Hi, my name is Devin, I have an old car (and truck) addiction. Ok, now that that is out of the way, here is my story, and that of my F100. I don't think I did a specific intro, but I'm just a guy who loves lots of older vehicles, not necessarily brand specific. Right now in my fleet are 9 vehicles, from Ford, Chevy, Dodge, Kaiser, Toyota, Subaru and VW.

As far as my truck, I picked it up about 8 years ago from a kid at the local junior college who lived in the dorms, had blown out the clutch, and needed to get it gone asap so I got a good deal on it but I had to haul it home on a trailer. Soon after I put a clutch in it and had a running truck. The story I got was it came out of Montana originally, and looking it over it had no rust to be found, repainted once in the original color. It's a very basic truck with 2wd, 8 foot bed, manual steering, manual drum brakes, and a granny 4 speed. I did find most of the original build sheet in the seat back. After having it a couple of years I scabbed a dual exhaust system onto it, (poorly,) which later one muffler fell off about 5 years ago. It has some other issues which I will address here too, in time. Overall it is a very solid truck and has been very reliable, and I don't reall intend to do a full teardown on it, more maintenance and repair. It only has about 80-some thousand miles on it, and still drives nice and tight with no rattles.



SO this is my beast. I'm learning how to navigate this site still, will post more soon.

Devin

 

First post on my own truck and I'm already forgetting stuff. When I bought it, it had stock steel wheels with hubcaps and tiny 235/75-15 tires. I ran those for a while until I came across a good deal on this set from a Jeep guy. I still have the stockers set aside, but for now I like these much better. The only thing is the tires on them are 10.00-15's. I don't think those have been made since the 1980's. I've had my eye out for a set of decent 31x10.50-15's, but they haven't shown themselves yet. One of the other thing's I did pretty quick after buying it was to locate a 4 bbl manifold and swap on a Holley 4777 650 double pumper I had laying around. I had to buy 2 factory iron 4bbl manifolds to get them at all, and ended up scrapping one. Talk about heavy! If I haven't mentioned it, I have a 360FE. Later I changed out the double pumper for an 1850 600 vacuum secondary.

Devin

 

Other then the little area missing from the grille it looks pretty nice.

Orich

 

Thanks! One of the neighbor kids did that a while back. I found the piece on the ground, just haven't glued it back in yet.

So a few months ago, my oldest son was driving the truck daily, as both of his vehicles were down for various reasons. It got to where it wouldn't hardly run at all around 2000 rpm. He threw a new cap, rotor and wires at it to no change. Since it was rpm dependent, I figured it was in the carb. In the end I found a plugged high speed air bleed. Got it cleaned out enough to run at the time, but then ordered a whole carb kit to go through it properly.


Where I started.

I like to tear carbs apart in a kitty litter pan, that way if anything gets dropped, it can't run away.


I borrowed this ancient ultrasonic cleaner from a friend. It did a really good job with just some dishsoap since I can't get decent carb cleaner here in CA.


Everything came out really clean and nice. I discovered it wasn't so great on gaskets, but there was a bunch of sediment in the bottom of the cleaning tank I had been after to get out.

A friend was waiting to borrow the truck as soon as I got it back together, so no pics and I didn't touch the tune or adjustments on it. I just got it back the night before last.

More to come,

Devin

 

1970-'72 had a rather unusual choke pull-off arrangement.
How have you handled that with your replacement carb?

 

That's a nice looking old pickup you got there! Cant wait to see the progress!

 

Some guys wire up the auto choke to the +side of the coil which is not where it should be as it pulls voltage away from the coil.
I believe it got hooked up to the field terminal on the alternator or onto the voltage field regular terminal..

Orich

 

I put an electric choke on the carb when I swapped over. I ran a fresh wire from an ignition hot bullet in the dash. I don't remember exactly where now, it was probably 5-6 years ago. At the same time I ran a wire for the signal for the tach I wasn't allowed to install at the time, all routed neatly in the factory harness.

So it's been exhibiting a problem from the left front, yesterday I took some time to look into it.
With the help of my youngest, I swapped the tires front to back. Knowing that the tires are old I was hoping that was the problem. Nope, no change.



Next I pulled the drum off, removed, cleaned and packed the wheel bearing. No signs of abnormal wear or metal shards. Test drove again, no change. But in paying attention, I noticed that it doesn't pull while braking. I almost always use compression braking so I hadn't picked up on that before. At this point I'm thinking I likely have a failed brake hose keeping pressure on that wheel. So far as I can tell all 3 soft hoses are original. Replacing them is now on my to-do list once I have a few more duckets to throw at it.

Devin

 

The Carb. Throttle Solenoid is supposed to be connected to Wire #932 (which is powered by the Ignition Switch).
Too bad you routed another wire, the wire is probably already installed in your truck....

 

Nice looking truck. Have you checked the wheel cyl's? Make sure they are working. I have two rusted completely solid.

 

I see that the wheel cylinder is leaking, if you roll back the dust cap you'll have a lot of fluid their that's the rubber cap on each end of the cylinders. .
Take a better look at how the out side of the wheel cyl has leak an brake dust has attached to it...
A wheel cyl with a frozen piston can cause it to drag.
when replacing your you must do both front not just one wheel must do in pairs...

Orich

 

Good eye Rich. And 2X on replacing in pairs. Last I saw Rock Auto had/has brake cylinders for Bumpsides on close out specials.
OP, I think while you have the brake system apart you have a good idea in changing all three brake hoses. They aren't exactly spring chickens. Let all the brake fluid drain from the M/C. Take a clean rag and wipe all the sediment off the floor of the M/C.. Once you're ready to bleed the system fill the M/C full of fresh DOT 3 brake fluid out of a brand new bottle. While bleeding watch the fluid level and don't let the M/C go dry.

 

You guys are right on doing wheel cylinders in pairs. I should probably just do all of them, but not yet. Still waiting on funds in that regard.

However, as I believe I mentioned previously, this thing needs exhaust. There was no muffler whatsoever on the passenger side, and a cherry bomb on the driver's that dumped under the bed. I had been putting off doing anything about it since I wanted to do headers at the same time. A while back I bought a kit to do headers and full exhaust from Summit. Today I was able to start disassembly.





The pipes came apart easy enough with a Sawzall, but the manifolds are another story. I broke 3 studs on the driver's side and all 4 across the top on the passenger side. Ran out of time and didn't get to the bottom row. This is going to be fun to get them out.

Devin

 

These old classic trucks are not a fast easy fix on most every thing dur to there age.
They can be labeled like the house from Hell. as what ever to touch the next joint breaks or has to be cut off to remove the first part.
As a can of worms..
Modal A ford barn find were easy to get on the road once again. Never had to worry about the brake system since they had mechanical brake system..
Model A engine were known for wiping off the timing gear teeth which was a simple fix...

Orich.