You are my HERO! (And I kinda agree with Oddball: "To a New Yorker like you, a hero is some type of weird sandwich, not some nut who takes on three Tigers." But in this case it is 104 degrees in brilliant Arizona sun to wield many wrenches. )

 

And, while we are waiting I'll tell what I did today. Not much. I'm taking it easy while the lip heals. But, I did some 'puter work and got the new page on electrical circuit #'s and color codes up and running.

Then I decided I would check into the radiator support to see what differences there are to the earlier ones and what it will take to change it out. Since you can't see much from the back I pulled the grille to look at the front. Here's a shot of the back of the grille, and the red oval shows the hack job done on it to get the oil cooler to fit.




As shown here, the cooler is running horizontally across the brace, which is why it interfered with the grille. And, they hacked the radiator support to get the hoses through. Instead, I'll run the cooler vertically, like the red line shows, and that means it'll clear the back of the grille. Plus, the hoses will go under the radiator support, not through it, and that's the way the factory did it.

Also, note the red oval on the left of the picture. That's a tag/buck - see the next pic.





And, here's a closeup of the tag:

 

Thanks Gary, it's pretty much all in a day's work in July here. For the rest of you readers, I messaged Gary because I was at the junkyard and I pulled a 85/86 core support that I wanted to bring as a "garage warming gift" in September. I got it out and discovered a couple of small cracks near the passenger side frame mount. Gary says he does not mind welding these up, and the unit should then be serviceable. There are a few spots of surface rust, but overall it's pretty clean.

 

THANK YOU! I just can't thank you enough! Wow! As you can see in the previous pictures, Big Blue's support is both hacked and rusted, so this one will be such a help.

 

Gary, FWIW, here is what the factory cooler (and aux trans cooler) look like. You will probably want one of those on the truck you put the E4OD in.

 

Yes, I'll put one on Dad's as that's where the E4OD goes. Big Blue gets the ZF5.

 

I really thought I understood Vernon's frustration. Not with this truck, but with the "help" he was hiring. And I'm sure that it isn't nearly as frustrating for me as it was for him - it was his money, and his dream that was going down the drain. But, today I found yet another example.

I was scoping out the radiator area for the movement of the engine oil cooler, and in doing so I found that the oil cooler is 1 3/4" thick and the space between the A/C evaporator and the valance is 1 3/4". Hmmm, I don't want things rubbing, so maybe the evaporator could be moved back a bit?

Sure enough, there's plenty of room to move it back 1 1/4" at the bottom. But, when looking at it a bit closer I found a couple of problems. The maddening this is that there's room to get the evaporator into the correct spot in the radiator support if they'd just slipped it in. Start here and look at the yellow and red ovals:





This is a shot from a different angle on the red oval area. Notice the crease in the tube. It not only has been partially flattened by hitting the radiator support, but the crease may well have caused a leak. I wouldn't be surprised if this brand-new-when-installed evaporator is ruined - which may well explain why the pressure in the system is down or nil.




And, on the other side the tube has been rubbing on the radiator support. You can't get a piece of paper between them, so it is likely that a leak is eminent there as well. (No, Jonathan, that isn't a crack. Just the edge of one piece of metal overlapping another.)

 

Wow! Yes, hard to find good work these days, and if you do, give them business to keep 'em going. Nothing like doing it yourself to make sure it's done right, no doubt about it.

It seems like everytime you get into this truck it's part detective work; good catch, even if it means some new parts need ordered in.

 

Gary, I will give you a suggestion if you have to replace it, get one for a 1994-97 model. That's what's on Darth, it required a little modification to the mounts and may have to get different lines made. It is a multi-pass and works a lot better than the older one for R134. BTW, that is the CONDENSOR you are showing, the EVAPORATOR is in the casing on the firewall. You might also check which orifice tube is in it, Matt can probably still tell you which one is recommended.

I do think he either had Larry, Mo and Curly working on it, or maybe Hamm Phist, Jack Legg and Shayde Tri.

 

Ouch - correcting a man on his own thread. That's cruel.

Gary knows his parts - he's just getting older and mixing words up.

 

I took a shower after writing that and as I stepped out and cool air hit I realized my mistake. Duh!

But, I will consider the later model one if I have to replace it. Thanks for the tip.

As for the workers on this truck, perhaps it was done by the team John Denver sang about - Rocky Mountain High.

 

Well if we're correcting him in his own thread...

"Eminent" means famous, respected, conspicuous.

"Imminent" means about to happen.

I've been corrected on mis-using those two words so many times I finally remember what they mean!

 

Wow! You are right. I am wrong. Good job! . Thank you. I really hate making those mistakes, and hope I don't in the future. But, if I do tell me so.

 

... and the third similar word is "Immanent" ("a" instead if "i" in the middle) which means dwelling within, or inherent

This concludes this English lesson. We now return you to your (ir)regular thread.

 

Interesting. I think those are homophones - sound the same but are spelled differently. And with a bit of Googling I found this to help me remember them:And, as was suggested, back to the regularly scheduled, but irregularly posted, topic. My friend that runs a welding shop came by last night to get my gas bottle as he's going to refill it with hotter gas so my welding on the heavy stuff will go better. (I hope he doesn't think he owes me anything, in spite of the work we've done on his '79 F150.)

While here I asked him to critique my welds on the front receiver and step bar brackets. He liked those on the step bars, but suggested that for the kind of stress the receiver might see of pulling Big Blue out of a swamp I should run a few more beads on it with the new gas. He said I should turn the speed down when welding heavy stuff and make several passes. So, I'm anxious to see what the new gas and approach will do.