Gary Lewis

Thanks, Scott. I'll take a look for the reseal of the reservoir. But, I'm not sure I'm too worried about it getting too full as it could blow the fill plug and get out that way since it isn't a tight fit or seal. I wonder about turning the thing upside down, cleaning the seal as best I can, and then running Permatex® Flowable Silicone Windshield & Glass Sealer into it. I've used that before to seal windshield leaks, and it works well. Flows like honey and gets into the leaks before setting up. Anyway, back to the compressor install...

Not sure what is causing your stalling, and it doesn't sound like the winch is really doing it. With a 1G alternator, which would be stock, you wouldn't have much power being generated at idle. So you could pull the battery down during winching and if you had much else running it might die minutes later as the load finally takes the battery below whatever is required for ignition. But with the 3G you shouldn't have that problem as it should easily keep up with any load, other than the winch, when idling. Anyway, I don't like the idea of being "out there" where I might need a winch and possibly killing the battery and the engine while doing that. So that's why I have the aux battery and the Cole Hersee 48530 Smart Battery Isolator 200A. That way I can pull the aux battery down and still have the starting battery for running the truck.

John - Glad the Truetrac is working so well. The one in Big Blue kicks in at just the right time in many cases. For instance, on the recent ~250 miles of awful washboard gravel roads with mud and running water over the road I'm sure it got us through many places w/o issue. However, watch out for corners on wet pavement as sometimes it'll kick in and send you sideways. Obviously your rebuild and the modifications worked out well. Congrats! As for stalling while you are winching, have you considered a 2nd battery? Ford made an aux battery holder and that's what I have in Big Blue. I winch off that battery, and have a Cole Hersee Smart Isolator that ties the two together when they are above 13.4 volts, so if I pull the aux battery down the truck doesn't stall. On the paint, I've used POR15 on the floors to kill the rust and seal them. It works well for that, but won't work for where you have exposed areas as it isn't UV stable. However, you can coat it with other paint while the POR15 is tacky, so you could paint the rear with it and then spray in a matching color.

Excellent! Good luck!

Well, the F150 wins the ride and handling test hands-down. It is much more like a car and Big Blue certainly rides and handles like a truck. It is hard to quantify what change the front suspension by itself made, but let me try. On a scale of 1 - 10, with 10 being awful: Dad's 4wd F150 with coil-sprung TTB's & sway bars = 2: You don't really notice bumps, and certainly don't fear them. Big Blue now = 4: You do notice bumps, but no longer fear them. However, this isn't all due to the front suspension as pulling out 2 of the 7 leaves in the rear, which made it essentially a stock F250, made a big difference. Big Blue w/a D60 & a 7-leaf spring pack & no sway bars = 6: The front suspension change made a really big difference, but there was still a "snap" or "kick" when you hit a bump that turned out to be the extremely heavy rear springs that were on the truck. Big Blue with TTB's, 7 leaves, & no sway bars = 8: Ken Blythen suggested I disconnect the sway bars and that made a big difference. Big Blue with sway bars = 10: When I got the truck, in addition to having TTB's & leaf springs up front and a way too heavy spring pack in the rear, it had the sway bars connected. With them connected you studied the road ahead and prepared for any little bump.

LOL! Those don't do it for me, but whatever. Anyway, I've been told that Baldwin filters are excellent. You met Brandon/Bruno2 here at the house, right? He swears by them.

Got the compressor mounted, although it'll have to come out for the carpet to go back in. It is secured quite well, dead center in the tool box, on its rubber mounts and the shroud is also secured to the floor. Also, the 3 cans of Fluid Film came in today, so I used most of one can in the wheel arches. Here's a pic with the hose/nozzle arrangement shoved down that opening. I sprayed a whole bunch down the two openings in the fender, but then started feeing something hitting my head. Turns out it was blowing out the back of the opening past the fender liner. In the pic on the left you can see where it was going as I sprayed through those openings. And the pic on the right shows where I used the spray nozzle and added more. However, I see in the pic that it didn't flow down into the last bit of the seam, so I'll need to hit it again tomorrow.

Ok, it is official! My brother and I are leaving on Sept 6th, two days after the show, and will spend the 8th - 11th 'wheeling. Our hotel is in Ouray, so now I just need to get a few more things done on the truck.

Ok, now on to another topic - onboard compressed air. I'm starting into that and just took the HF compressor "system" apart and started fitting it into the toolbox. And the first realization was that if I put the compressor where I'd planned, on the far right side of the toolbox then I'd be creating a problem since many of the things I put in the toolbox are heavy and getting them over/past the compressor wouldn't be easy. So the plan now is to put the compressor in the very center and the control panel directly above it, as shown in the pics at the bottom. But that's going to make it more difficult to use the original plumbing plan. As you can see on the left, below, the hot compressed air came out of the compressor and into the tank via a piece of copper tubing. From there, after cooling a bit, it came from the tank to the control panel's manifold via a piece of plastic tubing. And then there was a piece of rubber hose going back down from the manifold to the pressure switch. Instead I'm thinking of going from the compressor to the control panel's manifold with copper tubing. Then from the manifold to the tank via rubber hose, with a tee to the pressure switch. While that will much easier to do it'll be less than optimum because there won't be as much cooling this way. However, this system won't be used extensively so I think this approach will work ok. Thoughts? Better ideas? Improvements? http://www.garysgaragemahal.com/uploads/6/5/8/7/65879365/waving_orig.gif And here are a couple of shots showing the compressor and the control panel positioning:

The reason we had the Error 500 debacle was that Nabble made changes to the system so that we can no longer reply to posts via email - among other changes. They appear to have fixed the Error 500 issue, but I think the loss of replying via email is here to stay. Sorry if that was your favorite way to reply, but this is out of my control - at the moment.

^^^This 100%^^^ I don’t know what the ride is like on SD coil springs vs SD leaf springs but I suspect the primary gratification is the accomplishment itself by those who have the time and skill to fabricate a front coil system (or perform a body chassis swap to get it). I admire the handiwork but it sure isn’t for me! Thanks, Jonathan. Janey and I both still marvel at how much better the truck rides with the changes that have been made. So while there might be further improvements to be made with a different spring setup, we are happy with what we have. Oops, the rest of this was to go in Big Blue's Transformation thread.

Peter - Apologies! It appears that I did have a computer glitch at the same time that I clicked on the link you supplied, which was https://orbimotors.com/. So please accept my apologies for doubting you.

LOL! No, I'm not THAT stressed. I'm glad you are joking. And, I'm glad that it is working now, with or without misspellings.

Yes, they do! Given what I found out about the dirt on Big Blue, I'm thinking they'd look good on him.

Peter - Thank you. Now, back to normal programming. I sent you an email asking you to go to the New Members Start Here folder, read the guidelines, and then start a new thread there to introduce yourself. In the flurry of email you may have missed that, but please find it and follow those instructions. It is important that you read the guidelines as we hold everyone to them, so you need to have had a fair chance to read them.

Misspelled? Glad it is back up, but I'm not seeing the "misspelled". Can you give me an example? I'm curious.

I did look and my computer froze. And none of the engines were for Fords. I am moving these posts to "thread jail" in 15 minutes and banning you if you've not removed that link.

DO NOT CLICK THE LINK IN THE ABOVE! Peterr991 - The link in your post above is bad. It looks to me like you are spamming us. I sent you an email and I'm posting here to tell you that if you don't remove that link immediately I'll ban you.

DO NOT CLICK THE LINK IN THE ABOVE!

Surely those are worth something. But in my searching I found this on Goldmine: Also, I noted that someone purporting to be "A.P. Sheffield" wrote in via Facebook. Initially thought it was you, but then remembered you don't do FB.

I'm thinking of flying out and driving it home! Seriously though, that is a NICE truck at a nice price!

I'm thoroughly confused! Why would one spring be longer than the other? Why.... Have you asked Rough Country? It seems to me like they made a mistake.

That's about how much the tires stick out on Big Blue, both in front and in the rear, so I understand what you mean about the entire truck being covered. But I don't know about fender flare sizes as I've not researched them, so I'm reading along with you to learn. Anyway, glad the Bronco is doing so well! That's a really good feeling, I'm sure. And the Ranchero looks great. It is coming together quickly.

That's a good one, but it actually stands for Nabble Application Markup Language. And the latest is that Nabble knows they broke things, but they say they can't quickly back the changes out. Which is EXACTLY why I'm doing my darndest to get us off their servers and running a version of Nabble that they can't change.

Bummer! Hope you get the bearing replaced easily.