The FORD Lounge

The VIN is the only part that matters.

Janey recommended that I keep one bolt off Dad's truck that was original.  So I have a valve cover bolt.

Reminds me of the story about the family axe that was an heirloom.  The handle had been replaced dozens of times and the head had been replaced several times, but it had always been in their family.

Abe Lincoln's Axe

Neat idea on keeping a bolt  and the valve cover is a good place for it.

This is my grandpa's railing at my folk's cabin after the windstorm in 2019.  He made it probably before I was born.  And he passed away over 45 years ago.

The wood posts were getting pretty rickety about 20 years ago when the first tree fell on it.  I replaced all of the posts and straightened the one bent section of galvanized water pipe he used for the rail.  I also moved it from the left side of the steps to the right side.  But it was still my grandpa's railing!

After the storm last year I had to replace one of the replacement posts as well as two of the three main (original) sections of pipe and a couple of the original connecting fittings.  But it's still my grandpa's railing!

I like the way you are preserving your grandpa's railing.  

Speaking of Dad things, this is the porch swing he made in 1954, I was 5 at the time. My Mom wanted a porch swing for their new home, Dad built the swing from left over oak flooring used in the house. When he passed away in 86, my brother got it and stored it in the barn. When he passed in 2011, I got it had to replace a lot of the slats on the seat and back. But to my kids it’s still Granddad and Grandmothers swing. And I hope it always will be.

That's cool, David!  I hope my grands will have things like that of mine to remember me by.  Maybe a truck or two?  

I've got my dad's soldering iron and my great grandmothers paper weight.
Found memories but that's enough baggage for me.

I still have the section of the floor that I cut out of my brown truck for the transmission inspection plate. At some point I'd like to put my best picture of that truck on the plate and hang it on the wall so I can always remember the truck that gave me the confidence to fix my own vehicles.

I have a pair of needle-nose pliers that were my grandpa's.  They have a pretty solid patina to them, but they're the best needle-nose pliers I've ever seen, and that's not rose colored glasses talking.  They are STIFF, and the jaws close evenly the whole length.  They were probably the best quality thing that dirt-poor immigrant ever owned!

I also have a couple of cheap guns.  I never use them but they don't take up much room in the gun safe.

Otherwise it's just the few things he made at the cabin and the one tree he planted there.  People wanted to cut down that tree last year but I wouldn't let them.

After diagnosing a weak fuel pump last week, my daily driver Ranger decided to be a magician this week and make all of my clutch fluid disappear from the master cylinder on my way home from work. I'm paranoid about things like this, so I grabbed the bottle of brake fluid I keep in the toolbox and poured it in the reservoir and then limped her home. Since I just threw in an all new Luk clutch and slave setup back in January, I went ahead and put in a new master cylinder figuring that the cheap replacement I had in it finally let go. I think this is my third or fourth cheap master cylinder since I manual swapped the truck back in 2014. I think I'll buy a quality one for next time, although I'm not sure if there truly is a quality version.

Then, on the test drive, my oil pressure dummy gauge started flickering. Rangers (Probably all late 90's to early 00's Fords honestly) are well-known for this issue, and although I replaced the original switch probably seven years ago, I guess it was time for a new one. That's the roughest part about owning the same vehicle for ten years, you end up replacing the same parts multiple times.

salans7 wrote

 That's the roughest part about owning the same vehicle for ten years, you end up replacing the same parts multiple times.

Yes, but it’s your truck!

You keep peeling that onion, but I'll bet you really cry when you have to remove the same ring several times.  

Seriously though, you probably know how to replace that master pretty easily by now.

I have a Toyota that destroyed masters before I ponied up for an OEM part. I just put in a reinforcement plate on the firewall because their sheet metal bends and cracks over time.
Its my wifes daily and I told her it might feel different but she didnt notice.

Ive been looking at the 90s and 2000s Rangers for our next commuter (which means lots of dirt road driving). Im curious what youre experience with them has been. I know lots of people swear by them and they seem to fit the bill: compact pickup with a v6 option.

When I was down at my brothers North Carolina house I was amazed at how many Rangers were on the road.
While they may not be as omnipresent as Hilux pickups are globally, there must be a reason there are so many still running around.  

Shaun, at least you have a history and know it was done correctly in the past.
Some parts live a harder life than others and some parts were marginal even on the drafting table.
If you'd known you would still have this truck a decade later the price difference wouldn't have amounted to much.
And sometimes you just have to go with what you can get your hands on.
I look at the battery shelves after the first solid week of sub-freezing temps.
Slim pickings. But nobody is refusing a 'silver' that fits and works.

Gee, 10 years, I have had Darth for 26 years, it will be 27 in April.

Haha, ten years seems like forever at this point, but it amazes me how fast that time has gone. Most of my friends have been through over 5 trucks in that time. I do know this truck inside out, and I'm pretty sure I've personally turned 75% of the bolts on the truck. In fact, aside from the tire store for alignments and tires, the truck hasn't been in the shop since I bought it as I've done all of the work myself. I guess if it still runs and drives after all this time, I guess I'm good enough at diagnosing and replacing parts.

swampedout wrote

I have a Toyota that destroyed masters before I ponied up for an OEM part. I just put in a reinforcement plate on the firewall because their sheet metal bends and cracks over time.
Its my wifes daily and I told her it might feel different but she didnt notice.

Ive been looking at the 90s and 2000s Rangers for our next commuter (which means lots of dirt road driving). Im curious what youre experience with them has been. I know lots of people swear by them and they seem to fit the bill: compact pickup with a v6 option.

Rangers are great little trucks, I've had three now, two of which are still in my possession. They are very easy trucks to work on, and they remind me of aeronose Fords in that they're more technologically advanced than a bullnose, but also simple enough that you can still figure most things out yourself with simple tools. The auto transmissions have a life span of between 150k to 200k, so be weary of higher mileage trucks with automatics and unknown service history. The 4.0 SOHC engine faced timing tensioner issues from 2001-2005, but were fixed after that. The older OHV 4.0 engine is pretty solid. The 3.0 V6 is a very reliable engine, but it's gutless. Gearing is your best friend with a 3.0, but they are decent commuter engines around town. The only engine that gets solid fuel mileage in a Ranger is the four cylinder. That's really the Ranger's biggest downfall.

33 years now...
I guess you could say we're comfortable with each other, even though I push her sometimes.

I only hope to have at least one of my trucks as long as you guys. I would preferably like to have them all that long.

I find it fascinating when people are able to keep a vehicle that long, especially when most people seem to feel the need to change them up every few months.

I don't mean for this to get into a discussion about religion or politics, and if it seems like it's going to go that way I'm happy to have this post deleted or whatever seems right.  But I wanted to comment on the discussion about discussing religion and politics going on in the Big Blue's Transformation thread an I didn't want to continue to hijack that thread.

I personally have no problem with the policy to not discuss religion or politics here.  It might be interesting discussing those topics with some of the people here, but it also might be a mess.  And I have other venues where I can discuss those topics, so I don't need to discuss them here.

But I did want to mention a bulletin board I used to be on and what they did.  It was a board set up and run by a print magazine I subscribe to, Pointing Dog Journal (PDJ).  So obviously it was primarily about pointing dogs and bird hunting.  I say "was" because the magazine shut the bulletin board down about a year ago.  I don't know why they did, but activity on the board had really died away, to the point of probably less than 20 posts per week total.  So they may have just decided that it wasn't worth the effort.

People asked periodically why it had died down.  Some suspected that the added requirement that members of the board be current subscribers to the magazine.  That had been put in place partly to keep out phishers (there were a lot fewer posts from new members that were advertising male enhancement products after that).  But it definitely excluded a lot of the former members, so I'm sure it was a factor.

Others suggested that the drop in activity was from the overly conservative administration that kicked people out "too readily" (in some people's opinions anyway) for rousing rabble.

So maybe what they did didn't work.  But in a lot of ways it did.

Like this bulletin board, PDJ board had separate forums for different types of topics.  Unlike this board, the PDJ board didn't have a "root" forum.  You had to click into a sub-forum to see or create any threads.  In a way I think that was better, because it helped focus things better.  If you wanted to talk about training dogs, or field trialing, or hunting, or whatever, you went to the applicable forum.  There was a "general discussion" forum, but generally (groan!) people didn't post there if it fit into a different forum.

They did eventually create a "politics" forum (which I avoided) to keep political discussions out of the "general discussion" forum, but religion was still fair game under general discussion.  And there were quite a few religious threads.  People posting in them included "mainstream" Protestants, "evangelicals", Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Native American traditions, atheists and probably more that I'm not remembering now.  Surprisingly, none of the religious discussions got nasty.  People were very open with their beliefs, and frequently said that they disagreed with what someone else had said.  But somehow the disagreement never got disagreeable.  And it wasn't because everyone was always so pleasant!  There were some NASTY discussions about dog training (the only thing two dog trainers will agree on is that the third one is wrong!).  A lot of the evictions came out of those disagreements.  And the political discussions were bad enough that, as I mentioned, they got moved to a different sub-forum where people didn't have to see them if they didn't want to.


So anyway, I don't have any point here.  Like I said above, I'm fine keeping religion and politics off this board.