Gary Lewis

Interesting. It says: Might be pretty handy if you had that intake.

83/87 F250/350 — 8 cyl. 6.9 diesel E5TZ 9J288-CB #E5TA-CB, E6TA-AB

This is interesting. I assumed that a choke heater is a choke heater. But this one, E3TZ 9848-D or CM-4104, is just for one group of 2150 carbs. Apparently they were tuned for the application.

While the advert says it is gray, the MPC says "paint to match", so it just isn't painted. IOW, it would probably not match the "Charcoal" used in '84 & '85.

I'm having Garys Garagemahal Ford Truck Show in the Skiatook, OK CoC parking lot on Sept 2nd. If you can't join maybe you can host one in your CoC parking lot?

Boom, you are on the map. I put you in the parking lot of the Church of Christ. I'm sure they won't mind.

Interesting. MPC says it is for "E-F-U100/350" and "Before 8/83". It is "Fawn-simulated leather". I'm sure it'll fit a pickup or Bronco, but have never seen one with a wheel other than black. However, the MPC goes on to say that a -B is "Medium blue-simulated leather" and is also for the E-F-U100/350.

Pretty!

I'll bet it goes right on up as we get close. Janey is headed out for a meeting at church, so I'll kinda watch this.

Welcome, Jerry! Glad you joined. Would you like to be on our map? You can see it at Bullnose Forum/Member's Map in the menu. Bringing trucks back after a 15 year rest is difficult, but it sounds like you are well on your way. Hope you'll start a thread in either the main section or Projects to let us follow your journey.

Noodled on this all night and now I'm wondering if hysteresis is the problem. The "bad" voltage is set to 12.0 and the "good" is set to 12.5. So what if that's too close together? I'm thinking this way 'cause there's something odd about the way the desired RPM stopped climbing at +144. I've found two parameters that cause me to think this might be the issue. Here they are, quoting what BE says about them and including their setpoints: Crossover voltage threshold above which fixed constant switchpoint is used: .30V Crossover voltage threshold below which the adaptive switchpoint is used: .25V Taking the two together the band is .55V. But with "good" at 12.5 and "bad" at 12.0 there's only .50V between. I don't know that these two parameters have anything to do with the issue I'm having, but it seems reasonable to set "good" to 13.0 and run another test. Thoughts? Help? Ideas?

100%. I know parts for the Ford 8.8 are relatively inexpensive...I have been pricing them lately, but the wild card is the labor. I'm sure a proper shop would charge 4 hours labor at least...maybe more. A crafty backyard mechanic would do it for less obviously. Yes, but we shouldn't equate cost with quality. In the case of the 9", it has gone several thousand miles with no problems at all. But as I was installing the axle shafts in the Dana 60 I discovered that they'd put the wrong bearing in one side and the shaft wouldn't go in. Then, as I was shining a light in there to make sure that was the problem, I found that they'd not cleaned the axle tube and there was a LOT of dirt in it waiting to come loose and get into the bearing and the differential. So the backyard guy did a better job than the "professional". A friend and I have a running joke about "professional mechanics". Years ago he had the first year Honda Gold Wing. At one point he took it into the shop and watched the Honda-trained mechanic check the valve lash and then the points with the same feeler gauge - without cleaning it in between.

I think it depends on where you are and who does the labor as it varies dramatically. I think I paid ~$900 to have the front rebuilt on Big Blue, but that was also installing the OX locker, but the cost of the locker itself isn't included in that price. And it is a Dana 60 so is bigger and the parts are more expensive and the work was done in a mechanic's shop. On the other hand, about 10 years ago I had a guy that was working out of his garage rebuild the 9" on Dad's truck and he charged $300 including parts.

The plug looks pretty good, including the threads. So I get from your post that #5 & #3 were loose? That would certainly give you problems. I'll bet snugging them up fixes it. If you have two fuel doors then the truck originally had two tanks and you should have the switch on the HVAC control panel and a valve on the frame under the driver. If so it should be fairly easy to add the 2nd tank later - assuming the wiring and fuel line is still there and the valve is good. But, as said, those valves are prone to failure and are expensive - if you can find one. However, if you get lucky that it all works then it would be a case of installing a new 19 gallon tank in the rear and hooking it up. Anyway, if you replace the tank you have with a clean one I think you'll enjoy not having things plug up. As for the exhaust, if you have holes in it you'll obviously need to replace that part and can do the biscuit at the same time. But start treating the bolts with something like PB Blaster now so you can get it apart when the time comes.

I'm glad you figured it out as I sure didn't know.

Good point. So I'm going to drive it a bit with the tune that's in it and will cycle the air compressor a few times to see what happens. In fact, we are planning some kind of trip on Tuesday to take the truck out, so maybe miles and starts will help it regain its memory. But I'm still quite confused as to why it only added 144 RPM to the base of 640. At 1 second we were supposed to get +96 RPM and at 2 seconds +200 RPM. But we only got +144 RPM and it stayed there. That's the amount of increase we should have gotten at 1.46 seconds. So I'm seeing two problems with this. First, that the desired idle RPM didn't continue to increase until the battery voltage got above the "good" threshold of 12.5V. Second, that once the battery voltage did exceed the good threshold that the desired RPM didn't come back to the base of 640 RPM. As said, there's something I really don't understand about that table.

Dave is right about pics. The forum puts them on exactly the way you take them. In other words, it isn't smart enough to read the metadata embedded in the file, like some places do, so if you hold the phone upside down when taking the pic it'll be upside down on the forum. As for recommendations on other things, you got mine in the New Members Start Here folder. But let's talk a bit more about the fuel system. To me the Bullnose dual tank fuel systems are a pain, and from what I've seen the valves to tie the two tanks together are expensive and hard to find. But if you have a bed with a single door then you are kind of stuck if you want more than 19 gallons. That's because that is the biggest midship tank that I think is available. So you might want to see how badly you really need more than 19 gallons. I don't think it will be cheap nor easy.

Bill - As you can see on the chart, the voltage goes south in a hurry when the air compressor comes on. (I was running the A/C with the blower on High as well.) So with the threshold set to 12.0V it took 10 seconds to hit 12.0 and another second for the desired idle to go up 96 R's and then another second to go up another 48 RPM. And for some reason it stopped going up at that point. So there's something wrong with my understanding of how that table works. But I think this approach will work if I can get my head around the table and get the RPM to come back down when the load goes away. So can you help me understand?

Well, I'm half way there - I got it to raise the idle RPM but not drop it back down when the voltage came back. But first, a "funny" story. Apparently when you pull the ECU fuse to wipe its memory you should put it back before trying to start the truck. But after replacing the fuse it started easily. And I'd made two changes to the tune. First, I set the Charging System Lowest Voltage To Indicate Bad to 12.0V, but left the voltage for Good at 12.5. Second, I changed the Low Voltage Idle Air Adder table as shown below. My thinking was that I'd get 96 RPM immediately when the voltage goes low, and then I'll get a nice smooth increase of another 400 RPM over the next 254 seconds. But that's not quite what happened so my thinking is wrong somewhere. In the chart below the battery voltage was rocking along at 13.9ish and when the desired idle RPM got down to 640 I turned the air compressor on. As you can see, the voltage went south in a hurry, and when it got down to 12.0V the desired idle RPM went to first 736, which is +96, and then to 784, which is +144. Not +200 at 2 seconds, but just another +48 over the initial +96. But it never came back down from 784. In fact, until I let it sit for a few minutes not running it didn't come back down on restart. So, what am I missing?

You are now on the map. And you figured out the pics, maybe by reading the page at Bullnose Forum/Forum FAQ's. Nice truck. It sure is fun to fix things on these trucks, and there are usually plenty of things to keep us happy.

With PTO not doing what I was looking for I may have found another option: Low Voltage Idle Adder. As shown below, both my tune and Bill's tune have no provision to raise the idle RPM if the battery voltage gets "low". But I could easily put a curve in there that would raise the idle. However, as yet I've not found out what voltage is considered "low". But there is a parameter called "Charging System Lowest Voltage to Indicate Bad" and one called "Charging System Lowest Voltage to Indicate Good". Both of our tunes have bad set to 11V and good to 12.5V. So I'm wondering if the Low Voltage Idle Air Adder kicks in at 11.0 and out at 12.5. Seems like I could test that pretty easily by writing a new table in that actually raises the desired idle RPM and then turning the air compressor on. Thoughts? Better ideas?

And here's the proof that at least I'm getting the ECU to recognize the PTO input. The red square wave is the BITMAP_KAM_1 output, and you can see that it goes high 4 times, which is how many times I hit the PTO input with my test light. And as you can see on the left, where the white vertical line is the value of that parameter is 32. From the previous post the PTO status is Bit 5. And when you turn the binary number of 00100000 into decimal it is 32. So none of the flags are set save for PTO since the value is zero at all other times. And you can see that the Desired RPM didn't change due to PTO, although it was still at 736 due to the ECT being only 104F.

I'm been doing research on the PTO function and it looks to me like what it does is to turn off monitoring of certain emissions things for a period of time. In the to-be-monitored parameter below, BITMAP_KAM_1, you can see that one of the bits is labeled "PTO (Power Take Off) is active (disable affected monitors)". I believe that bit gets set when the PTO input goes high, and I'm going to test that in a bit. And when that bit gets set the table below shows what happens. Each bit that is turned on in Power Take Off (PTO) Affected Monitors turns monitoring off for that function for the time shown in Power Take Off Hold Time. For instance, Bit 0 turns monitoring the cat off. So in both Bill's tune, which is Value 2, and mine (Value) we don't tell it to turn anything off as there are no bits set, but if there were the monitoring would be disabled for 120 seconds. I cannot find any other parameters that PTO affects, nor any value of idle RPM that should increase when PTO is turned on. But I've asked on Decipha's forum to see if I'm missing something. And now I'm going to test the theory set out above by data logging lots of things, inc BITMAP_KAM_1 while I play with the PTO input...

Chris - That's a bummer! Sorry! On the wiring, while I think you have it right, I'd put the radio and a speaker on the bench and see if maybe they'll work that way. That takes the truck wiring out of the equation.

It is a "bit" broken as it appears that it didn't work. But it usually, if not always, does. Tick the box that says "Send a copy to me" and you'll see you get one.