Well, here we go into the sub-swamp named HVAC, and maybe the sub-sub-swamp named Panel Door - all of which have progressively-more alligators.

It dawned on me that I have HVAC ducting in the attic from Brownie, one of the 82's I've owned. So, I pulled the panel door. Turns out that "early" Bullnoses had metal panel doors and "late" Bullnoses had plastic doors. Where was the change? I dunno, but Luke's Big Blackie, which was built in 3/83, had a metal door, and Big Blue, which was built in 5/85 has a plastic door. So, some place in that 26 month span it appears Ford changed to plastic doors.

Is one better than the other? Yes, for two reasons. First, the metal door is still flat while the plastic door is warped and won't seal in the housing. Second, the metal door is about 1/4" wider, left/right, and that means it won't be as critical where you position it to seal on the opening nearest you. BUT, it will be more critical where it will be positioned to close off to the rear.

You can see the difference here. I've positioned them with the broken edges of their plastic hinges aligned.




But, you may ask if the hinges broke in different places. Nope - see the pic below. So, while there was a change in the design of the door, the weak spot wasn't fixed. And, regarding the frequency of failure, of the 5 Bullnoses I've owned and for which I know the answer to this question, 3 of 5 were broken. Only the '82 Explorer and Dad's '81 had good panel doors, and Rusty ('81), Brownie (82), and Big Blue ('85) had broken doors.





In closing this post, here are front and back shots of the metal door that was in Brownie. Note that the foam was still on it. More to come....

 

Gary, on the water, get an older (pre-1980) heater valve and tee the vacuum from the recirc door line, that will shut off the water in Max AC. The older trucks had a vacuum valve on the temperature lever and a two stage water valve, on, half and off. Off was max cold, half was in AC mode.

On your blend door, make a new one and hinge it all the way back to emulate the later design, it will swing further and hopefully block the hot air. I did notice that with the newer casing in Darth, I do not get the hot blast I used to get on a restart in the summer, cold almost immediately.

 

Bill - Good idea on the valve. I'll see about doing that. Or the Chrysler/Jeep valve we talked about previously. But I'm not sure a change to the blend door is needed if the valve shuts off in Vent and Max A/C.

Back to the panel door, I had some success with it this morning. I put the hinges on the plastic door with the pivot pin forward, and with two #10 washers and one #10 nut as a spacer the door is parallel with the front opening just the right distance for the foam I'll put on. And, it fits the opening to the rear as well. So I just have to measure the washers and nut to determine how thick the spacer needs to be, and will probably cut a plastic one like Luke did.

However, since the metal door is 1/4" longer I may have to shift the hinges a bit for it, or maybe even trim it. But, I'll leave that for another day as we are headed into T-Town for an afternoon out. Later, gator.

 

I wish I could use emoticons in the title, as I'd put a few of these up there:

I think I'm at the same place someone was when he said if he ever changes a rear main in the truck again that he'll just pour gas on it and set it on fire first. Man, this ain't easy. I've thought about creating a web page for how I did it, but I'm not sure I want to encourage anyone to do it at home - just on a closed race course with professional drivers.

Anyway, read on and then tell me your thoughts about the web page idea. I have measurements for where I put the hinges on the door, the hinges I used, the notches I had to file in the door to clear the hinges, the thickness of the spacer and that of the foam, and even the door dimensions. Lots of detail that I won't bore you with here, but it just might help someone else silly enough to do this.

But, it is in and works, albeit not perfectly. In spite of lots of trial and much error I couldn't get a perfect seal in either the defrost or the panel positions. So, in defrost there will still be a little bit going to the vents in the dash. You can see that here where the door is in the defrost position but there's still a gap in the lower right.




But, in this pic the door is in the "panel" position and there's still a little bit going to the defrost or, for that matter, floor vents. Not much, but still some. In the end, it is a balance between getting the door far enough to the right to seal the panel vents completely or getting it far enough left to nestle back into the opening to the defrost/floor vents and put everything to the panel. And I couldn't find a position that would do both 100%




Anyway, here's a bit of detail on how I did it. First thing to notice is that the nuts are soldered to the back of the hinge, which allows you to put the screws in from the cab side of the ducting. And another is the notch filed in the door, both the plastic and the metal, to clear the pin of the hinge. And, while you can't tell from the pic, the plastic and metal of the door are taped 10-24 to take the screws holding the hinge to the door, which means there's no nut on the front of the door to hit the housing when it closes. It would be all of these things and a dozen more that I'd put on the web page.




Tomorrow I hope to put the whole dash back together. This has given me a chance to clean the ductwork as well as the stuff under the dash pad, and that plus the removal of the headliner and cleaning the rear corner trim should make the cab a much cleaner place to be. So I'm hoping to get to drive the truck and prove that concept in a few days.

 

Wow.

Ya know, I had documented (with pictures) what I had done here, all I remember is having used a sheet of ~1/4" packaging foam on the flapper valve, I don't think I had any hinge problems like that.

But all that stuff went offline for one reason or another over the years and so I guess it's good to see new pictures & descriptions.

 

I'm used to hanging doors, and was going to say that you need to cut away some plastic to get the pivot in the same plane as the old plastic hinge for the geometry to work.

What kind of foam is that, and why did you need to cover the whole thing?

I have some thin neoprene foam tape around the perimeter of mine.
Thankfully my truck is all mechanical and not vacuum motors.

 

Chris - Yup, which is why I'm creating the web page. This job is not easy in the truck, and the documentation thereof wouldn't be easy either, so if I create a page on it I want it to stay around.

Jim - Yes, the hinge pin needs to be in just the right spot, but the limitation is the types of hinges you can find. I thought I had the right hinge and had the pin just right, but even then it wasn't perfect. As for the foam, that's camper weatherstrip foam tape. It is about .2" thick and has adhesive on one side. However, I used 3M spray adhesive to ensure it'll stay put. And, I filled in the middle just so there wasn't some of that adhesive showing to ensure "stuff" doesn't get hung up on it.

As for what I did today, I put the dash and HVAC ductwork back together. It went a lot faster than I thought it would, so I moved on to painting the gauges. I put three coats of Testor's Fluorescent Orange on them, and between coats (1 hour ea) I checked out the trailer and camper wiring to ensure I know what I have. (See post in Trailer & Camper Wiring Harness for the results.)

Tomorrow I'll put the gauges in the cluster and install it, and then turn to the trailer hitch and connector. But, here is a shot of the coolant temp gauge. It was taken using on-camera flash, but it isn't right as comparing the actual gauge to the picture shows a difference. And then when I view it on a different computer it is different again.

In any event, the thing to notice about this shot is the color at the very bottom of the needle. I left just a bit of the original paint showing, and you can see that it is a bit more yellow than the Testor's Fluorescent Orange. However, what I don't know is if that is really the original color or if it has changed.

In any event, I'll do an 8-page micro-analysis on gauge colors on my web site soon, comparing NOS gauges that haven't seen the light of day with the three paints that have been suggested - HiPo red, HiPo orange, and Testor's. But, I can say that I like using the Testor's paint better than HiPo's as the Testor's is thinner and goes on more smoothly. Even the third coat went on smoothly, but when I tried that with HiPo's paint it started gumming up.

 

Fluorescent colors never render well.
There is too much UV, and as you may know cmos and ccd cameras tend to be more sensitive at the other end of the spectrum.

I remember well when Marlboro sponsored race vehicles went to a color you could never get right even with post processing.
The hot pink of the Britten bikes was the same way.

 

Yes, it is very difficult to get these colors "right", and even if you do it won't be right on another monitor. But, I just compared colors between this laptop with a 4K display and my iPad 2 and they are essentially identical.

I'm hoping that comparing the NOS gauges and the three colors under the same light will work. But, with fluorescent paints being hard to photograph it will be interesting to see if what I see with my eye corresponds to what the camera sees. It didn't today, but that was with the shop camera, which is a 15 year old Nikon. So, when I do it for real I'll use my good 24 Mp Nikon DSLR.

 

The sensors just aren't able to 'see' that much color intensity (chroma) in UV.
...I think it may be that the wavelength is just too short to register.
​​​​​​​Or maybe it's the lens coatings.

The human eye -and brain- perceive wavelengths beyond the visible light spectrum as "brighter"
This is why laundry bluing makes whites 'whiter' and colors more intense.

If you use your dslr, paint a swatch on white paper and go into the spectrum plots.
You'll see how strong fluorescent red is way up at the violet end.

 

So..
I just did a little checking and it seems I'm off base.
That the sensors themselves can register WAY down to 200-250 nm.
But the sensor filters, lens coatings and the glass itself filter much of this out.

​​​​​​​I admit my mistake and am sorry for the harebrained conjecture.

 

Yes, our eyes are marvels and cameras don't compare. But the idea of a swatch makes sense. Just need to figure out the best way to show the different paints vs the NOS gauges.

But, I've done some Photoshopping and have tweaked the previous picture of the temp gauge to make the needle look on my various computers like the real thing. Here's a before and after, with the top one being the untouched version and the bottom one being the after adjusting it. Now, holding the real thing by my computer or iPad they look the same. The only difference is that now the paint has dried and there's no sheen. And, they look good!

 

Nice work, Chief.

It's odd in that I painted my gauges with the HiPo Fluorescent Red, and the color turned out exactly like the gauge on the bottom picture.

I used three coats. And, I agree with you in that the third coat applied a bit "gummy." I was expecting to have to do it over, but when the paint dried, it was smooth and even.

 

Thanks, but that means your monitor is different than mine. I say that because I have HiPo red and orange in the vials next to the Testor's Fluorescent Orange, and the two oranges are very close. But the red is much more red.

I just realized that a big part of the problem is the lighting in the shop. It is color-balanced fluorescent, but it only has a Color Rendering Index in the mid-80's. So, what I'm seeing in the shop is not the actual color, and when I changed the color on my computer to make it look like it does in the shop what I got isn't right either.

I proved that just now by taking the gauge out of the shop. Right now the sky is seriously overcast, but that light shows the needle to be a very fluorescent orange. I can't detect the change as I look at the needle and walk out the door with it, but when I compare it to the pictures I've posted above, viewed on this iPad, there is a very large difference. And yet, with the lighting in the shop the needle looks the same as the lower picture.

But, if I take a picture of the needle outside with either this iPad or my iPhone the result doesn't look like the actual needle. I'll try later today with my DSLR and see what I can get.

 

I played with the "big" camera a bit today, but am not satisfied with what I was getting so will put that bit on the back burner and address it later.

However, I did make some progress today:

• Gauges: Got the gauges installed in the cluster and that installed in the dash. And, everything works. I'll wait to take pictures in the daylight to avoid the problems we've been discussing as much as I can. And, I'll take pics at night as well. But, I can tell you that even in a well-lit room you can see the blue of the LED's peeking out.
• Steering wheel: Got it installed, but it may still be a notch off of straight-ahead. We will see when I can drive it - soon.
• Horn: When I put the horn pad on I tested the horn. And all that I heard was the relay under the dash clicking. Doubt that'll alert anyone so I'll have to sort that out later. Guess I have never tried the horn.
• Starting: To test the gauges I started it up. Or, maybe I should say I attempted to start it as it had the same I-don't-wanna-go attitude it had before, so I had to jump it.
• Fuel lines: After starting it I noticed a bit of a fuel odor, then I found a puddle of gas under where the rear tank should be. Not sure if it is the supply side or the return, but I did Bootlegger's fix.
• Trailer hitch: Reinstalled the trailer hitch with new G8 hardware.
• Trailer connector: Removed the old connectors, drilled and taped the bumper, and mounted the new 7-pin connector. Tomorrow I hope to wire it up.
• Taillights: Installed the new LED's in one side and left the incandescent bulbs in the other, and then installed the new lenses. Will take a pic at night of the difference.

Also, here's a shot of where the oil is dripping from - circled in red. But, note the wet spot where the arrow is. The dip stick is tight, but.... Thoughts?