Gary Lewis

You use WireBarn calculator as well, thats what I been using to size the wires properly. For the headlights thy are 55w low beam 60w high beam. That is 110w low beam for two bulbs and 120w high beam for two bulbs. @ 12.8V battery voltage is 8.6A low beam and 9.38A highbeam. @ 13.8V battery voltage is 7.97A low beam and 8.69A highbeam At the highest amperage which is 9.38A if I run 16 AWG like I plan with 2% drop I can run 7ft of wire but that amperage is for both loads. If I split it up by load which is 7.97A at the highest @ 13.8V I can run 16 AWG at just over 8 1/2 ft length. For my driving lights they are a pair of 100w driving lights. @ 12.8V battery voltage is 15.63A @ 13.8V battery voltage is 14.49A For the total of 200w @ 14.49A I can run 16 AWG in 4 3/4 ft run. But at 7.25A which each bulb is drawing and will have its own dedicated power wire from the relay I can run 16 AWG at almost 9 1/2 feet. Now for the grounds, if I link them together like the factory did in many instances by splicing two grounds into one ground wire I used Wire Barn`s wire combination calculator. This gives you an effective gauge based off how many wires of a given gauge. So in this instance I have two 16 AWG ground wires from my driving lights, if I crimp them to the same terminal the effective gauge of these two 16 AWG wires is equal to a 13 AWG wire. So when I splice the two ground wires from the driving lights into one it will be two 16 AWG wires into a single 12 AWG wire which would be slightly bigger than I need. Now if I take the two 16 AWG headlight grounds and splice them into one 12 AWG ground as well I now have two 12 AWG wires, which has an effective gauge of 9 AWG. So seeing 12 AWG is already slightly bigger than required by 1 gauge size, I can splice the two 12 AWG wires into a single 10 AWG wire and it would perfectly balanced if I am thinking of this correctly. The total circuit at 13.8V would be 8.69A for the headlights on high beam and 14.49A with the driving lights on which they would be as they are linked to the high beam trigger. This is a total of 23.18A @ 13.8V in a 10 AWG size which the 10 AWG would be carrying the complete load back to ground I can run 10 AWG for almost 12 feet with a 2% drop. If I am thinking of it correctly then I can effectively splice all the ground wires together from 16 AWG to 12 AWG to finally 10 AWG which would then either go straight to the battery negative terminal or a terminal board bolted to the side of the fuse/relay box. I would prefer to do it this way to ensure my headlight circuits has the best power and ground leg of the circuits as possible for maximum brightness. If I was running LED bulbs then I probably wouldnt be going to these extra lengths. The one that will be interesting is the ground for the roll bar lights. The KC Daylighters come in either 50W or 100W bulbs. I was leaning towards the 100W bulbs like my KC Apollo driving lights. But in this case running four of them would be 400W worth of bulbs which even at 13.8V comes out to 29A of power draw. Considering the wire running back to the roll bar will be down the frame then up through the bed and up the roll bar I would guestimate from the relay to the bulbs I am looking at I say 16 feet of wire give or take. Given that they will be in pairs on a relay that would be 200w pairs at 14.49A. I could get away with 16 AWG wire in this case if it wasnt for the length At 200W pair @ 14.49A I am looking at needing a 10 AWG power and ground wire to get me 19ft of wire run. But I would be pairing the wires up with two power wires off the relay for each bulb so I am not powering two bulbs off one wire. That would still come out to 7.25A for a single 100W bulb @ 13.8V which means I can run a 12 AWG wire for almost 24 feet of length and this is not even taking into account the length of the ground wire which I really should be taking into account as it is part of the length of the circuit as well. But in the way of the auxiliary roll bar lights it would be two dedicated power wires and two dedicated grounds for the four lights. I wont even attempt to splice them into fewer wires as it would put me at a gauge of wire that wont fit the connectors. Many of these connectors I have been looking at has a cut off of 10 AWG in some instances. Yes, I use Wire Barn, for sure. The ability to tailor wire lengths is great. I like your plan on the headlight and driving light grounds. Take them all into one and ground it at the battery and your wire lengths will be short and you'll have the fewest connections. But on the roll bar, I'd take the ground to the frame below the bed. That will cut the run length in half.

I'm sorry, I responded to John but not to you. Is this truck 2wd or 4wd? If it is 2wd and you want to go 4wd then you are going to have a lot of work to do since the frames are different in the front. We have a couple of guys on here that have converted and it was a significant effort. If it is 4wd then you'll have a very poor ride as it will have TTB's and leaf springs. I am not a fan of that combo, so I converted Big Blue to solid axle and SuperDuty springs and went from 2" of articulation to almost 8" and a much improved ride. As for "converting to a one ton", if it is an HD F250 it basically is a one ton as the frames, springs, and axles in the rear are the same. What is the GVWR on the truck? If more than 8500 # then you are there.

Satin would be closer to factory. But either will look great.

Yes, you need a gasket there. Do you have A/C? If so there's a guy that makes those gaskets. As for the plug, I can take a pic of Dad's truck today and probably show you where the plug goes. But Dave already knows, so if I don't figure it out maybe he can take the pic? However, I'm thinking you have a plug in that hole, it is just that someone at the factory dropped an extra plug in.

Also nice.

Nice!

It looks really good! Well done!

Looking good!

No, the stator wire isn't used elsewhere - other than wrapping around to the internal regulator.

Glad you are getting things sorted. On the oil pressure switch, the 460's use them in the fuel pump circuit. It'll certainly work. But it might be easier to wire up the relay I mentioned that is pulled in by the stator of the alternator. Obviously it would have the same results as an oil pressure switch. On the connectors under the hood, the yellow wire is Ckt 37 to either the marker light or aux battery relay. If not used it hangs in the breeze. And another one that hangs in that area is to the underhood light, and that wire will be LG/Y.

Well, things aren't going to be very convoluted for long - I ran out of the stuff today! But I did make some progress in spite of it being a short day due to a doctor's checkup - I passed. I got the wires connected to both C321 and C325. And I got things organized a bit more. As shown below, what is left is to put a few more connectors on, and then I'll tackle the mess of wires just to the right from bottom center. Those go through the firewall to the ECU awa the horn pad and brake connections. One step at a time...

I thought of doing that but I know the sniper will have to go straight back to the battery for power and ground to help stop RFI issues. What I am thinking of doing is get some bare metal crimps without the insulator and then run the grounds together and daisy chain them via crimps. So have the two Apollo driving lights grounds come together and crimp into one ground. Then I can do the same for the headlights now instead of having four ground wires I have only two. I could also bring those two ground wires together and crimp them together and have one wire. But every time I do that I will have to enlarge the single wire to ensure there is no grounding issue. Its why I was thinking of running them back to the box. If I were to ground the headlights I would have to sit it atop the factory headlight ground as I am using that ground and power wires to activate Relay 1 and 2 making the headlight relay circuit plug and play. That way if in the off chance my relay goes out I could always simply unplug the connectors for the relay circuit and plug in the OE connectors to get me home. The ground wires for the apollo driving lights, they would have to run between the body panel and bumper then under the core support and up to the OE headlight ground if I ground it to the core support. If I run the wire that far it wouldnt hurt to run it back to the fuse/relay box. But what I could do is instead of running it up to the fuse/relay box I could mount a terminal block and ground it and use it as my grounding point. My big thing is I am trying to avoid drilling new holes as I prefer to be able to revert back to original without having to fix holes that shouldnt be there. I have to do some reading and see how to properly size a ground wire when you splice two grounds into one single wire. Like wise I need to see about four grounds into one single wire cause if I can get away with it for my lights I can link the grounds together with in the wiring harness that will be covered by a woven loom wrap and youll just have one ground for all the lighting up front. I how ever wont do that for the sniper out of fear of creating issues. If, for instance, you run #14 to two headlights you could then run two #14's into one #12 for the ground. The Wire Barn calculator says that #16 is good for 10 amps to 5' with a 2% drop. But #14 is good to 5' at 20 amps with the same drop.

I can't get to a specific part number as you've not given us enough info. However, you can do it yourself as you know the details. First, I'd go to the page at Documentation/Fuel & Air Systems/Fuel System Part #'s/Fuel Senders & Pumps. There you can find the part numbers. And the next thing I'd do is go to Rock Auto and see what parts they have. Compare those part numbers with those from our documentation, which is from Ford's master parts catalog. Then, with that info you can go to other sites looking for those parts.

Will you pull the suspension off before blasting? And what paint will you use? Anyway, it is going to look great.

It will look wonderful!

I'm confused, but what's new? What you show in the picture looks like it is the opening through the firewall rather than through the kick panel plate. Right? If so, there's supposed to be a gasket between the firewall and the HVAC plenum. As for the bolts, I'm trying to remember, but I think that some of those are threaded into the plastic of the plenum. So if they spin you may need to replace them with a bolt and put a nut on it. And the plug looks like one that is used in the cowl or on the firewall. Look around, you may have one like it in place and in that case someone probably dropped one in your truck and didn't pick it up. Maybe your truck was built on Monday or Friday?

You could have an AOD built to handle your engine's power. This article in Motor Trend says "that with the right parts, the AOD can take up to 800 hp." Then you don't need a computer.

(John is very likely to come back and say "I like my carb!". Or "When I see that wiring mess I freak!" We've had this conversation. )

Welcome! Glad you joined. Dave/Fuzzface2 is right - we have a map (Bullnose Forum/Member's Map in the menu) and can add you with a city or postal code. And he's right about the column. While there are several bolts on the firewall and two bolts holding it to the dash you do have some things to take off under the hood. Start a thread in the main section and we can walk you through it.

I think you have good plans, but have a suggestion. Why not make the body & frame grounds and then tap into them near the load? I have an extensive ground system and my headlights and fog lights tie into the radiator support, which is heavily grounded. I think running heavy grounds to the frame, fenders, cab, and radiator support would provide a better path to ground than running multiple smaller wires to the loads.

Excellent! Glad you got it apart.

The throttle kicker is strange. The write-up on how it works is below, and I don't think it will do what you need. You can't come off the starter relay as it is hot all the time, or hot in Start only, depending on where you connect. But neither of those are what you want. I have installed a relay and pulled it in with either the stator terminal off the alternator. But you could use a source of switched power to pull the relay in. The advantage of the stator terminal is that it is only hot with the engine running where switched power is hot even if the engine isn't running but the key is on.

I miss Jim! And yes, it is a bit convoluted. I put it on to allow me to move the whole thing around a bit. When I put the whole mess in a couple of days ago things got all twisted and it took a while today to sort them out. So the convolute will, hopefully, let me test-fit it so I can figure out how long each wire should be and then pull it out to make the connections on the work table.

There must have been a story with this front-end because that was the ONLY part the p/o had replaced. You can just see one peeking out the back of the wheel well here: I know this was done VERY recently because the bushings are brand new, not even dirty. What baffles me given the cost of this stuff is while this was being done he didn't replace the shocks. They were totally gone. I can understand wanting to give the coil spring a few more years to save a buck (sorta) but you have everything apart to replace that bushing and you don't throw a new shock on? So weird. Bear in mind I bought this from a guy who himself bought it at auction. I figure HE was the one who did it, and probably at least one of the two bushings was totally gone so it wasn't even driveable. It has a brand new exhaust too - albeit a cheap one. I figure he was doing the bare minimum to get it sellable. Whatever. This year my plan for this truck is basically "if it's rubber or inexpensive, replace it". I'm just trying to triage the true priorities. A steering box is definitely in my future. But probably I'll wait until I don't need to drive the truck for awhile, and while I send that out for a rebuild I'll just put the whole truck up on blocks and rebuild the rear brakes at the same time. Since I have to take the axle out it's a big job, so I'm going to go whole-hog on it and replace a ton of stuff: springs, cylinder, fittings and soft lines, shoes, etc. I'd rather spend $50 extra for a "one and done". I don't think there's any way to understand why people do what they do. Hard to understand, though, why you'd put a bad shock back on is hard to understand. By the way, the paint job is cool! Oh, I mean "hot". It looks like your truck is going so fast the front is glowing red.

Oh yes, I understand the harness, and it makes sense because it allows either type of sensor you want to use.