Gary Lewis

That is bitter sweet - lose a friend but gain a tool. 😢 But, that should be a good tool. I don’t know what all brands Scott sells, but it might include Lincoln. And, you may have the same helmet I have. It works for welding and solar eclipses. 😜

Wow! So much work! And goo work, to boot. 👍 I can’t account for the high stock temp gauge reading, since it does it with two different clusters and two different sending units. But, there’s supposed to be an 8 to 9 ohm resistance wire feeding the system, and without it I suspect everything would read high. You can see the resistance here: http://www.garysgaragemahal.com/fuel-tank-selector--gauges.html. You could check that by pulling the cluster and checking resistance from the power feed to the cluster to the battery’s positive post. And the way to fix it might be with a real voltage regulator to replace the ICVR. But, if the ICVR or resistor are the problem then all three gauges will be reading high.

I used these from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Y1CFAB2/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1. I don’t know if they’ll ship to you, but any similar bulb should do.

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Troy - Take it easy on the "old" comments. I'm 70. 😩 David - You act like I knew what I was doing. I thought we were learning together. 😉 Anyway, the change is dramatic. I did the same thing on Big Blue and now I can see the gauges. But, I might try white LED's next time as I'm curious what that will look like.

David - I do believe those are the ones I'm using. But, I've lost track of what I have and from whence it came.

If your system is like all I’ve seen, there is no line from the back of that little distribution block or manifold into the cab. As Chris said, it should be the line you have capped off. That system is shown here in a picture that you can click on to make bigger: Underhood/Vacuum Systems. What usually happens is the little line gets brittle and breaks where it goes into the cab. So you’ll have to get creative to fix it. How much of yours is left sticking out?

Welcome! Both to you and the truck. Big Blue is also an ‘85 XLT Lariat Explorer. Cool! And, glad you like the new digs. It feels kinda like home. 😀 So, tell us more about you and the truck. Where do you live? What engine and tranny does the truck have? Etc.

That is certainly the tray that came with Big Blue. But when you install it you’ll find you have to have two additional brackets - one that attaches to the radiator support and to which the tray bolts, and one that attaches to the fender and holds the coolant recovery reservoir.

I have been planning to powder coat the ones for Dad’s truck. However, not all powder finishes are created equal. The clear isn’t as durable as an opaque finish, and the textured finishes seem delicate as well. So I’m not sure what to do yet.

The factory A/C, called Integral A/C by Ford, is an easy one on these trucks. I’ve done one in an hour, but the last one was longer as someone chose to use RTV to keep coolant inside the ducting rather than replace the heater core. 🙈 The hard one is the HD heater unit. I’m not sure how the heater-only unit is to work on. Nor dealer air.

Bill - Can you provide some info about how all of this works and who Core Tuning is? By “how all of this works”, I mean what part does Core Tuning play? Once I find an ECM, what needs to happen in order for it to run my 400? And for the E4? What costs are there beyond the ECM, the EFI hardware, etc? And once it is all working, how is it tuned?

Jonathan - Go to Page 1696 of the Illustration file, which should be Page 1 of the Exterior Moulding Section. (Or go to Exterior/Name Plates) There you should see the XLT moulding, which is a Type 6. Then go two more pages and you’ll see the one below. There are only three Type 6 mouldings: One for the rear corner panel for the 1980 and ‘81 trucks, which I think includes the Broncos; one for the tailgate for the 1980 & ‘81 trucks; and one for the fenders of the 1982 - 86 trucks.

Bill - That’s a good description of the head of the puller Scott borrowed. It had the fingers that were jammed apart with a ball-end on the screw, which had a 5/8-16 female thread on the other end. Jim - That’s sorta what we made. We threaded a ~6” rod 5/8-16 on one end and welded two heavy washers on the other. Two for extra strength as the first weld didn’t hold. Scott really burned the welds in the second time. Then that piece of heavy 3” channel went on, and it probably came close to 5#, but since it was thin it took up a lot less front/rear room than a hammer head would - and we didn’t have much room with the tranny under there. And, it was successful. 👍 If we had this to do over again we would have taken the t-case off and then removed the tranny - with the bellhousing attached. The weight of the cast iron NP205 plus the cast iron NP435 plus the cast iron bellhousing is huge, and makes working with them tough. And with the t-case hung off to the left things tend to rotate. But had we removed the t-case we could then have lifted the tranny and probably gotten the crossmember out. Then the tranny & bellhousing would have been easy to remove. And getting the machined front of the tranny to go into the bellhousing took some gentle persuasion. 😜

Glad you understood. I THINK what I was trying to say is that everyone but Ford knows they are "sills". IOW, you can call them "scuff plates" but we know better. However, in the light of day that didn't come across - even to me. Anyway, it looks like you have things going well. Mix and match. 👍

I’m sorry, I certainly didn’t mean to offend you. It was actually my lame attempt at humor. Here you and I and the rest of the world are calling them a sill plate, but Ford calls them a scuff plate. However, now I see they called them both. And I’m not suggesting we change. In fact, I labeled my new page “Sill Plates”. Again, I didn’t mean to offend you. At all. I just thought it was funny.

When Scott got here with the clutch kit and puller I mention the grease and punch trick. He said that everyone he talked to said that was the way to do it. So we tried, and grease went everywhere. We think the difference is needle bearing vs bushing. We can both see that with a bushing there's no where for the grease to go, but with needle bearings it just squirts out between the bearings and the punch. So, we tried the puller, and the first thing we noticed was that there was no way to use the long slide hammer since we still have the tranny under the truck. So we fashioned a slide hammer out of a short piece of rod, threaded 5/8-16 on one end to match the puller, and with heavy washers welded to it as a stop on the other. Then we slide a piece of heavy 3" channel over it and put it in. Sure enough, with a few blows the guts of the bearing came out. So we put it in again on the shell and after a few more blows it came out as well. Here's what it looks like: Once that was out we thought we had it made as the new parts went in like clockwork. But, then the tranny/t-case combo fought us when we tried to put it back in. Ultimately we won, but not without a battle.

Just because people call them "sills" doesn't make them that. Officially they are "scuff plates", as shown on the page above, and this from the 1980 - 89 Ford/Mercury car master parts catalog.

Added another page today: Interior/Sill Plates. And I didn't find a gear ratio chart for the transmissions in the catalog. Perhaps someone can on-line?

That'll work, but my son can't drive a stick. Nor can he rebuild a carb. So, an E4OD and SEFI w/OBD-II seems a good approach.

Good progress! Finding the leak from the antenna was good detective work. As for the "sills", you need to start calling them by the right name! (That's what I call them as well. ) The catalog doesn't have "sills" nor "thresholds". But, it does have "scuff plates", and since I don't like answering a question several times I created a web page for this: Interior/Sill Plates. However, that page doesn't exactly answer the question of whether plastic was used as the catalog says "bright" and "black". But, a bit further down it has this for the R & B vehicles: That is the only mention of plastic in the catalog for scuff plates. And, since you can't really ensure that just because the catalog says or doesn't say anything it proves something, I'm not sure. Here's a snip from the Literature/1982 Pickup Brochure:

I've driven Dad's truck with the ZF in it from OK to DE and back, visiting Bill's son in WV along the way, and had the bed so full of furniture you couldn't get sand in it. It performed quite well and once in OD there was rarely a need to shift. But, I do agree that it is like driving a "big rig", which is why it is going in Big Blue and the E4 in Dad's, making BB better on the highway due to the ZF5's OD, and Dad's more sporty.

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Oops, you posted while I was typing. I think he has the tanks and driveshafts. Hmmmm.