derek

That's a good point I hadn't considered when we've considered trying to find a tilt column. I definitely have to pull myself in by the wheel when entering the truck. Whew, scratch that from the list.

I'm kinda surprised to say it, but I stand in favor of keeping the introduce yourself first policy. The more I've thought about it, I believe that may be why this site seems (to me) to have higher quality posts and conversations than others I've visited. While I don't have any issue with people jumping in to ask a question and leave, my worry is more about people jumping in to ANSWER question and then leave. This site has been invaluable to us in working on our truck, and while some of that is the great documentation, it has been just as much finding people's past threads about their trucks, and the shared knowledge of you guys. I have come to realize that I trust the consensus we get here more than any other sites, because the users here are invested, and it's not overrun with bad answers. I do think having a minor hoop to jump through to show that you are serious before posting to the main forums is a good thing because it makes you stop and consider whether you actually want to be a part of the community or if you're just throwing your two cents in on some random forum.

Yeah after your post about that switch providing ground I realized it could be getting ground from a lot of places considering the condition of some of our wires... time to find it and trace it out I suppose

As for the blower switch, it doesn't have an off position. You have to move the function lever to Off to turn the blower off. The bottom position on the blower speed is just Low. Thanks, I will get one of those ordered. As far as the blower motor, it’s blowing even with the function lever in Off.

Yeah we replaced the resistor and cleaned out the blower motor leaves a while back and that's got the different speeds working, it just never shuts off, so I'm thinking the other switch is just broken "on" somehow, hopefully it will be more obvious once we pull that thing out.

This weekend we plan to start working on getting our A/C components installed. One thing we intend to do is the heater core shut off that is described in the documentation section. Ideally I would like to use the vacuum valve that Gary mentions there. Gary, were you ever able to confirm that Four Seasons 74612 is the correct valve? This is what the documentation page says: Additionally, if we are going to go that route, we would have to pull out the selector and while in there we want to address another issue we've noticed if possible: Our blower motor stays on even when the function selector is switched to off. I'm assuming that it's something with the switch there, the vacuum functions all seem to work correctly, but my understanding is that when the selector is in off it should also be cutting power to the blower motor. Has anyone else run into this issue? I searched a while back and found some people talking about that behavior, but haven't run across a solution yet. I'm hoping cleaning it up a little may do something. In the end I'm not hugely worried about the blower staying on all the time, as living in Louisiana there are very few times I'd be running the vehicle with it not running anyway, but it would still be nice to have working correctly.

I wonder if anyone has found any more recent solution for these. We’ve found ours to be completely shot and need to swap them out if we can find a suitable set of them. I don’t hate the idea of getting some from polybushings.com as mentioned earlier in this thread but I have no idea on the dimensions of these things.

So we've had a productive weekend. We got up Saturday morning and headed to the yard to see if we could find a delay valve to replace the one on the huge 460 air cleaner we found as the one it came with had a broken leg. Around here it's real rare to even find a carbureted engine anymore, so we didn't have much expectation, but we managed to find an 84 mercury grand marquis and had to fight with it a while to get the hood open, but once we did, we found an air cleaner much closer to the size our truck would have had. The snorkel was on the wrong side, but we knew we could potentially flip the hose to the other side so we went ahead and grabbed the air cleaner and were prepared to leave. We turn the corner and there it is - a brand new 82 F250 that had just shown up. This thing was clearly garaged for a large part of it's life. We look in the engine bay and it's got the same 400 we have, along with it's original air cleaner. Inside the truck, we find all of the trim is in much better shape than any we've come across in a yard, so we took the pieces we needed and headed home. This morning we reinstalled the front sway bar, and then cleaned up our new air cleaner and got it installed. I've understood that the factory air cleaners would function better than the old one we had sucking in hot air, but it was noticeably better running with it. It seems to run smoother and I swear it feels like it has more pick up now. First a test fit: Then, after a little cleaning:

ok I believe we got the hose for that one then too, gotta see where on my engine that goes to, but I believe Will is familiar with it, just wanted to make sure of what was over there. Thanks Jim!

oh okay yeah that would definitely be helpful. On the other side we have an extra hole next to the green thing, is it just blocked off too on yours?

Thanks Bill, I that diagram helps. Do you still have this air cleaner on your engine? If so, would it be possible for you to send a picture of what the holes in the sides are hooked to or filled with so I can better visualize what we are looking for?

That’s not my understanding from the documentation section unless I’m reading it incorrectly. It’s referring to the CWM as a cold weather module and then additionally it speaks of a bimetal sensor, which I understand to be the one in the bottom. From the “operation” tab in the air cleaner section of documentation it sounds like the CWM is in line with the bimetal sensor, and that it overrides it when ambient temp is within a certain range. I had assumed the green thing was the CWM but if that’s a delay valve then I’m guessing we don’t have a CWM and may need to find one of those, and that may go in one of the extra holes we have in the side of the air cleaner?

So am I correct in understanding that if it's hooked up to that cold weather modulator, it would prevent it from opening in certain temperatures? Would a 2 barrel 2150 carb benefit from the extra air under these circumstances?

When we got our truck, it had an aftermarket air cleaner, and after reading the forums and documentation here it seemed like this was not ideal so we've been on the lookout for one that would work for us. We found one that we thought would work so we picked it up. It's not the correct one for our truck, but it fits (barely - the back of it almost touches the cowl, but we were able to get it on there and tightened down with a little trouble). So now we want to figure out how to set it up as best we can for our engine - we are probably overthinking some things, but I have a few specific questions and would appreciate any other advice you guys can give as well. 1. On the backside of the air cleaner, there's a vacuum controlled door that appears that it would connect to what I believe is a cold weather modulator on the side (green). It appears to me that this would be pulling air from the engine compartment if the door was opened. What I am not understanding is when this door should open and the benefit that would provide. 2. It has the metal temperature sensor in the bottom which I understand controls when the door in the snorkel switches between heated and fresh air. Is there supposed to be another sensor in line with this before hooking into the vacuum? 3. What are the other holes on the sides of this air cleaner supposed to hook up to? On one hand, I believe if we sealed up the door on the back, capped the extra holes, and hooked up the vacuum from the metal temp sensor to the engine vacuum that would most match the original air cleaner setup on our truck. But if there is a benefit to using this door and the extra ports on the side, I'd like to understand that and use them for their intended purpose. Photos attached of our aftermarket air cleaner the truck came with and the ford one we found.

Cash app is another platform independent non-Paypal option that I've had good experiences with, but yeah Paypal and Venmo are fine with me, I just heard about people having trouble cashing out with PayPal, so that made me wary of them.