Wow truck looks great!

 

I hope it makes on the magazine, it's well deserved!! One of my favorite 79 F350 4x4 SC on this site. You have done some incredible work which I'm sure you are proud of. Awesome truck for sure!! Super slick!!

 

Well said and I'd have to agree it is one of the BEST S/C's on the site.

 

Thanks guys...........I really do appreciate it! It's always nice to know when something you've done meets with the approval of your peers. We'll see how the magazine thing goes, but I'm really not that worried about it. As I've said the whole time, I built Buford for me......anything else that comes along is gravy, but the satisfaction I get is being able to enjoy something that I built and finished on my own. Granted, I had to have some help along the way (i.e.: machine work, paint, tranny, stereo), but the design, installation and assembly was all me.

Hell, even some of the parts I have on Buford are now available to you guys because I called to have the prototypes built. The battery trays were my idea, which are now available for retail (I didn't get any credit, but I got mine first......lol). The toolbox was a prototype, as Highway Products hadn't built one yet in that configuration. The spare tire carrier was my design, but I don't see that becoming a popular thing just yet. I may try to improve that design at some point. The point is that just like some guys here helped me to come up with my own ideas, maybe my ideas will serve to help others.

Regardless.....again, I want to thank you guys for being as supportive as you've been over the haul of this project. It took six years, and I tapped this site for tons of information, and it almost always paid off. Sometimes I'd have to find answers on my own, either because I couldn't find the answer here, or simply because the question I was asking hadn't been posed before. I may have done a lot of my own research, but between that and the insight from members here, I figured out what worked for me, and for that I am grateful to you guys.

I'm sure I'll make a few more changes/improvements to Buford along the way, but it's been one heck of a ride so far.


I-W: I believe I got that collapsible steering shaft from Flaming River. I liked the beefy look, and the added safety. If I have one complaint about it, when you're in tight quarters turning stop to stop (like at car shows), you can hear the spring on the shaft wind up and click a bit. At first I thought something was rubbing, but it just seems to be the shaft. Sorry I can't remember how much it was, but I'm pretty sure you can find that answer from the folks at Flaming River. I remembered their products when I was trying to build a hot rod Lincoln some years ago, as they had a lot of products for the fox platform Mustangs (and T-birds, Cougars, Capris, Fairmonts, Zephyrs, and Lincoln Mark VII's..........since they were all essentially the same car). Anyway, they're the folks you'll want to talk to.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

Well, while I know I said it was a possibility, I found it quite the surprise when I picked up the issue of American Truck this week, and found that Buford was in there. It's only a one page mention, but that's ok with me.....I just think it's kinda cool that it was in there.

Should anyone be curious, it's on page 60 of American Truck magazine that came out on January 14th. I grabbed a couple copies so I could keep one for posterity, and send the others to some friends of mine. I figured I'd mention it here since I brought it up previously. Just remember that if you look, just ignore that ugly sucker standing in front of the truck......

 

Congratulations, I will definitely look for that magazine.
Having your truck in a magazine, no matter how small is a major accomplishment.
And well deserved with as much time you have put into it.

 

Holy Moly...that truck is sweet.....nice job!!!! Seeing that truck sitting somewhere would be a lock them brakes up because I gotta go back and take a look, occasion.

 

The truck is awesome, you did a great job with it. I saw a commercial for "lmctrucklife.com" on TV and went to the site to check it out and was scrolling through the stories and Buford is on there too (not sure if it's the same article as the magazine or not):

http://www.lmctrucklife.com/trucklife
^If you click the link, it'll bring you to the page and just scroll down and click on the right article

 

That is really cool! Great job on Buford and congrats on the magazine appearance. I'll keep an eye out for it when I'm around a book store.

 

Thanks to all you guys!...........I still think it's kinda weird to see Buford in the magazine, but it's nice to be mentioned like that. Also, 51fordf5, I went to the website, and the writing is the same, but the pictures are slightly different. I do like how they used my engine compartment as the banner at the top of the screen. I just wish they would have been more clear about having us write the back story about the truck and the project, as all I did was basically list off a quick parts list of the build. Oh well.

Anyway, thanks again to you guys.......maybe Buford will pop up again somewhere else, and if he does, I'll let ya know. The lady at LMC did say that she was going to talk to the publishers for a few different truck magazines, and wanted to know if it was ok if she shared Buford with them too. I said that was fine with me, so you never know what could happen. Regardless, it's a good magazine, with some good stories......and some really nice trucks in it. We dentside guys were well represented in this issue, as I think there were at least three different dentsides of various configurations. I think there was one standard cab, one flareside, and my beastie.....so we had a few bases covered. 'later!

 

Looking to get a picture of the door weather strip placement. I am unsure of placement. Not the window that and the cab are all I can seem to find. I am a mom trying to make my daughters 1978 Ford F150 a bit quitter in the cab and I want to do it right. I replaced the cab weather-strip after watching some utube videos and reading online but the door other than the window I can't find weather-strip placement location. Please let me know if you have any pics or wisdom.

 

Well, I figured I should probably resurrect this thread a bit, since I made a few new modifications to Buford in the time since I've been here.....

Last year, I went down to California for the Kool April Nites show, and I managed to forget rule #1 when it comes to parking a carbureted truck at sea level........turn the engine off while still in gear so it won't diesel or backfire! Well, I turned Buford off, and sure enough, sputter sputter BOOM!!! Needless to say, my carburetor didn't quite function the way it should anymore, as it ended up crapping out on the way back home to Washington. I ended up having to have Buford shipped home, as I couldn't get the parts I needed where I was stuck. Well, once I got Buford home, I purchased all of the rebuild parts necessary for the carb, and after having rebuilt that Demon carb three times, I STILL couldn't get the engine to run worth diddly.

I spent day after day on the phone will Holley (as they own Demon), and after every step I took, their eventual answer was "Well, as much as we'd not think so normally, we actually think you managed to crack a metering block!" I asked them, "Aren't the metering blocks on the Demon billet aluminum", which they are, but they still think I managed to crack one somewhere. Well, I got tired of all the guesswork..........so, I sat in the garage staring at Buford, and after a while, stood up and said, "That's it, Buford, you're getting upgraded to fuel injection".

So, I spent weeks researching various throttle body injection systems, difficulty of installation, ease of programming, cleanliness of install, etc. Eventually, I chose to go with the FiTech 800 horsepower kit. I knew that FiTech did have a 600 horsepower kit, but I've learned enough about EFI to know that you should never run an injector over 80% of it's effective duty cycle, otherwise you get erratic spray, and poor performance. Since Buford already pushed out a little over 500 horsepower, I figured better safe than sorry, and went with the 800hp kit. Besides, it allows me to make other mods later if I choose to.

The installation of the EFI kit is actually really simple. You need to connect a water temp sensor, a tach signal line, switched power, constant power, ground, and the O2 sensor harness, and that's really about it. The computer is inside the throttle body, so you don't have to mount it anywhere. There is a line to send into the cab for the control unit, but that's about it. You then have to drill a hole in the exhaust for the wide band O2 sensor, but that was cake. I could even use my existing throttle linkage on the new throttle body, with the use of a few Holley adapters. I ran the fuel lines up the firewall and under the air cleaner for as clean an installation as I could manage, and it all came together remarkably well.

Once I chose the EFI kit, I then had to figure out fuel delivery........FiTech has what they call the Fuel Command Center, but in my research, there are some inherent difficulties with that setup that I didn't want to deal with. I could have also gone with a simple inline pump, but I didn't like that inline pumps tend to have a shorter lifespan than honest in-take pump setups. So, while I knew it to be more expensive (like anything on Buford has been dirt cheap), I opted to go with the Aeromotive Phantom 340 fuel system. Before I could use it, though, I had to figure out what I was going to do about my dual tanks.

I liked that Buford had dual tanks, but for an EFI fuel system, it suggested more difficulty and cost than necessary. For proper EFI supply and return on both tanks, I'd have to buy redundant systems, and route them through a marine grade crossover valve, and that all just sounded ridiculous to me. So, I went and got a double capacity rear tank, and got rid of my saddle tank. Buford would still have a 38 gallon capacity, but it would be in a central location. I then had the tank professionally cleaned, then took it to be powdercoated (as it has to be all spiffy.....I truly need psychological help). Once that was done, I installed the pump assembly with the big yellow sponge baffle that's supplied by Aeromotive. The purpose behind this baffling, is that it sits in a sort of rubber bucket at the bottom of the tank, and the pump sits in the bottom of that bucket with the baffling surrounding it. The purpose behind this is that the baffling will catch any splashing fuel, and route it down to the pump so that it never suffers from a starvation event. If you notice, the extension piece of baffling I had to use was going to be a pain in the butt to be able to put down into the tank unless I could come up with some way to connect it to the bigger piece. So, I came up with the idea to use the zip ties to pierce each piece of baffling, and loosely connect them together so they served as one piece. I told the folks at Aeromotive about that fix, and they said they may include that in their instructions for the extension kit, and include some zip ties to do the same (every once in a while, I come up with a decent idea). Anyway, once the baffling is in the bucket, there are four holes at the bottom of the bucket so that the fuel level can equalize, but the pump remains submerged as long as possible.

Now, with getting the 38 gallon tank, there was the issue of extending the pump assembly. Aeromotive provides a pump extension kit for these circumstances, and you just have to measure the necessary spine, and cut accordingly. You then need to plumb the pump to the head assembly over the longer distance, and extend the wiring as well. This is all basic plumbing and wiring, but you get the idea.

One of the bigger issues was the adaptation of the fuel sending unit. Firstly, it was aimed directly to the center of the tank, which is where the pump went. So, I managed to bend the tubing for the sending unit on a 45 degree angle, away from the pump, and closer to the filler neck. I also measured and positioned the sending unit so that the float would reach the bottom of the new tank. The issue here is that the sending unit will read "Full" from 38 to about 19 gallons left in the tank......from there, it will read as normal. So, when you start to see the fuel gauge needle move, you have half a tank left. Granted, it's still 19 gallons, but the big issue is that I wanted the gauge to read "Empty" when it was actually empty. That's waaaaay more important than full, in my mind.

Once I got the pump put in, I reinstalled the tank with the newly powdercoated extension hardware that can accommodate the larger tank, and got ready to put it back into the truck. Before I did that, though, I plumbed the head unit with enough hose so that I could connect the hoses to AN unions once the tank was installed. I've got the supply line leading to a 10 micron filter, and the return is on a simple union. The vent line I sent directly to the original equipment charcoal canisters on the passenger framerail, as they could still serve a purpose.

Once I got everything plumbed, wired, and got the linkage set up, I then did the baseline programming for the EFI setup. It's a very straight forward process, and once I got that done, I filled Buford with fuel, said a prayer, and got ready to turn the key. I turned the key to the "on" position, and waited for the fuel pump to prime the injectors, and I waited until I heard the telltale "click". I then went to start Buford, and he fired right up. The computer has to learn your driving style, and fine tune for your programming, but it seems to be smoothing out the more I drive it.

So, anyway, now I no longer need to worry about driving at sea level and blowing up a carburetor. Buford just fires right up, and drives nice and easy. Yes, it was somewhat expensive to do all of it this way, but for the money and the quality of each system, I don't think I'd have gotten a better deal with any other configuration. Anyway, here's a couple pics I took along the way....enjoy!

 

Looks great! I've been considering EFI for about a year now but have been unable to make a solid plan for the fuel pump. I intend to do something similar to what you have.

How deep is your fuel tank? Mine is too deep for any kit I have found and would require fabricating a bracket to extend the pickup.

Anyway, awesome truck! Keep us updated on how its working out.

 

Nope, I'm not dead! Have just been lurking around, and adjusting to retired life. I'm still waiting for the market to regain some semblance of sanity so I can buy a house next year, but until then, I've come up with a workaround. I've converted one of my storage units into a garage, so I can work on the truck. I've put Buford back into 'build mode', as I have a number of modifications to make before next spring. The first issue, was to pull the entire front axle assembly, and I took it to a shop here to have it completely gone through (new ball joints, new U-joints, new gears, etc.), while they tackle a failed plug weld on one of the axle tubes. No, it won't be cheap, but I've kind overdone it everywhere else on the truck, so the front axle assembly was due. While that's been out, I also had concerns that maybe my pinion angle was off as I had a vibration translating through the gas pedal, which drove me nuts. I went to a driveline specialist here, and he looked at my calculations on the driveline u-joint operating angles, and said I was fine. He said it was most likely the driveline itself, which I questioned, as I had the one-piece driveline custom made by a shop here. He asked which shop, and after I told him, he said, "Get your driveline to me.......I've had to fix a number of their drivelines". So, I went to the storage unit, and pulled Buford's driveline, which I've had balanced twice, and took it to him..........He called me later the same day, and said, "It's your driveline". I asked how he could tell, and he responded, "The damn thing isn't even straight!.......They used slightly warped tubing, and welded the caps on crooked!" He recommended that I take that driveline, and go become a proctologist with the guys that built it, but it's been a while......(and i don't want a criminal record). I asked, "Ok, so we're talking about a new driveline......should we stay with steel? Or based on the 68 inches of length, should we go aluminum?" He thought about it a second, and said that he could do one in steel, and it would work, but the 68" length could pose issues with regard to potential vibration and wear on joints. So, I told him to just go ahead and go with the aluminum line. He agreed that it has lower rotating mass, can handle WAY more horsepower than I put out, and I'll have no issues with vibration.....it's just a bit spendy. I told him that everything on Buford was spendy, so this was familiar territory.

So, I'm still waiting on its completion, but Buford is going to be getting an aluminum driveline, and the entire front axle assembly should be pretty much brand spankin' new. While I have the axle out, I figured I may change the oil pan and tranny pan gaskets, as they're easier to get to right now, but i'll evaluate whether that is needed or not. A little later down the road, I'll be installing a different fuel injection setup (Holley), as I've acquired the new Dakota Digital gauges for the dash. I also have to tear out the fuel tank, as I'm going to put a new floatless sending unit in that, which is compatible with the new gauges.

As such, I'll basically be tearing Buford's wiring harnesses apart this winter, so that I can incorporate the new doo-dads. Aaaaaaand, since I'm doing that, I have a new, weird modification that I'm trying to design...........but that's a surprise for later, once I've gotten a number of things figured out.

I've also had to remove Buford's tires, and get new ones, as while the tires only had 5000 miles on them, they were 15 years old. I couldn't have my truck rolling around on geriatric tires, so I sold the old set cheap, and got a new set of the same Toyo M/T's. I also had the wheels professionally polished while I had the rubber off, so they'd be snazzy when I put them back on. For now, Buford is sitting on six jack stands, waiting for me to get to work.

So, I'm sorry I haven't been around a lot, but since Buford has been in storage for the last five years, I've not had much to blab about here. That should be changing a bit as i've now purchased everything to make all my upgrades. I managed to sell one of my cars this summer, so it gave me the capital to be able to buy all the new toys for Buford. Hopefully, over this winter, I'll be able to show you guys what I'm doing, and have it done by spring. That's about it for now!