Well isn’t that interesting! After I read the above posts I did a google image search and found pics of brand new buckets (with 1 spring) and a bunch of used buckets with 2 springs, and 1 lone pic of a 3 spring bucket. I went down to the shop where I checked both of my F47 buckets:








There were 3 springs in each bucket, and the paint in those buckets matches the rest of the body, suggesting that they are likely original. Out of idle curiosity I walked over to the barn and pulled the driver headlight out of my son’s 1950 F68:




Yup, 3 springs! I’m wondering if it's related to trucks made here in Canada.

 

Hello, there are also three springs in my Mercury. At least, I think so. I'll have to check again.
Regards, Bernd 61 HD

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...-birthday.html

 

fwiw: over the years (I've owned my F-1 for 53 years) I've accumulated 8-10 original headlight buckets from various sources. Every one of them, and the original ones in my F-1, have three springs. Prior to reading this thread I never knew that there were other configurations, such as 2 or 1 spring.

 

All my trucks came from the Oakville Ontario plant and had 2 springs, 4 - 56's and 1 -53

 

All this is interesting.

I don't see how a new bucket with 1 spring can be properly adjusted.

I don't see how an old bucket with 3 springs (like I had mine for 25 years) can be properly adjusted. Wouldn't the odd spring, the one not lined up with the adjustment screws, keep the headlight from moving vertically and horizontally?

But, then why are there 3 holes for springs?

 

When I was dealing with the routing of the battery cables I did a mockup and some initial fab work on the battery/tool box which will sit in the bed of the truck. At a swap meet last summer I picked up an old steel box that had a decent colour match and looked like it would blend in nicely:









I added hold down tabs and a plate to properly secure it all:







Final installation will be done once I get the bed floor back in place. I ran transmission lines up to the front where they will join the short sections of rubber line to meet up with the trans:







Next I tackled the shifter linkage. Of all the aftermarket kits I have dealt with on this build, this fifty dollar Amazon kit was the best:







Installing it was delightfully easy. You remove the factory arm on the tranny, add the new knurled nut and new arm:












Next you add the heim joint to the shifter tab on the steering column, thread in the long rod, and bend it to whatever route pleases you:












Next you align that lower end of the rod with the middle of the long slot on the tranny shifter arm, mark that point on the rod and cut it there:







Then you slide the collar on, tighten the set screws to leave marks on the rod, disassemble, dimple the shaft where the screws will sit, add some locktite and tighten things up:












Then you simply find the sweet spot where it all shifts nicely. I set my column into the park position, adjusted the sliding tranny arm mount just once and it all worked perfectly:










I know I’m supposed to be on the wiring right now, but I keep running into silly little things that stop me dead (like needing a grommet or connector that I don’t have on hand). There’s no shortage of other things to do while I wait for some little part to arrive.

 

The wiring is drawing to a close! I wired up the new tail lights after an epic battle. They came with sockets designed for bulbs with staggered pin heights (like an 1157) but the supplied bulbs are the parallel type bulb. When I tried an 1157 bulb it would not go in. Yet the parallel bulbs supplied in the kit did (but they shouldn’t!). Long story short is that the supplied bulbs do work, HOWEVER if you rotate a bulb 180 degrees and install it you end up swapping the tail filament for the brake filament. I’m still scratching my head over this one…….

After losing my mind for half a day on the tail lights, I needed something that was easy and visually satisfying, so I worked on tidying up some of the wiring under the hood (or where a hood will soon be as there is no front clip on right now). Here’s a shot of the wires starting to look a little less disorganized:








The next step was to test the wiring. With so much new stuff in place there was a pretty good chance of some screw ups, so I decided to do things step by step, nice and slow. I started off like this:







I pulled out every fuse, double checked every connection, hooked up the battery..........







.......and started testing.

That vice grip you see is so that I could quickly disconnect the negative post in case of sparks/smoke. I added a fuse, checked that circuit, added another fuse, checked that circuit, and so on. There were some problems found, but they were minor and typically involved bad grounds. One example was the taillights, where I had forgotten to tighten the passenger side mounting bracket. This created a poor ground which caused the weirdest things to happen. I have however done enough builds to know that “when weird stuff happens, check your grounds”.

I eventually finished testing the body harness, then moved on to the fuse/relay block that runs the engine and finally the fuse/relay block that operates headlights/fan/starter. The final test was a test run of the engine. I had done a test months ago, but I had since added O2 sensors, the starting circuit, etc. Since it was going to be run, that engine was gonna need some oil. I had earlier swapped to a low profile oil pan, but I still had the truck dipstick, so that had to be dealt with. I added enough oil to be 1 litre low and test fired the engine (it worked). After letting things settle I noted the level on the dipstick, added a litre so that it was now full, ran the engine and after things settled noted the dipstick level again. I then added a new hole to mark the full level, and a crosshatch pattern down to the 1 litre low level:












After the test runs I had a few codes showing on my OBD2 reader but it was minor stuff (things I had left disconnected despite having double checked everything). The only code I could not clear was for my fan system. The LS ECU has 2 fan triggers as it's designed for dual fans, but I only have one fan. As a result my check engine light is on while the ECU searches for a 2nd input connection that it's missing. I have some ideas about how to deal with this though. It may take a while to get at it though, as my son is now seriously getting into his build so my available time has been divided up.

More to follow!

 

I like your dip stick treatment. Makes it a lot easier to know what's going on. I find in my advanced, decrepit age that reading the dip stick is becoming one of the more challenging automotive maintenance things to do.

 

Wayne, I am with you on reading dipsticks as I get older. The worst is brand new oil on a dipstick. Actually the worst is checking new hydraulic fluid on my tractor, where the dipstick is plastic and is the exact same colour as……….you guessed it...….hydraulic fluid!

I desperately wanted to get the bed finished as I am getting tired of having a half dozen things 95% done, so I got to it. I had the bed wood off, so I added a gas tank vent while access was great. It's routed up into the rear stake pocket where it’s hidden, but I also needed an easy way to fish it out if there was a vent problem. I made a wire hook which is attached to the vent hose, and it can easily be grabbed and there is enough slack to be able to pull the vent up and out of the stake pocket if required:

















The floor was tossed back on and I cut a hole for the gas tank filler, and added an access hatch to dress things up:


















The box needed a quick brushing and some rust paint on its floor, along with a strong plywood base as I don’t trust the thin sheet steel as the way to secure that heavy battery:








I added some rubber mat in case I store other stuff in there, and bolted everything down:







You can’t see any of it, but that battery is held by a big steel plate that is securely bolted through 2 pieces of thick plywood.

More to follow!