Gary Lewis

Too spendy for what it is.

Another week might be all it needs, especially if it sits out in the sun. And back-flushing is probably a good idea anyway as lots of stuff may be ready to break loose in there.

Dave - I think the idea of checking the other hood out is a good one. A hood is not where you want waves as you'll be looking at them all the time you are driving. Bill - The Falcons were very light in the rear. My best friend and I took one out for cruising one night and that 260 would light the tires easily. But I didn't know about the mounts being flipped in a 'Stang. As for the rear diff, I like the way the Truetrac does its work in silence. And, save for the incident in the rain, it hasn't caused any tire squalls or even chirps. But it is pretty obvious that it locks up in the rain. Should work fine on the trail, but can be a handful on the street.

Yes, if you read that thread that's the site that Jonathan sent me to. However, it doesn't fit with Ford's publications, so I believe Ford.

Yes, you should have a T18. As for the 1st gear ratio, don't believe everything you read on the internet. I prefer to believe factory documentation, and I have some on this site that says the CA-spec 460's with a T-19 got 5.11 first gears and the 49-state trucks got 6.32 first gears. Check out the whole of this thread: http://forum.garysgaragemahal.com/No-headaches-6-9-Diesel-td9311i20.html. Or, go through the Powertrains tab on the 1983 Ford Light Trucks Facts Book.

That would be a deal, but 33's are big on these trucks. That's the size I'm running on Big Blue and they look plenty big.

Yes, the "experts" are about to make me quit the truck pages on Facebook. Like the guy that asked about the broken check valve in the AIR system. I can't believe the range of answers he go, most of which were wrong, and some of which were intentionally wrong. But, like I did for that guy, I usually post a link to the correct information. And that has got to help people by getting them familiar with the site so they can find their own answers - assuming they will take the time to explore further.

As does the NP435.

If you have 12v at the clutch and it doesn't come in then the clutch must be bad. But I'd want to disconnect the truck from the clutch and jumper from the battery to the clutch to make sure. If you put battery voltage to the clutch directly and the clutch doesn't come in then you know the clutch is bad.

Bill - I forgot that some of those have an interchangeable bell housing. So he could have the 351W transmission but a 460 bell. However, looking at the towing spec's in the owner's manual Ford didn't seem to think that the specifics of the transmission, meaning 351W T18 or 460 T18, or the model of the truck, meaning F150, 250, or 350, made any difference. It appears the towing limit was determined by the engine and axle ratio. Apparently it was just a matter of torque rather than axle, frame, or spring capacity.

Thanks, Jonathan. To give you some numbers, as I type we have 224 "likes". But there are only 168 members, so it is obvious that people who are not members "liked" the forum and/or website. And that gets the word out to their friends, who may "like" it, and things multiply. You might wonder how effective this is. Here's a chart showing the number of people who have viewed the forum or website daily since the first day of the website in late 2015. As you can see, it is growing significantly, and quite a bit of that growth is due to exactly what Jonathan mentioned - posting links to the site on Facebook. In fact, that big spike toward the end is when the owner of a 20K+ member Facebook page shared a link to our site on his page. So, please both like the page and provide links to the site in order to help others.

I remember that truck. As for the group, some time the admins get distracted and miss things. Maybe try again? Or, does Facebook allow you to try again?

I think it was called old ford trucks... very large group. I think it was a junkyard in Texas that had it. I'm apparently not part of that group either.

What group is that?

Yes on the towing capacity. But, that is just a guess because I don't know your axle ratio. However, you can figure that out by decoding the certification label. But no on the transmission. A 351W has a different bolt pattern for the bell housing than does a 460, so they had to have changed out the transmission with the engine.

I missed the blue part. And, that fits because if you look at the Body Codes you'll see that it must be "CB", which is "blue cloth and vinyl".

That's a different story entirely. In that case, the hornet/wasp spray that shoots a jet of foam would be my choice. I used it the other day and it was pretty effective.

Tow ratings are at Specifications/Towing. And the typical gearing of 3.50 or 3.55 gives 7800 lbs for the 351 and 11,500 for the 460. But remember that we are talking Gross Combined Weight Rating, and you have to subtract the weight of the truck and its contents from that to get the trailer & its max load.

Me thinks you are.

Here there are lots of burgeoning bee keepers, and if you were to call one they'd happily come over and take the hive.

First, the Canadian trucks did have different paint codes, as seen on Exterior Paint Codes. And with a bit of editing that looks like a "BJ", but it can't be a "B" so must be an "8". And 8J is Copper, which is a 1983 colour. Does that help?

I use the None option to make it as big as possible. But if that doesn't work I think you might want to try the Big option. As you can see below, they are about 1/2 of what they could be.

That should be the right one since there's only one for that combo.

You are on the map. But please check it out to ensure I did it correctly: http://www.garysgaragemahal.com/members-map.html

Pics taken with modern cameras have "metadata" embedded in the file, and that gives the rotation of the camera when the pic was taken. But many forums don't have the smarts to decode that info, so pics frequently come out rotated incorrectly. You can fix that by opening the pic in some software, like Photoshop or somesuch, which does read the metadata. Then, if you save the pic it usually updates the orientation such that it'll display correctly in a forum. As for the width of the pic, edit the text that is created when you "Insert" it to include width = "100%". For instance, the text for one of my pics looks like nabble_img src="P-18855.jpg" border="0" width = "100%"/ without the "<" and ">" on the ends.