I gave the 460 on my 77 F250 Supercab a minor tune-up. Replaced plugs, plug wires, rotor, rotor cap, fuel filter, oil/oil-filter. Well, it ran like hell afterward. I had gapped the plugs just shy of .035. I had also broke two plugs trying to tighten them. Which I thought was strange, I never broke plugs before when installing them. I read these were ford conical shaped seats and no crush washer. Supposedly they break easier if your wrench gets off center...whatever. Anyway I suspected that the gap was wrong, so I pulled all the plugs, jumped on here and saw that .044 to .046 was recommended. I went with .045. I also noticed that one of the new plugs I had installed, the ceramic part could wiggle relative to the metal threaded part, so I replaced the wiggly one, and re-gapped them all to .045 and now she runs pretty good. Better then any other time since I've owned the truck (almost a year now). What are people running, octane-wise for the 460 trucks? I'm putting regular unleaded, seems OK. I don't hear any pinging. If I ran super-unleaded, could I advance the timing a little? Any thoughts on this? ~d


Oh yea, I forgot to mention that she was marking her territory all over the place last week ...I was going through half a bottle of powersteering fluid every day. So I broke down and went to Napa and got all the lines and a powersteering pump. Nice guy at the counter recommended replacing the high pressure line first, because most of the time that's where it leaks. That's what I did, and that's what it was. The truck extracted it's measure of sweat and blood from my body, but I got it done. Took the pump and the other line back to Napa for refund.

 

87 octane.

 

What brand of spark plugs are they?

 

Spark plugs are Autolite 25

 

I quit using Autolites after I got a couple of them without threads on them...

Anyone know of an equivalent for an Autolite 26?

 

Autolites use to be a great plug, i've always ran Autolite 45's in my FE motors, the new Autolites from China are junk, the quality went to crap, compare an old Autolite stamped "made in usa" to a new Autolite made in China (the plug is left blank only the box is marked made in china, sneeky huh).

 

As far as pinging and timing, what I've done before is advance the timing little by little until it starts pinging, then back it off a little. Just take your distributor hold-down wrench with you on a drive, and make a series of pull-overs until you get it right.

Heh... primative, but effective!

 

Figures...sending them overseas. That's why I got some without threads.