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So last night I made a little progress on the overall work. Sprayed some more layers of clear on the battery tray, then hit a brown spot weld under the washer reservoir with rust converter. Which has to cure 24 hrs before I can apply any more coats of clear coat.
Managed to grab a quick pic of the tray. Did ya smell it SSJ? The products I'm using on it and the order they were used
Then spent about 2 hours removing the vacuum pump, fender relay and other passenger side fender well accessories to get to the plastic mounting tabs under everything over there for the rubber hose for the washer fluid to replace it all with poly tubing and spring clamps and reused all 3 still good plastic clips to hold the tubing in place. The rubber hose held all the psi I could blow into it, so that doesn't seem to be my source of the tank leakdown.
Old manufactured 4/28/99 MotorCraft tank next to the identical dimentions "various manufacturer" (cheapest) one from RockAuto
Next up I traced back some wires that I had going to the battery to 100% confirm my thoughts that they were for the water/methanol kit, then I added some labels to the wires under the wire loom. Then I reorganized all the wire loom going to the add on fuse/relay box and put the washer tank into position to make sure it and the battery tray wouldn't cause any issues.
Next I removed the grill to inspect my condenser fins that I hadn't straightened in 2 years. Grabbed my comb and hit the bad spots a little. Wasn't feeling motivated to spend the hour required on the entire thing to get them all perfectly spaced and pick put the hundreds of pebbles of sand that are always in them. At least none of them are bent over and flattened like a couple years ago. That darn bird strike area is still an eyesore to me, but it's all clear and straight. Maybe I can feel comfortable enough to take some pictures of my water misting setup that spans the grille divider in front of the condensor/intercooler/radiator next time I'm free.
The next and last thing in that 1st big box of goodies I've been working on is the rear brake rotors/pads. By this point it was 4am and I'd been up quite a while, so decided jacking up the truck and setting up jackstands and removing wheels and brakes was probably more than I should bite off when I was starting to yawn, so I put up all my tools and called it a night and grabbed some soup and settled on the 1st Die Hard movie to nodd off to on the couch before the alarm went off to get the 4 females off to their schools.
Looking forward to the weekend. When I clock out Saturday morning I get to join you "daywalkers", as a friend called it, and be on days shift for 2 weeks. Granted this weekend my goal is to finally move the Corvette from the old house and then powerwash all the cement there, so may not get much truck work done till my next day off when everyone is at their schools and not pulling me in different directions
The rattle can products only offer marginal rust protection. You can’t ‘spray’ the paint thick enough for the best protection. I do spray a lot of things, but I use the Rustoleum 2x products. There is no reason for ‘high heat’ anything (except exhaust parts) and I think clear is probably a waste of time.
If you want to keep stuff from rusting, brush/roll on rust oleum Rusty Metal Primer after thorough degreasing and top coat with rust oleum High Performance Enamel. Multiple coats of each (following recoat directions) will keep the rust monster at bay.
It looks great though. Your attention to detail is beautiful!!! I enjoy your updates!
Well I got home from work this morning and was looking for a 1/4" gap tile trowel for my brother when at the last box I was looking in low and behold what I stumbled across
No way!
So, the other night when I removed the fender relay I grazed a rubber cap on the positive terminal, and it being 22 years old threw a tantrum like a 2yr old and crumbled away Aww Poo
So at the time I laid it aside and figured I'd ask on here if anyone knew the part number.
But this morning when I found that unknown bag, for a now unkown tool/furniture who knows what I saw what I couldn't believe
Hmm, rubber And conveniently even has the correct shape molded to hug a nut
Surely my luck won't be good enough for it to fit...
No way!
It fit quite snug an secure. So now that I've burned up any luck I would of had today and possibly all weekend I'm going to just sit back and take a breather this morning and kick off my shoes. Heck just sitting here updating the thread has me debating with a member whether I should try to get some sleep in b4 noon or maybe watch some non animated movies while I have control of the remote....
Oh, and the injectors are less than an hour away from Rosewood's shop this morning
Well yesterday sucked. Started on the "simple" brake job, rear rotors and pads. That quickly expanded to include five 1hr round trips to parts stores.
So the first steps were obvious in rotor replacement. Remove the tire Stupid wheel weights have damaged the clear coat
So next I removed the brake caliper, and hung it from the frame with an old school rubber bungee strap so it wouldn't hang from the Russel stainless braided lines.
Grr. Truck was filthy, but the darn surface rust was distracting throughout the entire job
Removed the rotor and sat it down, but why are my gloves damp?
No... Failed hub seal
So, off to the parts store for the axle spindle nut tool and hub seals, pics of the tool & part number provided by @Sous
Tool with part number W83008
Axle seals BRS-116
So, off to the parts stores. Yeah, first one had the tool, but not the seals. Second one had 8 seals, but no tool.
The next steps were pretty straight forward after a quick read thru on threads here. Needed a puller to pop the hub's seal lose after removing the nut and outer bearing, then gave it all a couple blasts of brake cleaner. Then the fun began.
The back of hub, races checked, ready for the rear bearing
Bearing back in place, still looks excellent, a fresh splash of stinky gear oil Oil slinger in place, ready for the seal
Next up I poured another splash of fresh gear lube between the front and rear bearing races then lifted the hub in place, added the front bearing, then the nut, and that's when the day sucked. The threads wouldn't grab, and no matter how hard I pushed I couldn't get the hub to seat on the spindle enough to start the nut. So I pulled the hub off, applied a layer of great lube to the spindle and got out the punch and gave the inner bearing some light taps. Still wouldn't seat. So a few more light taps. Nope. So, called in the calvary. Dad. Dad was a high level mechanic at our paper mill before he retired, and part of our Skunk Works team. He had 40 years of wrench turning under his belt working on multi million dollar machinery from manufacturers all over the world, he's replaced thousands of bearings and seals and designed and upgraded a crap ton of stuff. I needed a second set of eyes, and experienced hands. So he brought a heat gun & bearing heater with him.
Nope. We tried everything he could suggest for the next 2 hours. I double checked part numbers on the seal for my 99.5 F350 vs Sous' 2000 F250, which of course were the same seal. It just wouldn't go on far enough to grab threads, and the spindle was smooth with no ridges for the bearings to be hanging up on. And nothing showed to be hanging up on the revealing layer of grease we wiped on the spindle.
Then the simple thing. I laid the old seal over the newer, and boom. The old seal was 1/16” larger inner diameter than the new. But why?
Grr. After looking the spindle over yet again, but with this new info we finally saw this. A sleeve. What the heck. Did the PO have a damaged spindle and decide to sleeve it then use a different sized seal over 17 years ago? After an inspection of the seal for any sign of a part number and coming up blank we grabbed measurements with my calipers then we traveled yet again to the parts store with the old seal. They suggested and we compared seals for 2wd, 4x4, 4wd (apparently there is a difference?) and even duallys for every 7.3 in their database. They actually asked if it was a junkyard axle out of a Chevy at one point.
Dude, lug spacing is different, and the axle tags say no. Trust me it's a Ford Sterling 10.5
So finally we put in the seal OD and id and came up with a MotorCraft seal that looked right and should work on the sleeve and hub. Of course there wasn't one in town, but their DC could have one in the morning. Ok. So back to the house to clean up a little n chat before I had to start picking kids up from school and sports. Then off to throw a fuel pump in the Corvette.
I'll never learn. I should have cut my losses for the day and just done house work. So the fuel pump on the Corvette is insanely easy to change standing at the fuel filler. I've done it before. Just remove ten 10mm bolts on the fuel cap assembly, and out comes the entire sending unit and the new goes back in. 5-10 minutes tops. Uhg. So as I lifted the sending unit out I heard light splashes into the fuel tank. I didn't see any debris around the unit that could fall in when I started. Once I lifted it up a couple inches I could see the carnage. OMG. I already hate ethanol, and whoever had the bright idea of mixing it into gasoline, but now I wish them a slow death being burned alive by an ethanol fire. The entire sending unit, where it wasn't painted like the above side was, was a mass of corroded huge flakey brown crap. I had added stabilizer before it went into storage, but this was insane. The copper wires to the pump and level indicator were even green and corroded clear thru. Then I had to go fishing to find the pump. And the filter sock. And pulled out 8 nitrile glove handfulls of corroded gunk. The fuel was lacquered black, and the bottom 3 inches in the tank was a thicker go like syrup. My best friend was about 200ft away admiring his new to him the day before showroom condition 66 Impala SS. He stopped and came over and 20 ft away said man that lacquer is making my eyes water clear over there. I finished scooping out bits and wires while I could still breathe and called it a day. Then ordered a stainless steel fuel assembly that will get here Tuesday...
Sorry, I was too high to think about taking pictures before we left. We walked around his acreage for a while to clear my head and have him show me the progress on his guard shack/package delivery setup he's having put in at the front gate.
Once back home I couldn't get the seal out of my head. Was it a sleeved repair job? A bad axle from the factory that Bubba put a sleeve and oddball seal on to make his quota Friday afternoon while dreaming of his sports team and beer?
So into the depths of the net I searched once the females were all asleep. After many pages of results I found a very very old post on a different forum mentioning a 2 piece seal on a 96 OBS coming apart on disassembly and throwing the guy off, but it was so old of a thread there were no pics. After some more searching I found more mentions of a 2 piece seal separating, but no pictures of these 2 piece seals. So I looked up a 2 piece seal. Basically it's a seal, that has a sleeve inside. It's own thin sleeve is to prevent wear to the surface of whatever it's sealing. That seal's sleeve wears instead of the axle spindle. Hmm, good idea. But they were more prone to leaking since there were 2 sealing surfaces going on, so Ford phased them out to the 1 piece seal we know. After looking over pics of seals during my inability to sleep thru the night, and some morning confirmation from@SkySkiJason and another set of eyes from Sous my morning goal became to gently try and remove the sleeve to see if my seal had separated upon disassembly.
Success! Now my spindle looked like all the other pictures and videos I'd seen where everyone simply pushed on the new hub seal and tightens down the nut.
Shoot. That would saved half a day and untold frustration and lost sleep. Off to the parts store again! So after picking up the same 2nd seal I had returned yesterday I was back in the garage joined by dad. Oh and the heat gun made removal of the passenger side seal's sleeve that also separated on disassembly easy peasy. Plus the knowledge of that even happening made it quite simple... Dad said many times he'd never seen a seal like that, but he wished they'd used them instead of having to remachine and sleeve worn journals for years
We put it all back together, torqued the bearing nut to 60ft# then backed it off 7 clicks for the used bearing (5 clicks for new) all in about 10 minutes. Slid the axle back in and applied blue loctite and torqued the bolts to 80ft# Then finally put on the new rotors to replace the slightly grooved originals
So purdy.
Yes I know the debate of drilled vs not. I was hoping it was just a stock photo on the website since there was no mention of drilled in the description but there was mention of slotted. Granted drilled and slotted on my Corvette have never been an issue and let me tell you those suckers get hot during an auto cross event. But it's also not towing 6.5 tons behind it while full of my family going cross country...
Here's the pads with ceramic lube on the brackets and ready for the capliers. The lube also goes on the sliver pad liners where they contact the caliper and pistons, but no pics of that. Also lubed the slide pins.
So there you have it. 1 bad, frustrating day, and a day of relief, but fresh brakes I won't need to worry about for quite a while.
Everyone is home this weekend so probably no truck work till Monday. Planning on tackling the cooling system work at that time. Hopefully it quits raining tonight and I can power wash the garage floor and driveway at the old house after sweeping it all out today. Planning on listing it Monday. Finally
Sounds like Sous’s concept of karma didn’t pan out.
Seriously though, man that sounded brutal. So glad you were able to figure it out.
Good grief how long was the Vette in storage? You may consider filling with the 100% gasoline Rec fuel (and stabil) before storage next time. If that’s available in your area. If not there’s always racing fuel.
Wesley, we have to have difficult times in our life in order to appreciate the good times even more.
It was my pleasure to help you out over the past few days, even if it was for a second opinion, part numbers and torque specs. We all need help from time to time.
Sorry about the Corvette, that sucks... Any pictures of the Impala? Those were/are cool cars.
One step of the project down, a few more to go! Pretty soon you will be cruising down the road with fresh parts and injectors smiling from ear to ear!
Sounds like Sous’s concept of karma didn’t pan out.
Quite the opposite sir!
He had support from his father, me and SSJ the entire time. It was 11:30 at night the other day when he mentioned the sleeve on the axle and we discussed the possibilities.
He persevered and got the job done despite the setbacks. He trudged through and found a solution instead of focusing on failure and losing his temper and smashing something only creating yet another thing to fix.
Misery loves company, so does positivity!
We each have a choice to make when these opportunities/moments present themselves. I am not perfect and loose my crap sometimes, but I try to reel it in and bring it back to 1st world problems and finding a solution.
Good job Wes. The more of a PITA a job is, the more rewarding success is. I hate that you had trouble, but glad you figured it out. One thing I’ve learned over the years is Ford absolutely did some oddball stuff from time to time.
I think your proposal for the people who decided to ruin liquor by adding it to FUEL is conservative. I can tell you from working in the petroleum industry, it’s a nightmare for them too. Next time you drive by a tank farm, notice the tanks that are BLACK around the vents. Those are ethanol and that is just one of the issues/challenges it creates.
Rezvani's Latest Post-Apocalyptic Monster Is a Ford F-150 Raptor Underneath
Slideshow: Called the Fortress, the 850-horsepower pickup combines Raptor underpinnings with military-inspired features, survival equipment, and a starting price of $285,000.
