Well....good news and bad news. Good news is, I got my carb and choke pretty much spot on and a buddy called today to tell me he's got an NP435 tranny and everything to go with it to swap it in except for the clutch for $200, gonna go pick it up tomorrow afternoon Bad news is, did a compression check on some of the cylinders today, I only got cylinders 4, 3 and 2 tested before I had to stop for the night. #2 has good compression at around 125 psi, #3 60 psi, #4....absolutely no compression Put my finger over the plug hole and could feel pressure and then a vacuum right after. Like I said, had to call it quits kinda early so I didn't get any other cylinders tested and I couldn't do the oil trick check to see if the piston rings are bad or if it's the valves, but I'm pretty darn sure it's the valves. So....I guess I'm gonna try and find out where the problem is for sure over the weekend and make my plan of attack after that. I might just try and find a good 390 at the local JY and swap that in or combine the two to make one good engine. Only problem with that is is that our renters agreement for the place we're staying at states that no major vehicle repairs such as an engine swap is permitted so I'll also have to find a place to possibly swap in the tranny and new engine . Fun stuff, right? My other thought is, I've got that cam and lifters I was thinking of putting in so maybe I'll put those in and at the same time take the heads off and maybe try and get the valves fixed. Maybe it's just a collapsed lifter like I had been thinking before Sorry if I'm rambling or being confusing or anything, it just kinda helps me troubleshoot and think as I type this up

 

Got some great news today. Met up with the buddy that found me the transmission, turns out his grandpa has about 15 or so old 60s and 70s Fords and knows pretty much everything about everything about them Also turns out he has heads that he'll sell me for $50 bucks And they're the good heads, late 60s 4 barrel heads with the huge valves off of a 428 Pulled them off the engine he had them on and they're super clean, so I'm gonna take my rig over to his shop in a couple weeks and get the heads and tranny cleaned up and looking good and throw them in, everything should be running like it should after that

 

Nice way to go.....

 

Nice rig you have there.

 

Thanks guys! My friends grandpa also has everything to do a frame off restoration and said I could use his shop when I need Heck, I might even get this thing close to show condition by this fall!

 

Been a while since I posted anything but I'm finally making some progress Got the truck hauled to the shop and the engine all torn apart by the days end. The head gaskets were shot and the heads weren't even torked on to the proper specs. I was also able to swap in my new cam by quitting time I'll post up some pics when we've made more progress and it looks like we've really done something, we should have the new heads on and the tranny swapped out by the weekend

 

We've just about got the engine wrapped up. She'll be running and driving by tomorrow afternoon if all goes well, we got everything painted up today and some other small stuff like getting the new lifters primed and in place and the bottom end all closed up, tomorrow the heads and intake go back on and then we're done for a week or two until we swap the tranny. Here's some pics, I know everyone's seen and done all this kinda work before but no one has ever died from too many truck pictures



These were from a couple days ago after the new cam got put in



Here's the shiny blue stuff Man does it all look so so SO much better than before!!




I feel really bad for putting such good looking parts back into such a crappy engine bay, I'll try and see what I can do about cleaning and organizing (maybe even shooting a coat or two of black or dark gray rattle can) in there before we throw the heads and such on

 

She lives!!! The engine is all back together and tuned up for the most part, but we had to put in a solid 12 hours yesterday though to get her there In a few days we'll swap in the new tranny and possibly do a steering box conversion since mine is about to give up the ghost.

What I started with


And what I have today

 

Haven't posted anything in quite a while since any progress has been pretty slow for the most part. I finally swapped in the 4 speed this past weekend and have been messing around with other small stuff i.e. rebuilding the carb, tuning the engine, slowly cleaning up all the hackjob wiring and ripping out the carpet to prep for repainting the interior. I scored a manual steering column and '78-'79 4X4 1/2 ton steering box from a guy at work for a super steal and have another guy who's going to keep an eye out for an open knuckled 44 for the front and some 3.54 gears for both front and back. I don't have any pics to upload right now but I'll try and get some up soon of what I've been able to do. Right now the plans for it for the rest of the summer look pretty much like just repainting the engine bay and interior, swapping the steering and axles out and maybe some other smaller things like installing a duraspark II ignition system. Future plans I've been thinking of are many and varied including possibly getting rid of the leaf springs and going with full on airbags, swapping in an IH DT360 or DT466 or a Cummins 12 valve, getting a new bed box and repainting the whole exterior and I've been thinking a lot lately about swapping out the grill for the '78-'79 style but I'm not fully decided yet so let me know what ya guys think

 

Keep the '75 grill. You have a real highboy, why would you want to change to a grill style of the two years there weren't any?

David