Well, yesterday I used mine to block my mom's boyfriend in his parking place so he couldn't leave before the Sherriff got there, when they arrested him on two counts of felony endangerment. Amazing how well a long wheelbase F100 will block someone in.

 

That is an example of "FORD TOUGH"!

 

I hope you meant to say her now ex-boyfreind...... Folks don't need to put up with people like that, even if they are related.

 

The ghost and I had an adventure this morning. The girl will be in town tonight, so I ran out to get my hair cut and pick up some vacuum hose. I came out and saw two blue hairs trying to open the hood of a Topaz. After a little tinkering it turned out to be the starter. There was a Napa in the shopping center too. The daughter of the two says "I'll give you $100 to change it while we run in here." I argued with her, and here's where we take a horrible wrong turn into that David Ball song. She says

"Look. We're here to get mom's hair done for my dad's funeral. Put this in your pocket and just fix the car. Please"

So I run and get a starter, put that in. Car is starting. Running weak. Cleaned some grounds. Then I noticed a bunch of bad hoses. Clean out her icv and air flow, found a disconnected kick down cable. Filled up the tires and cleaned the windows. At this point I was just having fun and lost track of time. About an hour went by and they came out of the Hair Force One (name always cracks me up). The mom got teary, reached into the car and got this.

Informed me that when her husband would run the car and drive around their property he would listen to this to "make sure the sound was working." He was apparently also a master air conductor to "In The Mood."

 

Make me a copy of that tape and send it to me, would ya? I just last weekend installed a Ford JBL primo sound system (with two amplifiers and a subwoofer in the trunk) into my brother's 1993 Taurus SHO, that system sounds pretty dang good! 'course I have no idea if the tape player still works, but that'd be a cool demo tape if it does.

I'm envisioning it to be kinda like the THX sound at movie theaters.

 

I thought of you actually. Figured I'd just send it out to you. I believe I have an A-B deck around here somewhere.


And remember that factory deck I sourced? I had to replace the belt on the cassette drive when I got it. Something is still slipping. When it's auto reversing a frequent open palm whack of the dash is needed to get 'er rolling again.

Goes with the overall Sanford motif hahaha

 

Kudos to you, Dave. Good Samaritan award. Well done.

 

Great story Dave!


As for what I did to my truck, nothing.

BUT, I did pick up a few birthday presents from NPD today. I love having their home office 2 minutes away from work.

This is what I picked up. Original 1980 Owner's Manual, and Locking Hubs warning sticker. Anybody notice how the hubs in the picture aren't factory Ford hubs?





While I was there, I set my eyes on a beautiful 1970 F100 they had in the showroom. It was a Grabber Blue single cab long bed with the Explorer package. One owner, less than 1,000 miles on the truck, original everything. Story behind it was that an older gentlemen from Colorado bought the truck to use around the farm. But shortly after he purchased the truck, he lost his driver's license, and was no longer able to drive. The truck had a few dents and scratches, but it gave the truck patina, and it just made me fall even more in love with it.

 

I changed the oil and I got my a/c accumulator and evaperator installed today. It is running good with the new intake valves and seats, not a significant improvement but it should go a while longer. I had to pull the intake again because the rear cork seal slipped out and it was leaking a ton of oil... I hate cork, but that is what was included with the kit, so I went and bought the intake gaskets that included rubber end pieces (MS93334 $9.99) and she seems to be good now.

I tried to install my FS6 A/C compressor but I need to find the right bolt size. I just bought a bunch of sizes from the local farm store and none of them were right. I had one that would work but it was too loose and one that was slightly too big (I think they were 3/8 and 7/16). Is it metric?

 

Thanks guys. It was a good morning. It's 109 heat index, so the only thing it really cost me was less time in my shorts playing guitar and video games.

The woman had a good, old, Virginia accent like I barely hear anymore. We exchanged information. Hopefully there's some 30yr younger versions of them running around .

As for the truck:

Filled up. 16.1mpg! . Finally broke 16 with my regular driving. Now it's time to shoot for 20.

And, Had a chance to examine my wrapped birthday gifts. One of them has to be a DIY bed liner kit I asked for. It's the only thing that's even remotely that heavy. So hopefully with the good weather next week we'll be chipping away at my "patina."

 

Yes they are.
Fractional to hold the bracket to the block/head and metric to secure the compressor.

 

Yes I agree with Jim. The AC compressor has both standard and metric for whatever crazy reason they decided to do that for. Gary has a complete list of fasteners for these engines somewhere in his folders. Maybe he will chime in and show you where they are to take the guess work out of buying the AC bolts.

Dave you did well on the mechanic work. I bet that really helped those ladies out. Especially since dad just passed recently. It's good to know there are still people out there willing to help someone out thats in a bind.

 

I lied earlier about not doing anything to my truck.

I fabbed up the new transfer case shifter boot plate today. To say it was a nightmare is an understatement. In the end, the .22 gauge sheet metal is a bit flimsy for my liking, so I'll probably be making a trip back to Lowe's for something a little thicker.

I also made a few "adjustments" to my radiator support.

 

Here's a link to the Testing forum where Chris and I were playing around with the file and how to share it. Note that there are bolts for the A/C brackets to the head, A/C rear brackets to head, and rear A/C bracket to compressor - all shown alphabetically. But, I don't see the front bracket to compressor bolts, and IIRC they were metric. And, I am 100% sure that on an '82 351W the bolts on one side of the compressor were SAE and the other side were metric 'cause I bagged them together and wrote that on the bag and couldn't believe it when I was installing it again. The bolts are so close in size and appearance that it takes some study to see the difference.

Ahhh! Now I understand. When you said earlier that you were using .22 steel I thought that was kinda thick and didn't realize that Lowes carries it. Actually, I think you have "22 gauge" not ".22 gauge". 22 gauge steel is .030" thick and would be very difficult to form w/o bending. That's why I'm thinking about .125" steel. It is overkill but what isn't on these pickups?

 

RE the A/C: was this in the infancy of compressors made other areas, like Mexico? If so that could explain the bolts. General mounting is Metric, the Ford specific bolts are still SAE.

Thanks, Bruno and Jim. We were having this chat in Va the other day: I don't understand why people aren't better to each other in general. My friends are just starting to pay for their own maintenance/home repairs, etc. Get quite a few calls. I have a hard time explaining to some that I'd be more offended if they didn't ask for help.

Few weeks ago a friend's mother almost paid $400 to replace a simple Moen faucet. Took about a day for us to explain that I didn't want anything. Just happy to help out. /rant.

Been thinking tonight about my mileage, so I can mimic it again. I think most of the improvement came engine speed. Now that I'm competent in the angry traffic around here I've been training my right foot to stay constant during shifts. So once I get rolling I try to stay about 1800rpm straight through the gears.

And what do y'all say about idling vs. restarting. Here recently if I'm letting the truck sit for only a minute or two; tossing out brush, putting something in the bed after moving it, etc etc I've been letting it idle rather than turning on/off over and over. I wonder how much fuel I use to get going, compared to 90 seconds of idle.