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I was planning on keeping the grill shell as a spare. It is not in very good condition though.
Good to know about the 8 lug conversion! Thanks!
It was in the 20's Saturday morning, but I put on my warm clothes and headed out to strip some more parts off the red truck. I managed to get the upper part of the steering column out, the back bumper off, and I cut out the part of the firewall I need to patch the ac hole in the yellow truck. I also removed a bunch more little things like the mirror brackets, door lock cylinders, door panels, vent windows and passenger side glass, and many other things really too numerous to list.
Total investment is $1500 not counting the price of the motor/trans below.
I have been driving it a lot this summer hauling the kids here and there to mow lawns.
I robbed everything off the red 4x4 that I wanted and sold the remains on craigslist for $200. Win.
Now, I have been contemplating converting the F250 to efi for a while so it will be a better driver in the winter months and more wife friendly should she ever need to take the boys to mow a yard.
The original plan was to just convert the existing engine, until I spotted an ad on craigslist for a 1996 EFI460 and E40D trans for $400. Engine and trans were still in the truck and it only had 116k on the odometer. I went and looked at it, it ran ok, and I left them a deposit. They bought the donor truck because they wanted to make a trailer out of the utility bed thst was on it and they had no use for the rest. They pulled it, and just a about everything I would need make it run....... including the entire dash!
Total investment is $1500 not counting the price of the motor/trans below.
I have been driving it a lot this summer hauling the kids here and there to mow lawns.
I robbed everything off the red 4x4 that I wanted and sold the remains on craigslist for $200. Win.
Now, I have been contemplating converting the F250 to efi for a while so it will be a better driver in the winter months and more wife friendly should she ever need to take the boys to mow a yard.
The original plan was to just convert the existing engine, until I spotted an ad on craigslist for a 1996 EFI460 and E40D trans for $400. Engine and trans were still in the truck and it only had 116k on the odometer. I went and looked at it, it ran ok, and I left them a deposit. They bought the donor truck because they wanted to make a trailer out of the utility bed thst was on it and they had no use for the rest. They pulled it, and just a about everything I would need make it run....... including the entire dash!
Anyway, Looks like I have some work to do now!
That's awesome! I'm gearing up a budget build of my own
With the 30 gallon fuel tank, electric fuel pump, new gas lines and carb rebuild I have right at 1,000 in it including the purchase! It runs, drives and 4x4 works!
My oldest son just got his learner's permit and wants this truck as his first truck. We have some plans for it, but first we needed to take care of some lingering issues.
Jake has been pestering me to start working on "his" truck, so we moved it to the front of the line and dove in. We made some good progress. Installed the vent windows, cleaned all the leaves, etc out of the cowl (what a mess!), installed an antenna, replaced the driver's side floor vent block off with a sliding vent, removed the hacked up wiring harness, removed the weirdo t-bird upper steering column stuff and began replacing it with the correct parts.
So we finally got to work on the truck some more this past weekend. He was out there at 8:00 on Saturday and worked on this thing pretty much non-stop until about 6pm. First thing was to get the "new" wiring harness all installed and functional. That took a while getting it all snaked in, getting the connectors plugged in and reconnecting the stuff under the hood that Jake took apart that didn't need to be taken apart. lol Good news is everything seems to work including the gas gauge. There were some wires to the column that I cut to remove from the red truck, so we needed to reconnect them. That meant Jake had to learn to solder. He did a good job. Heater controls and instrument panel are installed.
The giant AC heater box is out. That was a HUGE pain in the butt. I took the new heat-only box and cleaned the mouse nest out of it. Looks like the heater core and the blower motor may need to be replaced. The blower motor will run, but it makes a lot of noise and the previous owner had the fuse wrapped with aluminum foil so that leads me to believe it was pulling a lot of current. A new motor is something like $20 at Oreilly.
The next thing was to remove the front auxiliary gas tank. This was not a 100% "have to" kind of a deal, but when you put an E4OD in these trucks the the front tank, you have to put a huge dent in it for clearance. I have never used the front tank, so we decided to just get it out of the way because there's no reason for him to be running around town with 40+ gallons of gas in that thing. He probably would never fill them both up anyway. Removing it sure does make it easy to get to stuff under there now! I just told him what to remove and he wallowed around and got it out all by himself.
He decided he did not like the side and rocker trim, so he started de-trimming it. I kind of like it de-trimmed. The plan is to paint it a little later.
Today, since the harness all check out, he is getting it ready to pull the front clip so it will be easier to remove the old 460/C6.
That red and black pickup looks eerily similar to one that was down the road from me about a mile. The guy also had a rough blue half ton. I talked with him one day and he threw out $1,000 for both. Didn't sound good to me at the time. Dont know how long it's been but they are both gone now. They were on the north side of Amarillo.
Yep that was it. That's Virgil McBeth's place. He is a hoot.
I show up out there and he greeted me at the gate in coveralls and a toboggan hat. We figure out how to unload the truck and we talk cars for just a few minutes and he asks if I want to see his hot rod. Well, of course I did! He takes me to an enclosed trailer and shows off a very cool asphalt dragster he is converting to run on sand. Then, he takes me into his well used shop and shows me another sand dragster he used to run and is in the process of rebuilding. It's cool stuff, but not real expensive stuff. He built the shop many many years ago out of repurposed material by himself and showed off some neat things he incorporated when he built it. He has all sorts of cool pictures, signs and memorabilia on the walls. We talked about all kinds of stuff and man, I absolutely hated that I had to leave. As I was leaving, he told me to come by anytime and "we'd come up with someone to talk bad about". Haha Anyway, he is by far the most interesting person I have met in quite some time. I'd love to go back, sit down, and just listen to his stories. Almost hated to take his money because I felt like just meeting him and hanging out was payment enough. Cool dude for sure. Hope I can go back sometime.
That's the place. I've talked with him couple times, we talked about his racers but I haven't had the chance to see them(I'm a little jealous). Looking at his shop you would not think there is cool stuff in there. I guess I need to go over and chat some more.
Saturday was a busy day.... and chilly. It was in the mid-30's and breezy when we went out and got started. Brrrrrrrrrrrr.
Drug the big trailer out and parked it in the driveway next to the truck. We hooked the engine hoist to the core support and we picked up the whole front clip and moved it to the trailer and set it down.
Then it was time to wrestle the engine from it's home.
All out!
Jake pressure washing the frame, etc.
We hauled to big trailer to the backyard and drug the other trailer that had the new engine to the front. We swapped engine and transmission mounts and slipped it into place. I had high hopes that the '96 exhaust pipe crossover would work, but it became quickly apparent that it was going to occupy the same space as the radius arm crossmember. Not a big deal, just more work.
Driver's exhaust manifold is pretty close to the steering box as well, but I don't think it will be a big deal. Pic makes it look closer that it really is though.
Kinda looks like a mess, but the people I bought this engine from included EVERYTHING. There will be quite a bit to weed out since I have the entire front harness from the '96 truck. All the way out to light bulbs!
12-25-2014, 07:04 PM
