Every lil bit helps. My Ol Gal aint pretty under the hood. I have spent alot of dinero makin her reliable though. Maybe 1 day I will get the urge to do some "show" to go along with the "go". But it really aint that important to me. Turn the key and she turns over about once and fires up. And will go anywhere I need to be, and alot of places I dont need to be.

 

I suppose reliability is more important than cleanliness...

Haha yeah my truck is pretty reliable. I usually look for problems to fix instead of have something come up that needs to be fixed. But hey, if I can keep everything clean and perfect condition, then I shouldn't have any big problems!

I would like to go more places than I do, but usually I'm busy with school or work so I can't take off too long. Also, I get nervous about doing any damage... Realistically, I won't damage anything, I just have to be smart.

My friend lives in a place with TERRIBLE roads. One of the roads was heavily eroded in one spot from a recent rain (dirt roads). It was dark, and I thought my tires were big enough to 'glide' over the erosion.......

So I took the bump at 10mph and snapped my sector shaft from my steering box. The hole was probably 1 1/2 or close to 2 feet tall (taller than half the heigth of my 33" tire) and about 2 feet long and vertical on both sides....

My truck made it in and out just fine, but my steering box didn't. So I needed to replace it there in the middle of nowhere the next day.

Lesson learned, check what you go over before deciding to speed up....

Anyways that was Christmas eve so it's over with now! Now I get to concentrate on more cleaning and small cosmetic fixing of my truck!

 

good attention to detail

 

Well I believe I found out where my P0411 code is coming from!!!

I have done tons of research and looked up everything. I had no vacuum leak breaks that I could find, all my hoses for the secondary air system seemed good, and I know the smog pump was working too. So I was going to take out my diverted valve, which is a pain in the conjunction starting with an A (butt... with an A.. okay I'll stop being stupid)

Anyways. I pulled off the tubs that thread into the back of the heads. The passenger side hole seemed fine from the air tube. However, looking at the drivers side tube, I noticed it was a little wet. I was worried I had a leak from the heads into the air tube.

When I pulled the tube off.. I saw that there was a thermactor bung screwed into place!!!!

I spent 22$ at ford to get this part so I could screw in the power steering bracket and all I needed to do was take the one out of the back and move it to the front!!

Now my challenge will be to get it out of the head while they are bolted in! Hopefully it won't be too much work. I'm NOT going to take the heads out to get this stupid plug out.



Anyways, that should fix my P0411 code, now I'll have to look into the EGR system. I have been getting a p0401 code too. When I pulled vacuum to my egr the other day, it did NOTHING to the idle. However, I did hear the plunger move up and down inside the egr valve so that worries me.....

 

Ha! The thermactor plug wasn't even hand tight. So that was a relief it came out in a matter of a few seconds! I should no longer get the P0411 code!

Now it's just a matter of testing the EGR system. Hopefully it's nothing but I supposed I'll see if the code comes up with a day or so of driving.

Edit: Well bad news.... I did more research on the intake gaskets I bought. They are fel-pro FEL-1262S3. Apparently these don't have a hole for the emissions port... I didn't know what the emissions hole looked like at first so I didn't bother to check. The gaskets were like 40 dollars to I think. Hopefully I can reuse them, because they are really nice, but I might as well buy a set at O'reillys just in case when I take these off. If I do reuse them, I'll just drill a hole in the middle of them to allow flow to the EGR passage.

I'll wait a while until I do this too. It's honestly not too bad taking this all off, but is still going to be a pain.

As a side note, when I do take these off, does anyone know of a good sealant to use for sealing the lower intake? I used permatex ultra black, and it's working great. However you're supposed to wait 24 hours before running with it which kinda sucks... I don't want to have to have this span over 2 days when the labor to take the intake off and back on should only take 4-6 hours depending on how slow I go.

 

Well, I decided to start pulling the intake last night after I got off from work.

I just took the pack test yesterday (carry 45lbs for 3 miles) for a re-certification so I'm kinda sore now. It makes bending over in my truck a little tedious. I want to get this done today though! I bought some gasket maker "the right stuff" ultra grey. Apparently it's supposed to be good to go within five minutes.

Hopefully this won't take too long to do! I'll see if I can drill holes in the old gaskets for the egr passage, but if not, I got some cheap fel pro replacements at O'Reillys.

 

Alright so far so good! I just finished and after running the truck for about 5 minutes, checking the water temp (with my digital gauge) at 190, I have no leaks I can see, no water in the oil, and the vacuum gauge I hooked up to the throttle body says no vacuum leaks.

I also tested the EGR valve and it functions like it should!

Here's my table again:


and the engine bay:


I opted to use these rubber inserts on the intake lips that came with the new felpro intake kit I got:


I've heard a lot of mixed reviews about them, but it seems the negative comments are from people who haven't tried them. I have heard nothing but negative comments about the cork gaskets (that came with my first intake gasket kit) so I had a bead of RTV I had to clean up. However, when I originally took my intake off, I had similar rubber gaskets like these fel pro ones. These ones just seem much easier to use and I like the idea of a gasket instead of RTV (even though RTV works.)

Plus, I didn't want to gob up a whole bunch of "the right stuff" permatex stuff I got since you have only about 5 minutes to work with it until it apparently cures. I did use some of that stuff around the water intake ports and the corner of the rubber gaskets like recommended, but that's it.

Anyways, here are the STUPID old fel prop gaskets without the emission port:


You can see the indentation in the middle where the intake hole should have been. Too bad I couldn't reuse them, but honestly it would have been too much work drilling out the hole, cleaning them off etc etc just to have them potentially fail. My new gaskets aren't as expensive, but they still seemed pretty nice.

Hopefully nothing leaks with the new gaskets I got, but they seemed to hold up for the initial 5-8 minutes of testing I did! I do NOT want to be taking off the intakes for quite some time. I think the next time I do take them off, I'll be putting a 7.3 or 6bt in it's place (which unfortunately will be like 5-10 years from now unless I win a bunch of money.)

 

Hey that's the same table I got! It's all greasy just like yours hehe. Anyways, I did the intake and gasket on my 78 and I have a pretty bad leak already. I have these weird small bumps on the inside of the heads, I think there was 4 total, 2 on either side or something. These are just big enough to push the gasket up and create a leak. Maybe I got the wrong gasket or something...

 

Haha yeah the table technically is my dads, but I use it a lot. I probably would have cut out small holes or something with you gaskets to keep those bumps from pushing the gasket up! That is pretty frustrating doing all that just to have it leak!

 

Probably, that would fix my issue where it dies in cold weather after running for about 5 minutes. But I won't be looking forward to changing it. I've since, globbed rtv all over the outside edge of the gasket. It helped for a few days but didn't last.

 

Reading these build threads makes me wish I knew how to do this kind of work on my Bronco and the tools to do it Looking good btw Bubba

 

You could learn! I don't know a lot but I can look at it, find a screw driver and a hammer, and attempt to fix it. Normally it breaks more but once in a while...

 

I agree with you man. I wish I can do all these things to my own bronco and have the tools to do it. Maybe next year when I go to college or hopefully my senior year I can take auto shop and learn a few more things.

 

Yeah you can learn it's not too bad! Just start off with easier things and work your way up. It can be a little intimidating when you haven't done things before, but it usually isn't that bad!

And gruesome, I know the intake gaskets are a pain, but it would be better to fix them for good so you don't have driveability issues! Do you know what cylinder heads you have? My old E7TE heads didn't have those bumps you were talking about so you must have some older style heads. Maybe those bumps are supposes to be there to keep the gasket in place while installing the intake. You would need gaskets that have slots for the holes though!

 

Bubba, my 78 has the original 351M in it. I am not sure on the heads. I think they are the original ones. Although, if I got some legit Cleaveland heads and get them refurbished, I could bring in some power. I don't really know what they are for, I don't think stock gaskets would work though, it is an after market intake.