This AI thingy I found on google seems to be saying that inside the connector housing the wires may be flip flopped, so that in reality red goes to red and white goes to white?

 

Having the house pulled out from under would take the wind out of my sail so I can only think what he is going through.

I did not relies how bad the wiring was over by the battery. If you have other things to keep you busy till it gets cooler great.
When you are ready to do the dash / wiring swap just let me know and I am there to help.

I did the grass cutting in 2 stages as it was too hot so only did areas that are hard to see when it gets dark.
Went back out about 7pm and was done just before 10pm. I got to use the new head lights and got to say they suck!
It puts good light right in front of the tractor but not out farther where it is needed.
The stock lights had incandescent bulb, it was not vary bright and why I updated to LED assy. I got from HF as rock crawler lights.
I had to pull the lenes off the back part of the tractor lights to install the LED panel and ran the wire out the old bulb hole and glued the lenes back on.
Last night was the first time using them and got to come up with something else.

Son said something about using a car head light bulb and showed me a picture with LED bulbs in place. I dont really like the look of LED head lights but if if give more light out farther then I am for it.
He said you have to make a little mod to the area that holds the lights but also need to see how much amps the new lights pull or add relay & wiring.
So need to look into this new upgrade.
Dave ----

 

I know many years ago I put car fog lights on mower and that worked pretty good, it was a lot of light.

Whoever started building this truck, wiring was not his strong suit. Here are a few of my favorites. He definitely liked to skin wire and leave it exposed.

 

Holly **** cant believe it did not catch fire.
I can see why you said the harness needs to be replaced

Son said he looked at apartment just so he could get Kendra and Logan down here and after he looked at it he found anther house.
From the listing looks to be in better shape, no roof work from the looks, more land, better area & schools and less money.
Dont know if he has done a walk thru yet because he has been working. He went in today and said yesterday would have been his day off because of the holiday I guess?
He is off Saturday and asked what I was up to so maybe he is looking at it tomorrow?

On the tractor lights David talked to someone a while back and he installed 4x6 LED seal bulb assy. he got off Amazon for $28 for a pair.
He had to bend some sheet metal brackets he welded to the support the stock bulbs bolt to. He also had to trim a little of the support bulb opening but did not look all that bad from the pictures.
The lights should be here 7/6 and then I can see how they fit and what it will take to get them mounted.
If they dont work I give up LOL
Dave ----

 

The 3 inches of open skinned exposed wire coming off the back of the alternator has gotta be the worst.

That is such good news that something else has possibly opened up for him, I sure hope it works out.

You know those super bright light bar that young people put on their squatted trucks nowadays? You could adapt something like that

 

I am not that red neck yet to put a light bar on the JD tractor
But am getting there with the LED head lights I am going to install

That wiring was a short waiting to happen to let the magic smoke out!
I have seen some use wire nuts that were done better than what that truck was done.
Dave ----

 

Dave, you just haven't been in the South long enough! A few more years and you'll have lights all over that tractor..

Duraspark question. First off, I think mine is bad, when I hot wired it it acted like a short (spark at the alligator clamp I used on the battery) and had a high pitched whistle or whine coming from the unit. I disconnected the coil to see if that was the problem and it wasn't, so I disconnected the red/white connector from the ignition module and the short went away.

Now I google for "Ford Duraspark Ignition Module" and find many options and many prices. Some as low as $24 some as high as $75. If I go to Advance Auto website or Autozone website and put in a vehicle (tried 1981 F100 4.9, 1982 F100 5.0, 1983 F250 5.8, and 1979 LTD 5.8) I get only the more expensive ones that are $65 and over. I kinda though they are all basically the same, why are there so many different part numbers and prices?

I believe the motor is a 79 so I'd guess the distributor is also a 79, I imagine my best bet would be to get an ignition module to match that. But is there any reason I can't just order a cheap one off Amazon that is more or less a general fit for a wide range of years?

No markings or part numbers, any label that was on it is long gone

Amazon $26

 

Been down here 10 years April but Yankee runs deep

On the ICM if the truck was running and used as a DD I would say you get what you pay for so spend the money but in this case yes you can get a cheap one.
Get for what ever your you want the only thing you have to worry about is the wire relief color, I see that is blue.
It also dose not have to be from a truck it can be from a car or van too.
What dose the other truck have or being a feed back it might be installed in the distributor and cant be used.
Maybe a junk yard will have one? Look at 75 to 86 cars / trucks / vans.
Now 83> the 300 motor went feedback so that one will not work. Any EFI will also not work but I think the 460 trucks still had the box on the fender.
87 everything went EFI so no need to look at anything newer.
I think I may have one somewhere as my truck had one and think the parts truck did too. It may still be on the fender out on the pile I will give a look next time out that way.
Dave ----

 

The 82 parts truck has a weird one, I don't have a better picture right now and I'm already in my slippers so I'm not gonna go out there, hopefully this one is good enough to show what I am talking about. The module has a 3rd connector on it with a little housing that has 2 vacuum ports. I have not seen any like it when looking at parts online.


I know they get a lot of hate on the Ford pages but I am just going to get the cheap HEI distributor. 67 bucks, ugly as sin, but should work fine for this and I can always replace it later on down the road. If I buy an ignition module, there's no guarantee the distributor is good, so I might also end up having to replace as well. This way instead I replace everything at once and just have 1 wire to hook up.

 

That strange ICM with the vacuum IIRC has something to do with manifold vacuum and may change timing if the distributor does not have a vacuum can.

Something like MAF even with a carburetor, it was funky stuff Ford and others were trying to meet smog.
For $70 bucks and a set of wires I guess you cant beat that for a HEI that you just have to give it 12 volts.

Yesterday went with my son to look at the house a little better as he just rushed thru the first time.
It is the nicer of the houses I seen with him, did not see anything that "needs fixing now" but the large rear deck will need new decking, will not know how the joists are till the decking is off but the top is all dry rotted and cracked. There are a few steps that are wet potted that should be replace asap if he gets the house.
Next is the inspection so that will really tell him if good or not but I cant see anything jumping out at him.

When we were on the front porch talking another realtor and client showed up. The house was put on line 6 days ago and even at that David put a bid in the owner was on vacation and with the holiday it was not put on "pending". They did a walk through just so they know what it was so realtor could get a ideal what the client is looking for.
It is a little farther from his job than the other house, this is like 20 minutes the other was like 2 blocks.
So we wait for the inspection now.
Dave ----

 

There were no vacuum hoses on that unit when I got the truck so I didn't know where they would have routed but that sounds like a good explanation. I don't see a vac advance on the distributor itself so would make the most sense.

That house sounds good and at least won't need immediate attention on major things, at least "kock on wood" seems that way now. 20 minutes is not bad but compared to 2 blocks, that is a big deal

I wanted to tackle the shift linkage on the 83 pickup because it was so trashy. It looked like they took a piece of original linkage and welded an extension on to one end. But that seemed pointless because all they were doing was changing the angle and making it worse, not accomplishing anything. And where the bracket mounted to the transmission was not in complete alignment with the bracket on the frame so it was cause it to go at an angle.

Red line is more the angle it SHOULD be

I added a spacer to the trans bracket to bring that out and get a better alignment on the arm, then I used a turnbuckle thing to connect the arm to the transmission. It's very stiff, possibly because I'm past the comfortable angle of the unit and putting it in a bind. I wanted to take it off and add a washer in between on both ends just to give an extra sliver of room. But at least now I can go from P to L1 with the column shifter, before I was missing a digit. And from the way it seems I think it was P that was missing, originally wasn't able to go up high enough to get that "click" from the trans bracket.

 

Jesus, that wiring is a disaster. Someone should be ashamed. Like Dave said, I'm surprised it hasn't already burned to the ground.

Dave, I hope this house works out. 20 minutes is nothing these days. For 20 + years I had an one hour, one way commute. Two hours at min a day sitting in traffic. Mostly on the motorcycle. Not real confidence inspiring that they are overlapping buyers and they waited to establish his bid. But I guess it's understandable with the holiday.

John, the new linkage looks so much better. I hope it works out and doesn't cause any binding.


My weekend was packed full. I'm feeling it this morning. I'm hoping for a calm Monday.

 

When we were remodeling house in CT the we stayed in a Hotel for 3 months and it was across the street from where I was working at the time.
think was I had to drive 2 miles to the train station so the wife could get to NYC where she was working, then back to work.
Because she had to be at the station before I had to start work and came home later than I got out I spent a not of extra time at work not that was a bad thing but was not doing it as over time
I have also done the hour + one way to jobs as an IT contractor and some of that in winter, not fun.

John, was that the truck that did not lock in park so it would roll? If so maybe now that could be fixed, fingers crossed.
I like that linkage set up. If my clutch linkage ever wears like it was when I got the truck I am going to make it like that with the Heim joints.

The only heavy work I did over the weekend was did the trimming with the weed wacker and that was not too bad as it had only been a few weeks since I last did it.
I hope to do it every other week or so, so it will not take long to do each time.

Yesterday in the heavy rain we got I seen water coming over the gutter at the front door?
When it stopped I got thew later out and seen in a corner where that is no leaf guard crap built up and would not let water flow. How 2 areas like this that I cleaned as we are going to get rain for 3 days starting Wed.

Depending on how bad the rain & wind is I may start on the head light up grade v20 on the tractor as the LED 4x6 lights came in yesterday.
For like $30 for the pair I dont think I can go too wrong but we will see.
Dave ----

 

Longest commute for me was back in the 90's going from western Maryland to northern Virginia. It 72 miles each direction and a good bit of that was the Beltway. Stop & go traffic, rubber band traffic, you name it. The worst commute I have had since living in NC was going up to Wake Forest every day. Well the address said Wake Forest, but you passed the "Welcome to Youngville" sign about a mile before my building. That was 50 miles each way, with 12 or 13 of those miles being Capitol Blvd. Going to work at night would take 45 minutes, but coming home would take 1h20m. I don't miss it, the covid scare got them to send us to work from home and now my commute is in my slippers and ends at my chair!

The arm of this bracket connects to the linkage coming down the firewall from the column. Looks to me like it's been bent inwards, and if I could straighten it out then everything would look better and work smoother. But that is thick metal and I'm not sure how to go about it.

 

Two things I forgot to say a few minutes ago. Regarding the parking pawl, I had the same thought as you. I don't think it was originally going all the way up into P so maybe now it will work, and maybe the parking pawl isn't bad after all. The second thing, regarding that turnbuckle with heim joints, I like them, very nice and heavy duty, made from stainless. It seems like a different name from different places so when I googled I tried different terms. The best results I found were on Amazon and just called "adjustable tensioner" mostly between $10 and $15 depending on length. They don't always tell you the diameter of the holes though but in this case it was listed for fitting a 3/8 bolt. I already have a couple of them in my box-of-different-stuff but neither was the right length and also they were smaller diameter for a 5/16 bolt.