I recently finished up my service truck sans wheels and paint and decided I needed a new project to occupy my spare time and keep me up at nights. When I was working on my service truck I had bought a 1985 F-350 Crew cab with the intent of mounting my standard cab from my service truck to it and mounting my welder behind the cab so as to preserve bed space. After stripping the rig down, plans changed and I used a standard cab frame and mounted the welder to a trailer. (Lincoln Ranger 10-LX with a 3cyl Kubota diesel for those interested).

These pics are about 2 yrs old



Left to right:
1983 F-150, Had it since I was 14
1986 F-250, The service truck
1985 F-350, The Crew cab (Notice my inventive naming convention?)
1988 Bronco II, The "B2" or "The car" (That has thrown friends off a few times)
2003 Suzuki Vstrom DL-1000, my DD (including winter, I stud my own tires) currently setting a bit over 80k miles



Disassembly, I sold the 460 that originally powered it and covered the cost of what I paid for the truck.

Now, fast forward to the present time, I have picked up an extra 6.9 and a 7.3 parts engine and have been considering building the crewcab as I now have a 9 month old son and fitting the family and the dog into a standard cab is pretty much out of the question.. I don't have many of the parts I need including but not limited to: wiring harness, core support, radiator.....

The perfect storm happened and I found a non-running 1986 f-250 with a 6.9 for $300. The guy had attempted to replace the IP himself and hadn't kept track of the timing marks.. Pump was about 270* off time.. I now have all of the needed parts!!



Yes, I need to get my helper springs installed and perhaps set the parts rig further back for less tongue weight...



First I wanted to ensure that the engine would run, so I pulled the IP, managed to find the y on the cam gear using a dental pick as I could not fit a mirror in to see it, and did a test run. It runs but missed heavily on 2-3 cyls. Likely injectors, I have several extra BB codes so will clean, re-shim and re-pop them when I get to the engine.


Picking the CC back up from the farm, yes it is a chev pulling it. It is my buddies truck but my service truck needs tires and it was snowy and -12* F, his truck had good tires.


Dissassembly, I will keep the cab and frame, I still haven't decided what to do with it yet. Might shorten it and make it into a crawler, who knows right now






The fully stripped parts truck



Front end from the Crew cab. Yes, it would be nice to have a Dana 60 but for what I have planned for this rig it really isn't necessary. The TTB front ends aren’t the greatest, but most of their problems are blown out of proportion. If you replace the pivot bushings they don't wear tires nearly as bad as they are made out to....










This is the cleanest front end I have pulled apart on one of these rigs. This truck was originally from Seattle area and had 85K miles.





Completed front end, bushings, seals, U-joints... Ready to go! Now for the rest of the truck!




I found rust....





Clean your cowl vents.... Note the bucket of rotten pine needles on the right....



Bracket I created for clutch support, the factory one was bolted but I worked as a welder for 6 years.. Welded it is..



Rust after cleanup, Drivers side







Passenger side rust with markings on where to cut



After plasma cutting, no more rot...



New panel welded in



While I was at it I reinforced the parking brake mount holes which were cracked out around.. Piece is not even, but it was a scrap chunk I had laying around that fit.




Clutch stiffener bracket after welding and painting. Not the prettiest, but functional.

I am planning to POR-15 the entire cowl vent. It should seal the remaining rust and prevent any further expansion of it.

I am going to be painting the entire rig, currently trying to decide between the firewall being black or Ford Blue.. Engine will probably be a combo of both. Any thoughts?

 

Lookin good! Ford blue fire wall and IH grey for the engine would be my preference. But I'm sure whatever you do will look slick

 

Looks great... keep up the good work

 

Well I managed to work on the Crewcab for a few hours after work,

My first task was fitting my hydroboost to it. I salvaged the hydroboost off of a early 2000's F-superduty. The bolt pattern to the firewall was different so I needed to re-drill the mounting plate and re-set the bolts.




The newly drilled bolt pattern with studs installed, I simply used an anvil and hammer to install the studs as I don't have access to a press in my current location.



There is a significant difference in length of the rod between the old vacuum booster and the hydroboost.



5-7/8 inches for the vacuum booster



7-5/8 for the hydroboost



I used a hacksaw to cut out 1.75" and then welded them back together.





A little bit of grinding to clean up the excess bead.



Perfect fit!





Finished product, now to build up the necessary lines to connect it to the pump.<br/>I painted under it so as to seal it up. I will likely tape around it when I paint the firewall as I still haven't solidified the color I want to paint it. I am beginning to lean more towards Ford Blue for the firewall instead of black.

Also finished up today was the re-assembly of the Dana 60 rear-end even if I forgot to take pictures of that, I put new seals and wheel cylinders in and cleaned up the brake hardware. Glad I decided to do wheel cylinders as one of them had lots of rust in it... Everything else in the rear-end looked perfect, no internal rust from moisture at all.

 

Wha...?
Oh, that's OK then. As long as it's not yours. ;P


I used one off an '03 E-350 myself. Worked fine, but I had to adapt not only the firewall plate, but the bolts to the MC(used the '88 MC), and the brake pedal rod.
Once you get it working, it should do nicely, though if you are going through all the effort this is probably the time to install a Saginaw pump. The Ford pump works well enough, but if you brake hard while turning sharply at idle, you can max out the pump for a second and the steering will get hard until it catches back up. It doesn't usually cause a problem, but it's something to be aware of.

Also, I'd recommend a remote reservoir setup, with a lot of headroom. One of the main problems with the stock pump is the small reservoir, and if you crank the steering wheel with the engine /off/, you push fluid out the lid and all over the engine. Then, when you start the engine, it's low on fluid and starts whining.

 

Ah! Thanks for the heads up on the possibility of maxing out the pump, I have a hydroboost on my service truck, and as of yet have not had that happen. I got it from a friend so I am not sure what it is off of, likely an early 90s chev. (I am pretty sure it hasn’t passed any diseases to my Ford yet)

Yeah, I have considered a remote reservoir system and/or pump upgrade, I am not sure I will implement it on this engine. (There are plans for another one with some significant upgrades in the works). I have owned an 83 F-150 since I was 14 and thus have learned to avoid turning the wheel with engine off whenever possible.

 

So today I had family drop by in the morning and then had to put new tires on my wife’s car. (Glad I have a friend with a tire machine and balancer). I then worked on repairing the hacked up wiring harness..



The old gasser wiring harness, Pic taken after I had pulled a wire out of it to replace the hacked together wire on the diesel harness..



The 20ga fusible link that goes to the engine harness. It should still be serviceable right? The PO thought so....



I will likely have to do some repair on the connector as well. I think one of the connectors going back to the frame is the same so I may try to use it.



I added the plug back for the wires going to the radio. Probably not necessary, however I like everything to be modular and easy to work with. If I want to pull the radio, it is a lot easier to use a plug than to cut and re-solder wires and I refuse to use crimp connectors.

 

I managed to get a bit more work done on the CC over the weekend but Sunday was time to work on my service truck, I switched glowplugs from 24v to 12v and built a new tach sensor using a honeywell variable reluctance sensor for a Perkins diesel. Today was mostly brushing on the por-15 that came in today and prepping the interior for coating.

For anyone installing the Honeywell Variable Reluctance sensor for Perkins engines
The plug use is a DEUTCH DT06-2S It will allow you to use a plug rather than grinding away the plastic and soldering to the wires.

Here is an amazon link
https://www.amazon.com/Deutsch-2-Pin...ywords=dt06-2s

Here is a link to the sensor I ordered, I would highly recommend this seller as they were great to deal with!!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/321807525158?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Here are the pics!






Drilling out the factory sensor.



I was planning on grinding away the plug side of the sensor and soldering as I had seen suggested before. As I was about to do that I remembered seeing a leftover plug in my junk drawer that looked similar. It was a leftover plug from some auxilary lights I installed on my MC. It just so happened that it was a perfect fit.





Finished product for testing



Tested fine so now for the epoxy.



The plug that fits is a deutch plug model number DT06-2S



Installed



Swollen tip on the Bosch glowplug that I removed from the service truck



While I was at it I removed the GPs from the engine for the CC Glad I was planning on removing the head anyway... Champion gps from the po

 

I also created a video as I have seen a lot of guys ask about 24 volt glowplugs. Mine were installed by the PO as my service truck was a crew rig prior to me buying it, he had installed them so as to ensure that the crew did not burn them out. They worked well down to about 10 degrees but it was nessecary to cycle them 3-4 times to get the truck to start. The 12 Volt Motorcraft/BERU glowplugs heat much faster and allow the truck to easily start after only 1-2 cycles. With the weather cold, I was cycling the 24 volt plugs 15 seconds as I did in the video. The motorcraft plugs I only cycle for 10 sec.

 

Well, Yesterday I finished the POR15 on the cowl vent. sealed the remainder of the firewall and pulled the remaining interior out so I could begin coating the floorpans with POR15.
I just happened to find the original build sheet for the vehicle under the carpet for the rear seat! Kinda neat to find that as It has probably been hiding there since 1985.



POR-15 now coating the firewall



Most of the paint came off very easily. I think Ford must have gotten a bad batch of primer as the exterior paint is the same way.



Found a mouse nest hiding in the cab corner under the trim.





The original build sheet

 

I am trying to find out more about the stereo that came with the vehicle. It is apparently known as the best tape deck produced for vehicles and is highly sought after. The only caveat is that it requires a 5 digit code to eject the tape and I do not have it. I have considered hooking up an Arduino to go through and try combinations until it finds one that works. I have an idea how to do it but need to solidify my process.

Anyone here familiar with these older car audio systems?

The stereo is a Nakimichi TD 1200 II with a Nakimichi PA-350 amplifier and ADS speakers and filters. Pretty high end system for 1985!!
The TD 1200 Originally sold new for around $1500

 

POR-15 is made by the devil himself.. I got some of it on my hands a couple days ago and have not been able to get it off even scrubbing to the point of my knuckles being raw. Damn does it stick to metal as well though.. I had a spot I was trying to clean the rust beside and was wire-wheeling it. The wheel did not even scratch the POR-15 but took the rust next to it completely off..



While beginning to spread POR-15 on the drivers floorpan, i pulled the door seal off to this surprise... Should have thought of that first but it shouldnt be too bad to clean up.









So.. Does anyone have any clue what these are? These are on each A pillar. I am guessing it is a sensor of some sort, likely for an alarm system.. They have a rc-phono plug on the other end.





Well I was cleaning around the window and noticed that it moved when I pushed on it. Pushed on it a bit more and it broke.. Well I guess I am installing a windshield.. It needed it anyhow as it was cloudy in a few spots. It is pretty obvious that the windshield was leaking in this area..



I even had some flora growing on the passenger side bottom corner



Interior has now been fully prepped and ready to seal, I pulled the rear window out as well and will seal around it with POR-15 also..

 

Here are a 4 observations from yesterday and today

1. Por-15 stings worse than lacquer thinner when you get it in your eyes
2. No matter how many times you wipe the vehicle down with grease and wax remover you will still have at least one fisheye.
3. More light is needed for painting.. you could be on the surface of the sun and lack proper lighting.
4. After painting for 2 hours you will forget to take pictures of the finished product


That is all, G'night




Por 15 now coating entire floorboards

 

I didn’t get too much done today after painting yesterday. I added touch ups to a couple spots and put new seals in the power steering box. Note: the only way to change the seals in the box is to pull the sector shaft. When you pull the sector shaft you get a large puddle of PS fluid all over the bench and the floor.... Should have thought that one over first...



Painted the door jambs and interior satin black



New seals in the PS box



Before painting

 

Well the cab is finally beginning to go back together.. I have never worked on the wiring of a rig with A/C nor one with Cruise Control, This one has both and since I have swapped wiring harnesses and made the mistake of not marking all of them, I am having a heckuva time figuring out where each wire goes..










Found another mouse nest, this one plugging the AC condensor



Took a while to hose this out..









Also put the power steering box on as the paint was dry.