Looks Great! Keep up the inspiring work!

 

Thanks! I figured I'll slowly try and do the whole truck. I'm starting on the driver side because the orange peel was really bad in some spots. After the whole driver side is done, I'm probably going to do the hood just because I want it to be a lot smoother.

I was planning on re-clearing the whole top but I might be able to get away with wetsanding it at this rate!

I did the driver's door and finished the rear quarter panel piece today:




You can see I was a little lazy neat the window. I was a little worried sanding too much and then burning through so I left a little more peel than I like, but it's much better! I can still sand it out later if it bothers me enough. I haven't done the very bottom where the black and red meet yet, and I'm not sure if I'm going to. I know that part gets hit by rocks all the time so maybe a little thicker clear coat there will help protect it!

 

I just want to congratulate myself. I'm now a "posting guru" after 10 years! I sometimes go in spurts with posting, I've done a little more recently with my swap.

Anyways I'll be doing some more wet-sanding tomorrow. I wish my gauges would come in sooner so I could install those but it may take another week or so to get them. I'm going to see if I can sell my old Bronco engine stuff soon as well so I can fund some more performance parts and whatnot for this Bronco.

 

I bought another new battery today so now I have two fresh batteries. Hopefully that keeps me from frying my injector driver module now the weak walmart battery is out of there. I also sold my coil spacers I bought that I intended to negate the sag from the motor along with my 2" blocks that were on the back that I had to take out when I lowered it from a 4" to 2" lift. I got 50 bucks so I got about 3/5 back in what I had to pay for different rear blocks and the coil spacers!

Now I can get around do doing more wetsanding!

 

So I ran out of the Meguires M105 buffing compound when I was wetsanding my hood. I had some other compound but it didn't buff quite as well. I'll have to go and rebuff it out once I get more of the proper compound.

I've been nervous about my injectors because I know the prevoius owner said two were a little weaker but still in specs. The new IDM hasn't failed me yet, but I feel like the truck was (and has been since it's been put in) running a little rough.

After unplugging valve cover harnesses, I found out that there is an issue on the rear driver side. One of the injectors must not be firing because when unplugging the pigtail that powers both injectors, the engine only slightly stumbles and while the idle gets worse, its not that worse. Unplugging all other pigtails causes the engine to stumble and idle quite erratic.

I just took off the valve cover again and am going to see if I can pinpoint this down. I'm hoping the worst case scenario is that throwing a new injector in will make everything okay! (but I hope it's maybe something more simple like a bad solenoid even though the ohm readings were good.)

Wish me luck and fortune! Maybe a few hot babes as well. (My girlfriend would sure like that)

 

If it's injector #8 that is showing to be weak, that is a common occurance in 7.3's. The nature of the setup, is that is the one that gets the oil/fuel LAST......and it will almost always show weak. Hopefully you don't have a problem, injectors are not cheap!

 

I ended up taking the valve cover off and unplugging injectors one at a time.

Unplugging injector 8 does nothing to the idling of the motor. Injector 7 changes somewhat, and injectors 1 and 3 change a little more than injector 7 (as in idle quality.)

It may be that injector 7 is weak, and injector 8 isn't firing at all. The bottom two of the solenoid hex bolts (both on injector 6 and 8) were actually not even hand tight, they were loosely in there, but the two bolts were tight. I couldn't get a .003 feeler gauge under the injector armature, and I don't have a .002 (which is the bottom limit) so I won't know what the clearance is. I know it must be under .003 though..


HOPEFULLY I can get ultra lucky and maybe tightening the solenoid screws will do something. Probably not, but I'll hope for it! The injector armature was also able to wiggle around some, but that may be normal. It wasn't loose per-say, but I could slightly tweak it by hand.


Edit: I found smaller feeler gauges and injectors 6 and 8 have less than a .0015 gap (which apparently .002 is already when a rebuild is due.) Injector 4 was right about at .002, a little less though. Man... this is going to be pretty expensive. Hopefully I can still drive the truck around without doing damage to the engine on injectors needing a rebuild. If injector 8 still won't fire after I try to tighten the bottom two hex bolts, I may not drive the truck until I can get some injectors (because I'm scared I'll mess something up!)



Good news is I am selling my AFR heads for 900 bucks. I think it's a great deal for whoever is buying it, and I'm not losing too much money on the deal since I bought them off someone else (they were still new in box but I didn't pay full price). That will get me a few bucks for the injector rebuild fund!


Edit 2: Just so I don't bumping the thread and whatnot. Anyways, tightening the solenoid bolts didn't do anything so I'm going to try and find myself two injectors locally until I can save up to have mine rebuilt to stage 1s. I hope that getting these two injectors will hold me off for another year or so. I should be able to save up for injectors by then despite all my student loan debt!

 

Did you find the hot babes?

 

Haha besides my girlfriend no I didn't get any more! I'll ask her to see if she knows where I can get some more! I'm sure she'll like that.

Since I got some money from my AFR cylidner heads, I'm going to see if I can sell some more stuff I've collected over the years (large planted aquarium setups etc.) that I need to get rid of before leaving at the end of the year. Hopefully I can sell the rest of the 302 as well. Maybe then I'll have enough to get all my injectors rebuilt instead of dealing with just two of them.

With my old 302, I have 233k on it but it ran great and gave me no issues. I have the top end disassembled now, but am including the old cylinders heads that were good when I took them off. I'm including the accessories and brackets, as well as fuel injectors. (I'm not including the bassani headers with it though)

I'm asking 450 for that now so I'm hoping someone jumps on it. Do you guys think that is a reasonable price to ask for that setup? Should I ask less? I don't want to give my old stuff away, but I want to get rid of it somewhat quickly without loosing a huge amount of money for it.

 

That might be a little on the high side, but you can also indicate "Or Best Offer" as well. I would think you are more in the 200 to 300 range at best.

 

Oh okay, I just bumped the price down to 350. Hopefully I can sell it semi soon. I'd like to get 300 out of it, then I could have enough money to send out my injectors for a rebuild.

On a completely unrelated note, I thought we were going to have to put my cat, Gus, down today and I was extremely bummed out. I've had him for 17 years; I got him when I was 10! He's been the most affectionate, awesome cat ever, very much like a dog.

Anyways we found out that his diabetes came back so it may be something pretty simple to help him out! I know he doesn't have a super long time left, but he's still going to be hanging in a while. That will put me in a much better mood!





Yes I still have a stuffed animal on my bed despite being 27 and we do have a lot of cats! That stuffed animal makes a great pillow. Once I leave off to the Air Force, I will finally have my own place (even if it's being rented at the time) and can get a bigger bed! Who knows, maybe the Air Force will let me bring my stuffed animals to Basic/or OTS if I get accepted for an officer position! (Haha that would be a great idea.) I figured since my parents were extremely nice to let me stay at home during college, there was no reason for me to move out. Especially now, since I'll be leaving in under a year. I will admit, it took me a little too long to graduate, but I finally did!!!


Last note for this post, since I almost have enough money to send my injectors to Jim at Rosewood for a full rebuild. I'm pretty excited to:
1. Not only get stage 1 injectors but
2. Feel what my truck is like with all 8 injectors firing!

I'm sure it will have a lot more power on 8 injectors than on 6.5, and if I get the tuning done for stage 1s, well I don't know what to expect.

 

Are you going to have to do insulin shots? We had to do that for an old dog for a few years

 

Yes, we actually gave him some last year for a short time but the vet said it went into remission or something. I suppose it came back pretty hard. I worked at Petco for 9 years while in high school and college so I've come across a bunch of different things with animals. Ive taken care of a few that needed insulin shots, its surprisingly easy to do. Too bad whoever sells the insulin wants to steal from you, those prices are ridiculous.

There was a pretty intense showdown on the highway right next to my house last night as well. Apparently some piece of s*** wore body armor, stole a car at a gas station in Fountain Hill, shot at random cars while driving the wrong way on the highway, set a car on fire, then stole another car and dumped it in our neighborhood.

This was one of the rare times I didnt have my kimber on me because I left it in my Bronco and I was driving the camaro. When I got home I made sure to load my AR and shotgun because the guy was loose in our small ranch neighborhood. Almost everyone out here owns guns so even being in body armor, he wouldnt have faired too well out here.

Its disgusting there are people like this in this world, but Im thankful no one I knew got hurt and I believe the only injury was someone being shot in the leg.

 

I like my ARs too.

I would probably grab one of my Glocks before my Kimber though

 

Yeah some of my friends bought glocks and they really like them. I do plan on getting one eventually.

My Kimber is super nice though and with the full size barrel makes it much easier to aim. It's surprisingly not difficult to carry either. However, I'm sure a glock would be a bit easier.