ckuske

Yep, agreed! It was just a surprise to see it completely missing! The PO told me several things when I bought it back: A/C didn't work... (worked when I sold it) Cruise Control didn't work... (worked when I sold it) I think he got amnesia about all the things that broke while he had it, or tried to fix...

So I have made some progress (which is good!) I went to swap out the amplifier in the cab - and while under there, noticed there is nothing to actuate the vacuum dump valve! I think it may be called a "brake pedal adapter" but can't find much yet in the parts catalog (I still have a hard time finding stuff there). It looks like something was mounted to the pedal at one time but was broken off????

I like the idea of "Gary’s Bullnose Truck Enthusiasts Forum" personally. It keeps a nice reference to the current forum.

Thank you Gary! I'm looking forward to having some goodies when I come home from this work trip, although my wife and/or kids will ask "What truck parts did you order now?"

If it appears on my door step, I won’t turn it down Truly though, I sincerely appreciate the offer.

Thanks Gary, I did see that on the page and have the E0TZ and E9TZ ids in as eBay saved searches I always like to just ask, as I do t always trust the MPC 100%, and the community is here to ask about gotchas! Thank you for the offer! I’m away for work for a week, so let me search around a little bit and I’ll let you know.

I'm digging a little deeper, and I'm looking at the servo. It looks pretty beat up - the back is covered with surface rust, there is paint overspray all over it, etc. Does anyone have any idea on interchangeability with other years of servos? I see some on eBay and rebuilt ones on RockAuto that don't look too bad, but none that are an exact match. I've read that if I transplant the cable from the old unit to the new, the rest should work. Any thoughts here? Thanks!

Thank you for the offer, Gary!

I've been chugging along running tests. Most tests are passing, but in the processing of checking various pins, two of the retaining pins in one of the connectors (C717) to the amplifier broke off. I found one to try and glue back in place, but I think the other was already gone. I'm trying to find a replacement connector online, but I'm not finding much so far. Help? I looked in the Motorcraft catalog and other sites, and I don't see a match. There are no marks on the connector itself, either. EDIT: I found a number on the connector: D5AB-14489. Googling that number comes up with other shape connectors, though...

Hi Paul, The simple answer is that the forum software currently being used has been abandoned by the original author. There are features that plain don't work, and we have no recourse to have them fixed. No updates are being made to the forum software or the platform it runs on, and he can turn off our forum at will. He is letting it stay running because he doesn't care enough to turn it off (yet). That is a precarious position to be in, we need to ensure we are on a platform where we at least have some measure of assurance that our forum can't disappear on a whim.

We could drop the "s" and make it Bullnose Truck Club. I'm sure I could "buy" that URL and release the one with the "s". So if Bullnose Trucks Club is the winner we can check to see what people want to do. I think there are ways around that, although Chris/ckuske is probably the better one to answer it so I'll tag him. But first, if we keep the URLs of garysgaragemahal.com and bullnosebible.com we can re-direct them to whatever the "new" URL is. So all of their saved links would work. And a search for "bullnosebible" turns us up. But I don't know what we need to do to ensure that continues, which is something I'm sure Chris can tell us - and why I've asked him to be our Technical Advisor. We can do DNS redirection at a minimum - meaning when people tried to go to garysgaragemahal.com, we would redirect their browser to go to a different domain name. In this redirect mode, links being clicked from a search engine or third-party site wouldn't work - I think they would be redirected back to our sites home page, but I'm not positive. Even better would be the ability to redirect the browser based on a "HTTP redirect", which would mean we could keep existing links working. This may not be supported by Weebly - Gary, we would have to look in the Weebly settings. My hunch is no. Regarding showing up in searches - in the new site, we can add SEO phrases that refer to garysgaragemahal, bullnosebible, etc so when people search for that, the new site shows up in Google, Bing, etc.

I got through the transfer of the buttons from one horn pad to the other. Just removing the plastic nuts with some needle-nose pliers was all that was required (and being gentle to not crack the plastic!)

Ok, I got the new bearing in. It popped out pretty easily which was kind of surprising, but told me it was probably time to be replaced. I put the new one in, and the play is definitely reduced (but not zero). I then did the same test where I pressed the Off button and measured resistance. It was still in the kilo-ohms range, so no dice there. I then remembered that I should always listen to Mr. Occam first. This horn pad isn't the original, all the Rosewood came off the original so I swapped it out several years ago. So, I grabbed the original horn pad, did the same test, and the resistance came up to 1.08 ohms. I think this is probably close enough to the spec. I also re-ran the test of the steering column ground. I put the positive lead on the upper flange of the column, and the negative lead on a dash mount point. Basically zero ohms, which makes me think the steering column ground is good (and it is also what led me to not trust the switch) So, I will do the rest of the tests with this horn pad. I'd like to swap the switches from the "ugly" hornpad to the nice one. Any suggestions there? There look to be some plastic nuts that might hold the thing together, but I see lots of areas that look like the plastic was "welded" together with targeted heat. If anyone has experience with this, I'd love to hear it as I don't want to damage things.

Thanks Gary, that's exactly the kind of tip that makes this forum awesome. I'll post updates tomorrow or Sunday, and then dig back into the grounding!

I got the bearing this afternoon during my lunch hour from NPD. I'm waiting on snap ring pliers to arrive tomorrow so I can get things done the right way. I'm not sure how to proceed with actually removing the existing bearing, I guess I just try to pry it out???

Here are some pictures of the column after the flange has been taken off. You can see the gap in the bearing, so I'll pick that up tomorrow and hope that removes the play in the steering wheel. Anything else I should look at while at this level? Thinking of it, my shifter has always had play in it. Both in pulling the lever back to shift gear, and also in Park, you can jiggle the shifter up and down, and you will see the flange move from side to side. What would be a likely cause of that? After looking at the illustrations, maybe the main issue is on the side of the firewall where the transmission is hooked up to the selector on the steering column. I punched the pin out of the lever and removed it, but I can't figure out the next step to remove that flange where the shift lever gets inserted. Anyway, here are some pictures of the top portion on the column.

Gotcha, thanks. Looking at the illustration, there is a "top" and and "upper" in the tilt columns. I didn't know for many years (because I didn't care yet) but NPD's California location is in town about 7 minutes from me. They have both bearings there in stock, so its a good excuse to go there tomorrow. :) They don't stock F-150 parts really, but they do stock Mustang parts and the overlap is sometimes useful.

Hi Gary, That's a good idea, and an even better connection to have! I don't have any direct personal experience, but my brother-in-law has a 501©(3) for his high school basketball team. It didn't seem too difficult to set up.

Am I confusing lower vs upper? I would assume the bearing showing in my video with the steering shaft is the "upper" and I think the illustration supports that. It looks metal to me, and this link for a replacement looks correct. I guess what I am asking so far for this portion of the adventure is: Is the play of the steering shaft in the video acceptable? Should I replace it while I have the column apart again?

Thanks Gary. I'm feeling better today so I started measuring resistance again. Same results as yesterday, actually it was a little worse. I decided to move the turn directional switch out of the way, and take a look at the bearing. I posted a video here I'm guessing I should replace the upper bearing, right? I'm not sure if its related or not, but the wheel has some "jiggle" in it, perhaps the continuity is disrupted. I need to take the whole upper flange off to replace the bearing, right?

For polling, I think a Google Forms may be a way to go? I know they can be made anonymous. I thought if you didn't reach your goal in GoFundMe, you could give the money back easily, but I think I'm wrong after looking at their site. Maybe Kickstarter is another way to go there.

Without getting into analysis paralysis, I think GoFundMe is a good way to go. I'd say set up one fundraiser for the migration, and then each year, set up a 2024 Site Costs fund, next year a 2025 Site Costs fund, etc...

One more note, this blurb from Dennis Carpenter mentions a speed control brush assembly needing to be re-added/connected. I think the part number contains 9C899, but for the life of me I can't find an example of it that makes any sense. Do I have a missing link (no pun intended)?

That is worth a definite shot Vivek, thanks for that!

Thanks Gary! I'm reading up and am gathering things to try. I'm going to focus on just getting the ohm readings to come out correctly. I suppose I could even try things just on the wheel itself, and make sure the switches have the right resistance values out to the hub of the steering wheel? I also stumbled on this post from Ron - is this a real thing? (I'm guessing so!) If so, I'm missing a brush according to his picture.. (see my photo above) If I need it, any ideas where I can get one???