Hello its been awhile

My father just passed away last month and i inharited his 86 f250 6.9 IDI diesel 4spd borg warner tranny 4:10 rear. Ther truck has some major Electical problems ie burning wires. I have worked on the truck before and like it i am wanting to rewire the whole thing front to back top to bottom. i am also wanting to replace the gages with mechanical ones. i am also thinking of installing a dash from a mid 70s f series pickup. my questions are 1) where can i find an aftermarket speedo and gages? 2) WIll the 70s style dash fit and how much modding will need to be done to do it? 3) What circuts are nessesry to make the truck street legal?

Scott

 

just my opinion....

but your 86 and a mid 70's are almost nothing alike. What wires are buring up? I'd start by fixing the truck and then decide if you want to mod it. Take a Chiltons or Haynes manual, remove any "custom" wiring and just go thru it. A volt meter and $2 worth of wire ought to fix you up... and if it doesn't and you have something else going on - at least you didn't totally rewire a truck first!

Good Luck.

 

I have patched up the wireing and it is running but it is all breaking up in the arizona heat. I fix one section and something else fries.

Scott

 

dude youve got a bad ground somewhere!look at the engine grounds!.....also look to see if you have a hot wire grounding.....i had a similar problem!

 

I agree..... check the grounds, check for shorts. Arizonia is not THAT hot. My son has a bunch of electircal issues with his Mazda until I pulled out the stereo. It had multiple hot leads (memory, lights, general power) and they were wired wrong and it was grounding thru one of them until you turn on the headlights and then POOF!

I found it by removing "custom" wiring, pulling fuses on unneeded circuits, and a volt meter.

If you are putting in heavier guage wire when you fix it that just makes somewhere else the "weak link".

 

You may also want to check out state and federal safety laws on this swap as well because there are big differances between the 2 different year models as i now some military type vehicles are ilegal for sale to the general public because the dash on them does not have the proper padding for that particular model as per the DOT. Also if changing out the dash is not a violation of DOT regulations why not build a completely custom dash, in which i mean remove the whole origional and draw out what you would want and build it. That way you could have a complete 1 of a kind custom dash.
As far as being street legal as long as you retain any origional safety and emissions equipment. Making sure you have a speedometer blinker/hazard indicators, horn, air bags, defroster and lighting for the dash components it should be legal. As this model probably didnot come with air bags no problem there. if it is a EFI engine to be legal you must maintain all the EFI equipment and its smog emissions. If that year also came with a carburated version of your engine it is legal to swap to a carb system as long as you swap it with whatever emissions equipment came on that year vehicle.

 

Another thought it would be cheaper to fix the origional wiring the correct and proper way. that is unless you have gotten ahold of a vehicle that has wiring like a truck i once owned, that had shorts all over i repaired them correctly as they came up but the plastic wirecoverings were so old and deteriorated that in some instances when i was fixing one short another place down the wire the plastic cover would break off and create another. after about 6 months of fixing shorts once to twice a week i finally said the heck with it sidelined the truck and a little at a time purchased all of the components needed to rewire the entire truck, including all new plugs and sockets for lights etc. granted i did this on 1970 GMC Custom that i owned when i was 18 like 20 years ago. I was pleased with the result because it was a restoration project anyway which increased the sale value of it as a restored vehicle. If you decide to just fix the wires solder all wire replacements and my preferance is to use heat shrink to cover the spots where i patch in a new wire, not only is heat shrink better than tape it also looks better and you dont have to worry about it coming off. Heat shrink is realatively inexpensive, and it is also thinner when you go to retie the wire bundles together making them less bulky.

 

ya a custom dash would be awesome! IF YOU WANT TO GET AROUND THE EMISSIONS FIND A COUNTY IN YOUR STATE THAT DOES NOT REQUIRE A D.E.Q CERTIFICATE AND GET A P.O. BOX THERE THEN REGISTER YOUR TRUCK OR CAR THERE! AND YOU CAN GET PLATES AND TAGS!i did this with my 80 f250 and my truck came stock with all emissions and smog pump...i just discarded the old smog stuff and plugged all the unnessacary vacs!.....good luck.....i hope you find a county to reg(where i live its really easy to do! portland,oregon)

 

The last time i was in the dash i had to pull about 40 wires apart because they were all melted together i still don't know how the truck was still running. as for emisions hat is a non issue because 1 it was not required on this truck because it has a diesel and 2 there is no emisions testing in the county where i live. Currently there is no custom wireing in the dash there is no stereo in the truck now just an amp that is hooked direct to the battery through 2 fuses 1 at the apm and 1 at the battery.

Thanks for all the input

Scott