I've been looking for a 75-91 Ford E350 extended van for a while now.

What I really wanted was an E350 extended van with barn door style side doors and a carbed 300 inline 6 & manual NP435 4spd transmission. Yea good luck finding one with all of that!! So I finally decided if I can't find what I want I'm going to build it.

I have been looking and not finding much. I found an 87 E350 extended cargo van with a carbed 351W. I went and looked at it. It was so rusted I didn't even want to think about getting it.

I've seen this 89 E350 extended Club Wagon ( with the barn door style side doors ) for sale for a while. But I really wanted a carbed van. But without having any luck finding a decent carbed E350 I could afford. I finally decided to go look at the 89 today.

It was owned by a church. I got there and looked it over. It looked a little rough but it was rock solid. The only rust thru at all was on the front lip of the hood ( behind a bug deflector ) . I started it up and it ran smooth. I took it on about a 6 mile test drive. It seemed to drive ok, it had good power. There was a slight vibration. The brake pedal traveled a little more then I'd like. But it was solid not spungey at all. There was a weird noise when you let off the gas after hard acceleration. I had a complete brain fart and could think what would cause the noise.

I pull back in the parking lot, get out walk around the van. I check all the tires for any obvious defects. I didn't see anything but I noticed all the tires were General's! I have never had a general tire that didn't blow out or chuck the entire tread.

Well I decide to get it. I buy it and then go to a gas station and fill up the rear tank. I leave the gas station make it a few miles down the road. While sitting at a stop light I look down and notice the temp gauge almost pegged out to the hot side. I say oh sh@t. There's not really any place to pull over so I just turn both front and rear heater on full. The gauge starts to drop some. By then I remember what the weird noise was I heard ( bad fan clutch ) . I finally get to a spot I can pull over. I hop out and go tell my dad, who gave me a ride up there and was following me home, what was going on. Idling with the heat on full blast the temp gauge was right in the center. So I decide that it should be ok to make it the 50-60 miles home ( mostly highway miles ) .

I pull out get on the highway and get about 20 miles when I hear "BANG, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP" I look in the side view mirror and just see a huge dust cloud and my dad Swerving out of the way. My left rear tire lost about 3/4 of the tread. I get to the side of the road as quickly as possible. I'm about 1/4 mile from an exit. So I very slowly limp the van off the highway and go a couple blocks to this school parking lot. I get out of the van yelling some things I probably shouldn't in a school parking lot!! I check out the damage. It destroyed half of the running board mud flap, crushed some inner structure, smashed part of my rear 1/4. I'm beginning to think this thing might be cursed. Luckily there was a spare tire with some air in it. So I change the tire.

I head back out and get back on the highway. I make it another 10 miles when I start smelling gas. I call my dad to see if he sees anything coming out the back. He says no. I look at the gas gauge and it starts dropping. I get off the highway again and pull into a Mcdonalds parking lot. I get out and gas is dripping from the full length of the running board! I crawl under the back of the van and find a leaking hoses just above the rear axle.

So I call up AAA and wait 2 hours for the rollback. The driver gets the van loaded. He follows us back to my place. About 5 miles from my place I look in the mirror and it looks like the rollback is driving on a gravel road. There is just a huge cloud coming off the tires( I'm like WTF! ) . Well I finally get home the wrecker stops and I see coolant just pouring out of the wrecker. I swear this van must be cursed!!!! Maybe I should have asked for some Holy water with the van!!

I'm never buying a van from a church again!!

Sorry about the long novel of a post.



Here's some pics I took of the van while waiting for the wrecker. I've got a lot of work to do!! But it looks worse then it actually is condition wise.






What's left of the general tire. I want some BFG's!!!




And some of the damage from the tire.






I finally got my E350, be careful what you wish for!!!!!

 

is it possible that the blown tire damaged the fuel line along with whatever else you mentioned... seems quite possible to me if it did the rest of that damage. for now a rubber hose will replace the offensive section, and when you find the right section at the junkyard, go back and do it right.

sounds like a rough day, but not too much actual damage (except maybe to the wrecker, but thats not your problem)

i have a truck that i call the "tire graveyard" where all the tires i don't trust go to die. on the occasion i drive it, its quite effective at reducing my stock of nearly-dead tires

 

If the tire didn't cause the damage to the fuel hose it definitely made it worse. I'm going to pull the hoses out check them all over good and just get new replacements for the ones that need it. I'm more mad about the over 1/4 tank of gas that I dumped on the highway. That crap isn't cheap!! The funny part is the tire didn't blow! It still holds air!!

I'm thinking about just chucking the cooling fan & fan clutch. I've got a Taurus electric fan sitting on the shelf. I'll throw that on and that problem will be fixed.


I do know the other three generals are coming off the van! I don't want any more damage. I'm going with a new pair of BFG AT's on the back. I've got a pair of those on my 96 E250. I've had them for around 6 or 7 years now and have ran them on 5 or different vans and trucks. And they still have a decent amount of tread on them. I've never had a single problem with them. The last time I bought a new general tire it came apart with 150 miles on it!! I won't run them on anything!

 

i've had a few tires do that, i think one was a general. lost a big chunk of tread on the freeway, i felt like i had a wheel out of balance so i pulled into a parking lot off the next exit, found it lost half its width, a third of the way around.
another tire (unknown brand now) had a big chunk start to peel in my flatbed (tire graveyard) while my dad had it on a firewood run, he called me to bring him a spare, as the 2 in the truck were buried under firewood. i got there, he pulled off that one, and while installing the new one, the damaged one blew up, covering us both in gravel. it left a crater about a foot around and about 6" deep in the shoulder of gravel road.
in the last half year, i lost 2 tires (at different times) on one exact spot on the highway that i drive daily. one of those i had it coming to me, the other was unexpected, on the front of my van.

as for your fan clutch, it shouldn't be too expensive to just replace it. going electric, you either need a sensor for the fan, or you need to be observant and switch it on as needed
at the end of the day, its a matter of preference. ideally, the fan clutch works as it should, and the e-fan is a nice add-on, especially if you have an upgraded charging system to keep up with it

 

That's certainly some first day ownership saga----maybe any bad Karma or luck following your new van has been banished now? If it weren't so aggravating it'd be funny, but the not-so-good kind of funny!

Your van now rivals IDIJohn's similar van---his is a beast too, looks a bit similar--check it out sometime.

Haven't seen too many tires blow apart as you and Josh describe---any idea what causes it?

Congrats on the new van, welcome to the forums and better days ahead!

 

"Holy" bad luck much!


I guess I can count my self lucky nothing at all went wrong on my trip home with mine.


It was a 2 hour highway drive back home with mine, 125 miles in an unknown 600$ van never sits to well in your head but other than lacking FM tunage on the radio, and hearing the side barn doors rattle non stop all the way home, it went smoothly. Thank god I didn't have a blow it, it doesn't have a spare!

Engine was making me deaf though, 4.10's with the C6 sure is a screamer on the highway it tops out at 70 with the engine sitting on the governor!



To bad it's a window van eh? I was even pickier than you, I did not want a window van at all.


Me and my friends love my van

 

It wasn't very funny when it was happening. But now I can laugh about it. Hell even the wrecker driver was laughing about it. The wrecker driver was laughing because he was the on call driver for the big rig wrecker that would be needed to haul his rollback.

Yes I'm well aware of IDIJohn's van! He has been rubbing it in my face ever since he got it! Because he knew it was what I was looking for.

I would guess the tire came apart because it was a cheap tire that was out of round.

Thanks, I'm not new to the forum. I've had a 96 E250 extended cargo van for a while. But I want a manual transmission in a van. Not very easy to do in a 96. That's why I've been looking for a 91 or older E350. This is the van I'm currently driving.











If it wasn't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all!!

My turd was $800. But mine has a FM stereo and quiet barn doors! Mine has a leaking C6. No idea on the gears. It also a EFI 5.8L no IDI.

I don't mind the window vans. The windows are tinted. Once I get rid of the rear seats it will be all good. I'll like mine a whole lot more once I can hunt down a parts van with a hydraulic slave cylinder/clutch pedal set up. Then get the NP435 swapped in.

 

Oh well, at least it's got the mighty C6


Where is it leaking from?


And post the "Axle Code" that's on the door jam sticker. I have a list to tell you what's your ratio.

Mine was easy to figure out with the diesel, I figured it was 4.10 as soon as I hit the highway


And weren't all the NP's linkage setups? I have a 1980 E150 original shaggon wagon steering column with the clutch assembly that I bought a year or so ago, for future use in a van, but I didn't expect to get as lucky as I did to find a Diesel van in decent shape for so cheap! I was planning on a small block van, or preferred a van with a blown engine or tranny, to swap my 300/4 speed into.

 

I hate automatics!! Even the mighty C6!!

It's leaking from everywhere! Well almost. I don't think it's leaking from the dipstick tube, the shift arm or the vent.

The axle code is "33". I'm guessing it's a 3.55. It doesn't have the go it would with 4.10's. And it doesn't seem to be revving too high at highway speeds.


I have no idea what the NP435 vans were. I'm hoping I can find a donor van with a hydraulic slave cylinder set up. I can get get the hydraulic slave bellhousing out of a truck. Or if I can't find a stock van pedal set up I might go with an aftermarket CNC clutch pedal, master cylinder and slave cylinder. That is the set up I'm going to use in my 54 F100 project.


Here's the pedal I'm using in my 54.



Oh yea and when that 351W craps out I'm swapping in a carbed 300 too.

 

Axle code 33 is Conventional non-Positraction Differential 3.54 gearing.


I'd love to swap a T19 or ZF5 in my diesel van

 

Hell you should do the T-19 and a Brownie! Bulletproof and an OD gear. Plus you'd have an underdrive gear too. Just in case you ever want to move a whole mountain range.

 

You are in for a wait. The 300 is as reliable as death and taxes, but the 351W is a solid engine in its own right. As long as it is taken care of, i have seen them make 300,000 miles without rebuilding.

 

I've owned plenty of them. My 96 has a 5.8L. It has around 230,000 on it. It's smoking pretty bad when you really get on it. It also puts out a lot of oil smoke when you cold start it once in a while. So it needs a top end rebuild.

I really can't stand all the EFI crap. So it doesn't matter if the engine in the 89 blows or something in the EFI acts up. When it does it's getting yanked. I prefer the simplicity of a carbed engine.

 

I myself am quite the opposite. I cant stand carbs. They are incapable of adjusting for temp, altitude, fuel quality, and because of that require regular tweaking.

I dislike carb engines so much that i built an EFI system for my 64 IH Scout out of some old GM parts and a Megaquirt II board I built in my garage. Multi-port sequential fuel injection, coil on plug (no more dizzy!), Ethanol sensor to let it run on E85, and emissions so low the testing station thought their sniffer was broke. It also starts with half a second of cranking, no matter the temperature, the first time, every time.

I understand personal preference though. most people think EFI is black magic, quite frankly I think carbs are black magic.

 

I don't have many issues with carbs. But if I do I can fix it pretty quickly. Not so easy to fix issues with EFI sitting on the shoulder of a highway. It may not happen very often but electronics do fail. Ask me why I always carry a spare starter solenoid and TFI ignition module with me at all times.

As you can see When I get a vehicle it's usually a high mileage vehicle that hasn't received all the care it should have. So the fewer things that can fail the better the odds I won't be sitting waiting for AAA.

And you don't need EFI to run E85. I'll be running 2-2V Holley carbs on the 300 that's going in my 54. I'll be running that on E85 atleast spring thru fall. And possibly year round. Oh and that will also be a blow thru supercharged set up.

And if the carb is set up right it will start just as easy as an efi vehicle. The only time I had a carb engine fail to start it was other issues then the carb.

EFI is great when it's working. The issue I have is when there is a problem. It's a whole lot more complicated to hunt down the issue then it is on a carbed engine. I've had many issues with no trouble codes thrown.