Gary Lewis

William - That looks like C232 in the bottom of your first pic. Check that wire to see if it is yellow. All - I've done some slight tweaks on the web page, like adding links to Amazon for the relay and socket. However, now that I read about the socket I find that the load wires are 14 gauge. So I found this set of a relay and socket. But the pins on the relay aren't even tinned. Does anyone know of a good, high quality relay and socket? They don't have to be a pair.

I really don't know anything about them. But, I see them from time to time advertised on one of the FB pages I frequent, so will make sure I let you know the next time I see one.

I've added a tab to the Ignition page (Electrical/Ignition) called Ignition Simplification. Please take a look and let me know what needs changed, edited, deleted, etc. I tried to outline the advantages and disadvantages to the one-wire vs DS-II ignition. But, I did not include the "I want my Ford to be all Ford" discussion. That's because I'm trying to stay objective in this. However, I don't know that I did a good job of that, so need your input. Please! And, there probably needs to be something added about weather protection. Perhaps Bill's pic of the relay cover? Or is that something better? We don't have to solve all of the issues, but it would be nice to have a pretty decent how-to. Thoughts? Comments? Criticism? Upgrades?

Is this drawing "cleaner"?

And I expect that is the answer. But, didn't want to make any assumptions. So, if that's the case, is Bill advocating using the brown/pink wire or the white/light blue wire, or both? And, is he suggesting picking it up where the two were connected to the coil?

How's this? And, are my lines too thick? I'll try one size smaller......

I can go with a fuse. But, I'm not sure I follow on the other, so let me ask. You are suggesting "using the TFI system coil feed for the relay coil feed". But, by "relay coil feed" are you saying the power to the relay, meaning #30, or the trigger to the relay, meaning #85?

They look good, Angelo. But if it is as cold and rainy there as it is here I'd wait a while to wire them.

Ok guys, tell me if this drawing is better:

William - Could you do me, and I think you, a favor? Please confirm that you have C232, as shown below. This would be, as Bill and Steve pointed out, the easiest place for you to get power as it is on the driver's side of the truck so you don't have to run a wire all the way across. Here's the illustration from the EVTM showing the area just to the right of the brake master cylinder, with C232 circled. It will be a big yellow wire with a grayish green connector that probably isn't connected to anything. And here's Big Blue's C232. You can see that it is connected to the aux battery solenoid, exactly like the illustration above shows. But since you probably don't have an aux battery or the trailer wiring then that wire isn't used.

Jim - I agree that it is derated quite a bit in all the tables, but Ford's rating for #14 boggled my mind. The rating for #14 of 15 amps has always been my reference point, but to see it at 25 was strange. No wonder the headlights dim. I'll bet they've got #18 rated at 10+ amps. Next week some time I'm to get that book back scanned and I'll be creating a page for it in Specifications. Then we shall know. Bill - I believe you are right that Circuit 37 is there, and that it has a female 1/4" terminal. So that would be a good place to get the power for this. Notice that the fuselink is #14, assuming the truck has an ammeter, so it is effectively fused at something more than 25 amps. Do we think it still needs its own fuse coming off the end of #37?

William - I may have misunderstood, but the vacuum and tach issues are separate. You have a dark green/yellow wire, which you can see in the first of the two diagrams I posted, that goes to the tach. You'll connect that wire to the Tach terminal on the DUI dizzy. And, the dizzy will have a vacuum port on the front of it that you'll take to some source of either manifold or ported vacuum. But, I probably misunderstood. However, I'm with you on that power stud - I doubt yours has it. I have two Bullnose trucks, and have owned bunches of them. And of all those only one has the stud - Big Blue, which also has the trailering option and auxiliary battery. I believe that it takes one or the other of those, or the camper option, to get that stud. So, as Steve said, the fall-back is to go to the always-hot side of the solenoid - and then make sure you fuse it! DUI says it should be a #12 wire, so the question becomes how big of a fuse to use. I'd say a 20 amp fuse would be fine, although #12 is good for more than that. (Steve - I know that there are many different tables on that, but I just turned in a copy of Ford's Body Building book to scan and as I was looking to see which pages I wanted scanned I found a table which said that #14 is good for 25 amps. I wish I had the book now, but that must mean Ford thought #12 is good for 35 or 40 amps!)

David/1986F150Six - Yes, I remember that distributor. And it really helped Jonathan's truck when he installed it to replace his worn-out one. (Which is an interesting point as we cuss and discuss buying a new vs used distributor.) Bill/85lebaront2 - I understood what you were saying about the HEI being a power hog. It saturates that coil with lots of current, which is what gives it such a hot spark. (Remember when they first came out and a burned distributor cap or rotor was par for the course?) But I don't know of the "nice battery source on the driver's side, the insulated stud". I'm not familiar with that source, but it would certainly simplify things to have power closer to where the relay may need to be. Can you provide a pic or show it somehow? And I agree about the relay cover. I'd been saving that bit until last, until we get the wiring sorted out. But I'm not sure that a Bosch relay fits in/under that cover very well. So some research is needed to come up with a neat solution since the page I'm thinking about needs to cover all the issues.

Good idea. Here's a link to the Street/Strip Ford DUI distributor. May not be the right one, but it has several points: They say you "must" remove the ballast resistor in the wiring harness and run a 12 gauge wire to the "BATT" terminal They recommend manifold vacuum as "This vacuum advance will keep your plugs cleaner. If your car does not run good at manifold vacuum, then connect it to ported vacuum." They suggest gapping the plugs at .050" to .055" "now that you have enough firepower available" They recommend setting the initial timing to 12 degrees BTDC while idling below 600 RPM and with the vacuum hose pulled off the advance and plugged.

...or at least 93% of a red XLS Bronco. That's the first time I've seen a swing-out taillight. I think it was the '56 Chevy that had a swing-out taillight for access to the gas filler. Cool that someone added that to this Bronco. Yes, that Bronco has problems. But at least we know there were red versions of the XLS.

No prob. Almost 50 years ago I worked a rotating shift and I remember not recovering from graveyards well at all. As for the vacuum, it is just a matter of running a hose, available in bulk from the parts store, to a fitting that is surely already available on the engine. For instance, you probably have HVAC controls that use vacuum. And maybe speed control. These will have manifold vacuum to them, meaning it is on all the time, and it can be used for the vacuum advance. But I like to use ported vacuum for the vacuum advance, meaning that it comes on only when the throttle is above idle. And your carb will probably have a port for that on it. So it will be really simple to hook up vacuum to the distributor, one way or the other. Concerning the learning curve, you are on the steep part of the slope. Hang in there, it is all gonna make perfect sense, soon.

William - Glad you chimed in. And, you reminded me that I need to include the tach wire. Thanks. As for the power feed, Jim is right. The white/light blue wire is powered during Start. And while it is through that resistor, my math says the voltage drop across the resistor will be ~1v. (A typical Bosch relay pulls less than an amp through the coil and with E=IR, it'll be 1a x 1.1 ohm = ~1v.) And that is plenty of voltage to pull in that relay. And, Jim is also right. I'd sure want vacuum hooked to my distributor as the vacuum advance is there for fuel economy - and it makes a big difference. So I'd go back to DUI and tell them I want vacuum. But that's your call. Last, if I were to add the tach wire and the vacuum hose to the schematic, would that be what you'd need?

Ok, here's what I'm thinking about. This is a rough attempt, but I need your thoughts, please? What does someone like William need to see? The page would include the EEC wiring diagram, but w/o the red circle. Or, maybe with lots more red showing where the changes should be? And then it'll have something like this, although the power feed needs a fuse. But you get the idea - the EEC bits can be removed the the wiring disconnected at the connectors.

Steve - I've linked the e-brake TSB to your page. I re-read the BBB user agreement and don't feel good downloading things from their site and then posting it on ours.

Jim - Bill designed/built all of that, so I'm just returning it the way I got it. But I do understand the "secure it" mantra, and heed it closely. Each of the fasteners is wrapped w/shrink wrap, and then groups of them are bundled and wrapped with bubble wrap. And most of those are stuffed in the lower plenum tightly so they can't come out nor bounce around. Ditto the konvertible top h/w that is stuffed in the lower corner of the first pic - wrapped separately, then bundled, then stuffed where it can't come out. When I shipped Dad's engine to Tim he said I won the prize for packing. He figured it could have fallen off the truck and cart-wheeled w/o damage.

Angelo - Those are quirky. Can't say I have seen them before. As for what I did today, I got ready to work on Dad's truck - by boxing things up. (Yes, my Canadian and British friends, this was Boxing Day, about 2 weeks late.) Here's the first of several pics showing the engineering that someone put into the packaging of these parts - and it weren't me. The lower plenum is bolted down in 4 places using 1/4-20 hardware, including t-nuts on the bottom so as to not punch through the cardboard. And the thermostat housing is held with two 1/4" lag bolts. Pretty nifty. And then another layer goes on top, replete with valve covers - all held down by more 1/4-20 hardware. And, that board gets bolted to the 2x4 spacers with more lag bolts - which are hidden below the white tape. (Jim - Recognize the "hull saver tape"? It is also used under all of the washers.) That tape prevents the covers from hitting the lag bolts 'cause there's not any room there. In fact, the covers have to go on the board last or the heads of the bolts hit them. And, we are now all boxed up. Except, there's a lonesome upper plenum looking for a ride. So, to shut his whining up I wrapped and boxed him. (No, there's no Sag pump in there. I had to rob boxes as we are fresh out.) Bill - I noted the "different" address from which that box was shipped. Shoot me an email with the address to which you want it shipped back. And, don't throw any "packing" away as there's lotsa stuff hidden in it.

Bill - I agree that the white/light blue loses 12v in Start, but it is still fed from the ballast resistor, so should have plenty of power to pull in a Bosch relay. Right? Especially when the white/light blue is no longer powering the coil and/or ignition module. As for what you have "in" Darth on the dash, I do not know. But if I get everything back in this box I'm wrestling with, you'll have pretty parts under the hood soon.

That kind of thing is really why the website got started. We answered the same question over and over again on FTE, but didn't have a good way to document the answers so we could refer people to them instead of recreating the wheel. Chris tried to create a new way of doing documentation but couldn't get the powers-that-be to approve it. So I started the website as I'd rather answer the question once and improve the answer as we learn rather than to recreate it over and over again with different variations that confuse people. And now, 529 web pages later and growing rapidly, we have the Bullnose bible.

In general, I'd prefer you link to my pages rather than copy them (particularly any of my original text or images). I link people here, rather than copying your content. For things that are strictly from other publications (like official TSBs), it doesn't matter where you get the text or image since it's all identical. But I assume it will be easier & quicker for you to just get the PDFs from BBBInd. I'm trying to make this site self-contained because I've seen so many photos become no longer available recently. So if this site is available then all of the docs and pics will be. However, in your case that's probably not going to be an issue. But I'll see if I can get a good copy of that TSB. Otherwise I'll link to yours. Thanks.

Bill - You raised an interesting point, and one I think we need to capture on a page on the website not just here in the forum. And that is that the white/light blue wire has 12v in Run, regardless of which ignition system is in the truck, meaning EEC or DS-II. So, it is the right place to get power for things like the choke heater or the relay for a one-wire ignition. But before I start writing this up, including a relay diagram, let's make sure I understand what you are saying and vice versa. Below is the 1985 DS-II wiring diagram, with the W/LB wire, Ckt 20, circled in red. In this case that wire is ahead of C321, the other side of which a red wire that is going to power the DS-II module. (The 1986 diagram is essentially the same, but I've chosen the 1985 as it shows an option for the idiot light, which the '86 doesn't since they were eliminated for '86.) And below that there's the 1985 EEC wiring, again from the '85 EVTM, for the same reason. And again I've circled the white/light blue wire, although this time it is after C321 since the color carried through that connector. Anyway, it is going to the coil in the EEC system, and this was also true for the other engines with EEC. The bottom line of this is that I believe the white/light blue wire is the go-to source of 12v in Run, regardless of what ignition system is currently in a Bullnose truck. So it is good to run small-current things like the choke heater, or to pull in a relay to power large-current things like an HEI ignition. If we all agree with this then it would seem like a page to 'splain this and provide a wiring diagram for said relay and ignition would be helpful. THOUGHTS?