Gary Lewis

If I remember correctly, the 300's perches sit on top of the engine crossmember, and all the gas V8 perches bolt to the back of the crossmember. You can see some measurements and pics here: Documentation/Exterior/Frames/Engine Perches.

Surely there's an app for that?

Adding to what the others said, the vacuum trees are shown on a new page, just for you: Documentation/Underhood/Vacuum Systems/Vacuum Fittings. Looks like there are 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6-way fittings. So you might find one for the specific engine with the # of fittings you want. Seems they pretty much all have the same thread size, but what isn't always said are the size of the hose barbs. So you could go to the salvage and look as well.

Interesting. How do you cap the ends? Does that slow the drying? And how do you measure the moisture content?

What I'll do today is tighten the lower shock bolt w/o having the upper part of the shock in the tower. That'll show where the shock wants to go w/o being influenced by the tower. But that will show where the shock wants to go with no load on the suspension. Does the axle rotate any as weight is put on? Or does it just go up and down?

Darin - I'm sorry, but I don't have that bracket. As I think about it, I believe it got used in the serpentine setup for Dad's truck. Sorry.

Looks good. How are you buffing it and what are you using for polish?

So you don't think you are getting full throttle and it is keeping the choke from setting? I thought full throttle kicked the choke open with the unloader. What am I missing?

I thought I posted this, but apparently not. Anyway, I bolted the '95 shock tower up using two of the four bolts, as shown, and then held a framing square up against the eye on the lower plate. It lines up perfectly with the top of the tower, so there's no need to drill four holes, just use the existing ones and drill two more.Then I trial-fitted one of the shocks - perfect! So tomorrow I'll drill two more holes on each side and bolt the shock towers in and then mount the shocks.But wait, there's more! I mounted the panhard rod bracket on the engine crossmember. And with that, I'm done for the day.

Yep, that was the issue. I took 1/2" off the shock plate, and that gave me .2" clearance, as shown below. So I could have taken 3/8" off. Or even .25" and then beveled the bottom edge. But it looks like if the axle moves straight up into the bump stop there will now be only 2" of contact instead of 2 1/2". And if the DS wheel comes up and the PS doesn't then it'll hit fully. And now I'm tightening all of the fasteners using the torque specs in this extract from the '95 FSM:

The reason the shock plate hits the diff is fairly obvious here. The difference in total thickness of the spring packs is 1.782 - 1.213 = .569". That will do it. So I'll trim the shock plate and that'll fix it.....

You didn't hurt anything oiling it. It is supposed to move easily and smoothly. But you should be able to get the idle speed down to 600 - 650 RPM easily - after adjusting the idle air/fuel mix. But there may be some back and forth - adjust the mix, then the idle speed, then check the mix. The reason it may vary is that you might have the throttle opened into the transfer ports and that will change the mix.

And it was a good suggestion. But for some reason it doesn't seem to work for some of us. I can't get it to do anything with Dad's truck's VIN, either here or on their website. And others have had similar experiences. But it works for others. As for the comment about getting back to website and forum suggestions, I took that to mean the title of the posts, which had changed to something about my pics and was changed back.

It seems that your curve starts coming in just above 800 RPM, so any increase in idle speed gets more advance, which may increase the idle speed. And where do you have your vacuum advance connected - ported or manifold vacuum? But the increase in RPM with the air cleaner on suggests that your air/fuel ratio is lean. The air cleaner tends to enrichen the mix slightly. And your vacuum at idle should be closer to 20", which may also be due to a lean air/fuel mix.

I doubt the LS is the same length as a Ford engine, so unless you go to great pains to put the rear of the engine/transmission adapter at the same place the rear of the engine currently is you'll need shorter or longer driveshafts. But, it could be done.

Yes it is the same. But I don't have a closeup, although I can get one this afternoon and post it.

I think there's a way to clone the whole page and put it on our site if he doesn't want to migrate it to his new site. But of course we'd give him credit. I'll ask. And let's plan on doing both the belt and braces approach - add the info to the Documentation/Electrical/Ignition page and put a link to it in the Resources/Electrical folder on the forum.

I need to call Scott tomorrow anyway, so I'll ask him why he hasn't joined. He said he would. But his pages are just that, HTML/CSS pages, so don't lend themselves to embedding here. In other words, I think the best thing we can do for Scott is to link to them. As for the Crane document, that is a PDF so is easily downloaded and then embedded in either a post or a page. One approach for both would be to create an Ignition folder in the Resources folder/section of the forum. Another approach would be to add another tab to the Documentation/Electrical/Ignition page and capture both the Crane doc as well as links to Scott's pages. (Or, we could do both - create an Ignition entry in the Resources and have a link to a page in Documentation.) Thoughts?

Yes, I see the coil kit. I don't think there's enough difference between 85 and 92 frames to make the adaptation difficult. But there are things that I don't understand, such as "Bracket will not yield as much uptravel without a stock diff cover." Would I not be able to run an Ox locker w/o limiting travel? (That's a moot point as I'm not going that way." On the u-bolts, I've seen them closer to $40, but I know the SORD quality will be good and will fit. Plus they come with washers, which most don't. So, if not Moog for tie rods then what? Whom? Which? I'll be ordering soon. (The WHOLE steering/suspension and front driveline will be NEW!)

Haven't ordered them yet. Probably will this week. Guess I'll go with Dana Spicer then. Used Moog on Dad's truck, but doubt it'll ever wear them out. Hopefully BB will see some usage.

Yes that is what I was looking for. So if you took flat plate and welded a "ear" on maybe from channel for the link that may work. It looks like the ear is off set some from the base so you would need the sway bar & links in place before welding the ear to make sure it was set right. Now If I remember right there was something with the front bolt in cross member for the bar brackets also right? Dave ---- Yes, you might be able to do it out of channel. And yes, there's the other brackets as well. But that varies by whether the truck is 2wd or 4wd and if it has 2 or 4 shocks up front. It is all rather complex, but you can see the illustrations at: Documentation/Steering & Suspension/Sway Bars.

Interesting, Shaun. I didn't know they'd announced it, but knew they were working on it. When I called Erik this week to ask him some questions about Brandon/Bruno2 using Big Blue's castoff front suspension to convert his 90's 2wd to 4wd that's what he was working on. In some ways I'm sorry I'm going with the leaf springs. But to do the coils would require finding both front and rear suspensions and changing wheels, which seems like a lot more than what I'm doing. And this seems like a lot. But they are innovative! And helpful. I don't mind paying a bit more to get the u-bolts from them as I know they'll be good and it might, in a very small way, help them do more things for these trucks. Same reason I bought the shocks from them.

Good find on Page 1, Jim. Together that's a good resource. Where should we book it, Dano? Cory - Before you do your tuneup you might try running the engine at night w/o lights on. Sometimes a bad plug wire will show up. I've seen the engine compartment look like Las Vegas with all the sparks. But sometimes it takes spraying the wires with water to get the action started. And don't forget to adjust the idle air/fuel mix on the carb. Perhaps that's off. Last, see if you can dial in more initial advance w/o the engine kicking back when you start it or with pinging under load. More initial will help the bottom end power.

And now we have. Thanks.