I posted this in WHYDTYTT, but thought I should include it here for completeness on Rusty:

I pulled the leaking radiator, which originally came from Dad's truck, out of Rusty and re-installed the one that was in Rusty when I got him. Here's the one that was Dad's:




Here's the other side of Dad's. As you can see, it has pin holes on both sides.




Here's the one that's going back, on the right, compared to Dad's. This one is all aluminum and is 1 7/8" thick, and Dad's is copper/brass and is 2 1/4" thick.




Lots more to do to Rusty as I'm installing the oil pressure, water temp, and volt meter gauges that were in Dad's. And I'm installing the headlight relays that were in Dad's. Plus I'm re-installing the AEM wideband AFR meter. More to come.

 

Got the Sunpro water temp gauge installed today, routing the capillary tube through a new 3/4" hole in the firewall. Painted the edges of the hole and installed a grommet. Got the oil pressure tube run from the engine through that grommet and into the cab, but need another ferrule to connect to the gauge. Then I'll fill the remaining hole in the grommet with black RTV. Then it is on to the volt meter. But, I've misplaced the lights for these gauges, so need to figure that out before finishing the gauges up.

 

Almost have the instruments ready to install. Here's what I did today:

• Installed the spare tach I had, which required going with a different cluster to get the tach printed circuit.
• Installed a different speedometer, one with a trip odometer.
• Cleaned every connection, including those for the bulbs, and used a copper-based anti-seize grease on them to ensure they'll stay good. And, in the process I found many of the bulbs weren't working but they were fine after cleaning.
• Painted all the needles red, including the transmission gear indicator.
• Installed a different ammeter as the one that was in there wasn't working - possibly due to having a loose stud.
• Painted the back side of the bezel white. See below.
• "Built" a new ICVR and got it ready to be installed.
• Removed the blue light filters to get more light to the gauges.

Here are the needles:




And here's the back of an un-painted bezel, on top with the brown, and the bezel I painted white. That part of the bezel is the only way the light from the bulbs get to the face of the gauge, and white will reflect a lot more light than brown. And, the light will be "whiter" as well.




And here's the new ICVR, wired up and dialed in. The gauges should be rock-solid after this with no more taking off to the top end due to a bad ICVR.

 

Rusty Lives! Well, I ran him for 30 minutes today checking out the cooling system, new aftermarket gauges, new ICVR, and some new gauges inc a tach. And everything works.

It took a sheet of plastic closing off the radiator to get the temp up very much as the aluminum radiator does a really good job. Finally got it up to 220 degrees, which was not quite to the end of the normal range on the factory gauge. And that temp was confirmed with an IR thermometer on the thermostat housing, which read in lock-step with the aftermarket gauge.

I'll have to wait until another time to check out the lighting on the gauges, but even in the day time I can tell they are coming on, so I think they are brighter. And, the lights on the gauges work as well since I made a harness for them using 194 bulbs just like the factory gauges use.

Next up is the headlight relays and then the AFR meter. Then he'll be ready for duty.

 

Just in time to bring home a *cough-Chevy-cough* friend from the wrong side of the tracks... )

 

Yep! There was a chance that Rusty was going to Nashville to bring back our daughter and SiL's belongings as they are moving to Nicaragua for three years. But it doesn't look like they'll need his services so the next date is with the French truck. However, it will be a Ford truck towing a Chevy, so I think that does show respect. (I just saw Aretha singing and dancing in her fuzzy house shoes when I typed that last word. And Jake and Elwood, along with Matt Murphy and several other great musicians.)

Anyway, Rusty is coming along and is becoming reliable. And the new, reliable gauges and a good cooling system is a major part of that.

 

Look forward to seeing how you do your headlight relays. I purchased a premade harness but I have to cut it up as theres no way for me to mount the relays on the inside of the fender and route the wire neatly.

In the end it might have been cheaper to just custom make the set up myself vs buying a generic harness.

 

I don't think you can make the harness for what you can buy it for. Here's a link to how I installed the harness on Dad's truck a couple of years ago, and I think I said in there that it cost $25, not including basic supplies like wire, shrink tubing, etc. and, lots of time. But, the result fits very nicely and uses standard relays that are available everywhere - which isn't true of some of the harnesses.

But, since Dads truck is getting a new front-end wiring layout, including a power distribution box with several under-hood relays and fuses, this harness is available for re-use. And since Rusty is the epitome of the red-headed step-child it is appropriate that he gets it. I'll post pics of how that goes soon, but it should look just like it did on Dad's truck. And it'll not only give brighter headlights it will give brighter gauge lighting as the current will no longer be taken from the headlight switch so the voltage there will be up. A true win/win.

 

Yesterday when I got Rusty up to 220 degrees the radiator was not quite full, maybe down in the neck 1/4". I left the cap off while the engine was getting hot thinking there would be enough expansion to completely fill the radiator, but it didn't quite happen so I put the radiator cap on and then shut it down after a couple more minutes of running. Today when I checked on it the radiator was completely full and the coolant recovery bottle was about 1/8 full whereas it had been 7/8 full yesterday. So it looks like the cooling system is fully burped and ready to go.

Then I started on the headlight relays. Got some of the quick-hits done, like hooking up the grounds and connecting to the headlights. But, I got bogged down drilling the radiator support for the cable clamps I'm using to hold the wiring where it crosses in front of and above the radiator. It is kinda fiddly getting the nuts up under there, so I didn't get done with that today. Hopefully I'll get that done tomorrow and then adjust the headlights and be able to tick that to-do off.

 

Nope you really cant, it just pains me to have to disect such a nicely done premade harness I got for cheap just to make it longer so I could actually route the wiring neatly vs having it drape across the top of the radiator core support.

Personally Ive thought about trying to find a late model ford relay box that has two relay circuits and using this harness in conjunction with that. Atleast the relay boxes Ive seen had the Ford oval on them and it wouldnt look as far out of place as some chinese clear relays with the metal mounting tabs on each relay.

 

Look at a 1992-96/7 F-series or Bronco many of them have a relay box behind the main power box with space for 4 relays.

 

I actually have two Ford relay boxes, the larger of which is destined for Dad's truck. So, I've thought about using the smaller box on Rusty - both for the headlight relays as well as the choke relay. But, then I realize that doing so will slow me down on getting Rusty going. And, the relay setup worked fine on Dad's truck for several months so I'm sure it'll be fine on Rusty. Given that, I'm going for effective but not perfect, which is new to me. No LED's for the gauge and a hand-me-down headlight relay harness.

 

Thanks, I was looking more at the late '80s F series trucks I need to start looking at the '92-'96/7 then.

A four relay box would work for me. The headlight relay set I have uses two relays one for high and one for low beam. So if I have a box with four then when I get to the point of installing the roll bar I want with the roll bar lights I can use the other two relays for the high and low beam settings for those four lights. Would make things a lot neater in my opinion than having four relays screwed to the engine bay somewheres.

 

This is the box I think Bill is suggesting, and if I had found this before I built the harness this is the way I would have gone.





But, I didn't so here's my rather HD harness installed on Rusty, and captured in my Headlight Relay album. First, the connections on the passenger's fender:




Passenger's-side headlight, the relays, and the connection to the factory wiring harness, heat-shrinked and taped:




The run across the radiator support showing the cable clamps, in the red ovals, and the serious 3M double-sided tape used to keep it tucked up neatly and out of harm's way:




And the passenger's-side headlight connect and it's ground:

 

With the headlight relays in I started re-installing the AEM AFR meter. The first thing was to figure out how to mount the meter itself, and I don't like the hose-clamp-around-the-steering-column approach. So I played with various options and finally decided I wanted to cut slots in the shroud that goes around the steering column and bring the mount up from below the shroud. As a reminder, here's what the cup and mount that I bought looks like:




But, I didn't really want to start cutting on a shroud for a tilt column, which Rusty has, since I don't have an extra. (Don't worry RW, I have yours put back.) So I compared a shroud for a tilt column vs that for a non-tilt column. Turns out they are essentially identical with the exception that the non-tilt shroud is 1 3/8" longer. So, I mounted the longer shroud in the lathe and used the tool-post grinder with a cutting wheel to cut it at the 1 3/8" line. Here's what it looked like after cutting with the tilt version on top and the non-tilt on the bottom:




Then I measured and cut two slots in the shroud, slipped the mount through from the bottom, and drilled two holes in the shroud to match those in the mount. That let me secure the mount to the shroud and....... it slipped right on and didn't hit any of the inner workings of the column. Here's what it looks sticking through:




And, here's what the meter looks like mounted that way:




The beauty of going with this approach to mounting is that the wires and vacuum line going to the gauge can, I hope, be run under the shroud. So when I get back to working on it, probably Wednesday as I'm going up to see Dad tomorrow, I'll see if they'll fit in there. If so they'll be well hidden and should look pretty clean. But, what'cha think?