's got me really worried. I'm hoping though since it worked on my first test drive and then went south that hopefully it's just a seal that's leaking or a solenoid that's sticking since it has been sitting since 9/27/00. That's 5 years tomorrow.

Thanks guys
Malcolm