Gary Lewis

Look perfect, Bill! As for what I did for my truck today, I bought eight 10 mm stainless washers for re-attaching the shock mounts.

Sounds like, with some thought and consideration, you've come to the conclusion that what you have is what you need. What a wonderful position to be in!

I like Crystal better than what I'm using, but I've bought whatever I'm using locally and can't find Crystal locally. But I don't use the standard Simple Green in my heated cleaner as the smell will drive you bananas. So I think I have a lemon-smelling one, but don't remember.

It only takes slightly longer using warm/hot water, Dawn dish soap, PurplePower/SimpleGreen, & a stiff brush/scraper; than using solvent. https://supermotors.net/getfile/980253/thumbnail/35accomp.jpg I have a parts washer. It holds up to 80 gallons of Simple Green solution, heats it to 130 degrees, and circulates it through filters to get out the crud. That’s where parts that come into the shop start. Then they are rinsed in hot water, let dry, and then go to the blast cabinet. That works really well, but I usually have 30 gallons or so in the washer, and that takes quite a while to heat up. And I’m not that patient. So I do frequently use brake cleaner for small batches of parts. 😳

I vote for Magnaflow mufflers. They have a deeper sound than Flowmasters. When I got Rusty it had a Flowmaster, which someone said sounded flatulent. And it was so loud that I didn’t realize how much noise the tires were making. But a Magnaflow dropped the noise dramatically and also dropped the tone to a nice rumble. And then I discovered how noisy the tires were. 😳

Good score!

Thanks, Steve. I downloaded a copy and will have to figure out where to use that info. On the one hand I can link to it from the '85 Body Builder's page, but the electrical info needs to have a link to it from the Electrical section. Hmmm....

Wow! That's the kind of truck that Ray needs to buy and take back east.

The trailer light relay shows in an illustration here: http://www.garysgaragemahal.com/trailer-option1.html. Big Blue has the aux battery solenoid, which is the shiny unit in the pic below, as well as the fuel pump relay and the trailer lighting relay, shown to the right of the aux battery solenoid.

I felt the frustration earlier, and the joy last night. But that’s a good passage.

Thanks. I’ll check them out.

Yippee!!!! Glad you hung in there, and glad you finally solved it. Well done!

Yes, the 400 is hamstrung with the 2bbl carb. Even the 351HO got a 4bbl, so why not the 400? A 400 with the right hardware would have been a really strong engine. In fact, it still IS a really strong engine. And, as you said, it fits so much better in a Bullnose than a 460. Brandon and I have a friend, James, who has built many transmissions, transfer cases, and differentials for me. He has an '80 F350 w/a 400, and a couple of years ago he put an Edelbrock intake and 600 CFM 4bbl on as well as a straight-up timing set. He swore that it doubled the power on the engine. Who knows how much each part played in that, but apparently it really woke the engine up - even though it had stock exhaust.

I don't think it could possibly run "that" well if it was 180 degrees out. But, the fact that it runs much better (less poorly) with the vacuum disconnected is interesting. That suggests that timing is an issue. Have you checked to make sure the damper is correct? Bring #1 up on TDC and see that the mark aligns. Maybe you have the order correct but are way off on timing? But, that doesn't really work when we think about 1/2 of the cylinders running and 1/2 not. Anyway, something more to check. As for the EVTM, that's a laptop in a holder in your shop? That's cool!

🤪

It shows in the catalog, and on this page as well: Electrical/Lighting/For Or Driving Lights. But, the switch is a universal one that appears to screw to the bottom of the instrument panel.

One of the many reasons I like that article is that it supports my understanding of how and why the 351 cubic inch engines got alpha suffixes, meaning C, M, and W - because they had to differentiate between the engines. So in at least two of those they used the first initial of the main casting plant where the engines were made. And, it reinforces my position that since there was only one 400 cubic inch engine it never needed a suffix, and Ford never referred to it as a 400M. I'd written all that up on the 351M And 400 page almost two years ago, so was pleased to see that a source like Hot Rod agrees. Given that, and the recent find of the TSB on Power Valve Vacuum Hose, where Ford again uses the terminology of "351M" and "400", I've edited the page on 351M And 400 engines to include those references.

Tim Meyer posted on FB today that Hot Rod has recently published a new article on How To Build A 351 Cleveland. Thought y’all might like to see it. And note what it says about how the “W” and “C” came about. 😉

Rick - Good additions. Thanks. It’ll be a while, like a week, before I can spend any time updating the page, but I plan to add them.

That's a cool truck and camper.

Welcome! Glad you found us and happy to meet you. That's a good story about the truck. And it is coming along nicely. I'm sure you are proud of it. And the conversion to the later wiring will make things easier. Congrat's!!!

We are about 20 miles north of Tulsa. A trail cam is a good idea.

Cool! Jonathan's THE GUY!

How long will it take you to get the rest scanned? I appreciate that it's a lot of work (I'm doing some, too), but I think you said you had someone else scan the Body Builders' Layout Book, and some of those scans are pretty rough. So I hope you handle this yourself, even though I'm sure it'll take months. Actually, I think this takes priority over the TSB's since these pages can be of benefit to a lot of people and the TSB's are probably of more limited use. And, there are far, FAR fewer of these pages than TSB's. So, I'll put the TSB's aside and get these done first. The two tabs I did today probably took maybe at most an hour. Each page scans in separately and I have to put them together in one doc and then OCR it. But, that book also has car info as well as trucks up to around 2000, and I don't need to scan all of that. It looks to me like there are ~35 tabs, so I'm gonna say it'll take 16ish hours to get all of the info we want scanned and on the website. But I'm gonna be working on Dad's truck along the way, so instead of 2 days of 8 hours we are probably talking about it taking a week or two. However, I'm taking the next week off to play with my granddaughter. We will be with them from tomorrow until next Wednesday, so I'll not be working in the shop. However, I'll check on y'all from time to time. Oh, I did have someone else scan the body builders book as it is a large format that I can't scan. But these are 8 1/2 x 11 and I'll be able to handle them easily.

Yes, I think it is terrific, and one of the reasons is that it tells us in one place the answer to "what fits". In your example of the front rotors for Darth, you can get part of the answer from the Driveline/Front Hubs & Rotors page. And while you can tell that the hubs/rotors fit back to '76 because of the D6 code, you don't know how far forward it goes because my MPC only goes to '99. But this book takes all of the mystery out. It says "76-94", and gives you the latest part number to boot.