When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Jake took his driver's test yesterday and passed with flying colors. HUGE HUGE HUGE relief. The tester even commented to me that he was one of the best she had seen.
Monday evening I realized the brake lights and rear turn signals were inop. Oh no! We had a maddening thrash last night until 12:30 to get it sorted out. Checking continuity, voltage, etc etc. Turns out the old fuse panel's contacts are so rusty that it just would not pass enough current to operate the lights. I located a different 12v source from the 96 harness and everything worked perfect. Had I just remembered Basic Electronics 101, we could have had it solved quickly, but we chased a lot of rabbits before we figured it out.
He has tossed all sorts of options. He thought orange with the top of the cab and grille gunmetal to match the wheels. I was horrified at first, but now think it might look pretty killer orange.
We still have a lot of little things to clean up/fix/improve upon before we get to the body work and paint stage.
Check out Ford Paint Code "54" from 1987. It's listed as "Bright Caramel Metallic". I only know it exists because I tried to repaint my '87 Tempo, and somehow got #54 instead of #51. Either way, my Dad and I opened the can, and we both were like "oh wow. That's not red. But it's gorgeous...."
The only downside is I can't find ANYONE online who has a picture of what the paint actually looks like. Nothing I've found online comes close to capturing the actual color (there's a very good chance Ford didn't actually paint any cars that color). Maybe see if a shop can show you an example on their mixing computer of what the color should come out like? This is the closest I've been able to find:
Either way, two striking colors like an orange and a black are always a great look for a truck!
EDIT: THe Bright Caramel Metallic might be a little "brown-er" than you want. I completely understand, it's not an "OMG Orange" (which would be a great color name!) like Subaru's Tangerine Orange Pearl:
Paint will have to wait. We still gotta get this thing shifting correctly.
Learned a lot about the trans last weekend.
E4OD's are actually pretty simple from an electronic control aspect. They have 2 shift solenoids, a torque converter solenoid, a coast clutch solenoid, and an electric pressure control thingy which operates off changes in current and controls line pressure. (Imagine a valve that acts like a stereo speaker connected to DC voltage) All, except for the EPC are controlled by grounding the solenoid to activate it.
Pretty simple stuff really and if a guy had control of the EPC, you could easily set it up like a manual valve body with just a few relays or switches.
When the trans connector is unplugged, you have M2 and 4th because these are both completely hydraulic. This is how we are driving now.
Our problem is that with the connector plugged in and manually shifting, we have M1 and M2. In D we only have D1 but with no upshift to D2, D3, etc.
If you try to shift M1, M2, then D, you are met with a "neutral" situation when expecting 3rd, like it is not applying SS2. But, you would think that would result in 4th.
I still do not have a correct VSS signal and that may totally correct everything but usually a bad VSS results in high hard shifts, but it still shifts.
I jumpered SS2 to ground with a switch while in D and it shifted to 2nd, so I know SS2 works. That was a very big relief.
We tested the MLPS and it was fine, but replaced it anyway just to be safe. We also checked continuity and the harness seems to be fine.
So, we are in a holding pattern until our speedometer calibrator arrives from Australia.
We did drive it down I-40 on Saturday and it just burbles along at 60 mph in 4th.
On top of all this, our brake booster is dying. Hey it's only 43 years old, guess it's about time.
Looking over the wiring diagrams last night I found another wire that needs to be grounded. There are 2 VSS wires at the ECM. One is the signal input and the other is the signal ground. I had input attached, but not the ground. I have not had time to ground it, but am glad I found it!
Looking over the wiring diagrams last night I found another wire that needs to be grounded. There are 2 VSS wires at the ECM. One is the signal input and the other is the signal ground. I had input attached, but not the ground. I have not had time to ground it, but am glad I found it!
That's good to know - on some systems they multi-task ground wires, so not having one hooked up can cause weird stuff to happen.
If you didn't worry about the lockup in the converter, you could make a really tiny "test box" with two switches that would let you manually shift gears electronically. However, without the line pressure adjusting correctly (is it? I guess I don't know if it's confirmed working) some gears might not hold enough clamping force without slipping.
I believe the EPC is working right because we have reverse, 1st and 2nd when I jumpered SS2 to shift to 2nd when in D. I didn't try to jumper it into 3rd because I was really just trying to verify that SS2 was functional.
Brake booster is in and working nicely. Changed it in the cold and mist on Saturday. Brrrrr.
The speedo adjuster arrived Friday, but we didn't have time to install it on Saturday. Sunday we made a quick trip to White Sand, NM. Not really so quick. It's a 6 hour drive over there.
I originally planned to just use this to feed the ECM. But, there is no way to verify the ppm of the output signal. If we set it to what we think is the ballpark correct ratio, then feed the signal to the speedo and the ECM , we can recalibrate the speedo and it will display what our ppm signal is. Then, if it is off by a lot we play with the adjuster until we get close to 8000 ppm.
Not working as I'd hoped. Hooked it all up yesterday evening and messed with it for a few hours. First off, the instructions are really pretty bad. It auto-recognized the ABS sensor's signal just fine, but I killed a lot of time because I got the two rotary dials mixed up. Oopsie.
It will accept a Hall or VR input and has 3 output options.
1. square wave going high (0v-5v-0v)
2. square wave going low (5v-0v-5v)
3. AC sine wave
I had it set on 1.
Anyway, it took a while to figure out if I needed to set the dials for 80% or for 20%. 8000 would be about 20% of 39460 (the ppm number generated by our last 2 mile Autometer speedo calibration) but it is also 80% smaller than 39460 so you can see my conundrum. I finally figured it out, but with the dials set to 80, I was only getting a ~50% reduction in PPM (20048 ppm according to the speedo). Not sure what is up with that, but it is still way too high for the EEC-IV. I didn't have time to work on it any longer last night.
One thing I have noticed is that with the speedo connected and calibrated it does not register any mph until you get to about 15-20 mph. I'm not sure this thing is going to be my solution or not.
So, I did more research into just exactly what type of signal the EEC-IV and stock PSOM require. The PSOM takes a VR signal and outputs a square wave to the EEC-IV. Sounds familiar.... haha. I am thinking I might be able to use the stock PSOM in about the same manner as the speedo corrector, except that I 100% KNOW it's output signal is compatible with the EEC-IV computer. The kicker is that while the PSOM is programmable, the lower limit for correction factors is 5.0.
The conversion factor is calculated: ConvConst = TireRevsperMile x ToneRingTeeth / 8000
With our front tire size and 50 tooth tone wheel, we really need 4.93. That works out to a difference of something like 10 tire rotations in a mile. Certainly ballpark to make this crazy thing realize it is moving. I hope. haha
THe other kicker is that it can only be changed 6 times then it's locked. Maybe I won't have to ever change it.
The Aussie speedo corrector was a flop. On to plan B. I wired up the stock 1996 speedo and started the reprogram process. Fail. It has already been reprogrammed 6 times. Dangit!!
I decided to drive it anyway just to see if it would shift. Compared to the GPS speedo on my phone, it was right at 50% too slow. Despite that issue, it did shift by itself in D, but the shifts were soft and mushy because the ECM was only thinking I was driving half as fast as I really was.
We unplugged the trans (back to 2nd and 4th) and went for a drive to recalibrate the Autometer speedo. After the 2 mile calibration, it was right at 4000ppm.
I really expected the stock speedo to be a huge pain, but it turned out to be super easy. Now we just need to find a new stock speedo that still has a few reprograms left in it.
Even as a temporary "wire it in to make sure that everything is working as intended" it might not be a bad check before you try to find a PSOM that hasn't been flashed a handful of times already - especially since there's no way to check without powering up the truck, so it's a gamble if you look in the junkyard.
I took the $30 gamble and ordered a verified working one off ebay. It'll be here today. Hopefully it has some reprograms left. If not, I'll sell it on ebay!
We started eyeballing the roll bar stuff yesterday. Looks like we will have to go through the back window due to the shape of the sheet metal inside the cab. No biggie. I'd almost rather do that than chop the cab metal.
03-01-2017, 02:09 PM
