Gary Lewis

Jim - I really like the Meter Match. Today I need to calibrate the Empty reading against the rear tank, which is empty, and then I'm essentially done. However, there is a mid-point reading that can be used to try to make the readout more accurate, and over time I may want to play with that. That's because the gauge moves pretty rapidly through the middle and then slows down at the Empty end. So if I were to stop when I think I've used 1/2 of the tank I could push the button to train it to show 1/2 and it will interpolate above and below that to increase the accuracy. If I calibrated the Empty setting and then took the truck to the station I could put 9 1/2 gallons in the 19 gallon rear tank and then make it read 1/2. Then fill it up and calibrate Full.

Scott - That's a good resource you have going there. On the grommet and clock pigtail, I know I could use the pigtail but won't know about the grommet until I replace the speed control's transducer and see if that fixes the speedo/speed control problems. If so I'll leave the wiring that's in the grommet in place and try to sneak two more in - fog and backup lights. So if you don't mind sending those things I'd certainly appreciate it. We'll talk price in the background. Thanks!

John - When I think about what I have to do I get discouraged. But then someone asks me for a story about the truck and I go back over what I have done and I realize there's a whole lot more behind me than in front of me. And, speaking of that, I'll lay out some of my thinking for y'all in order to get some feedback. Here's what I have planned for the next few weeks: Mission Control: I'll wire up the switches and add the wires I need for the fog and backup lamps. But I'll need relays to complete that effort and where to put the relays is a question. Aux Power: I'll finish the power box wiring and run the #2 wiring for power to the inverter. But I need to add a fuse in the circuit from the aux battery to the aux power relay, and where to place the fuse is a question. Air Compressor: With the inverter installed it is time to install the compressor itself in the tool box and the tank under the bed. Let's say that gets done in the next month. That puts it at mid-January and I'll have ~5 months to the time to go to Ouray. Is that enough time to install the EFI and get it tuned? Sure would be nice to have it on that trip. But, I do not want to jeopardize the trip, so probably should save that for next fall. In any event, there is going to be a space crunch when I go to EFI as the air cleaner box and another PDB go on the driver's fender. So back to the questions of where to put the relays for the lighting - in the PDB? And where to put the 150 amp megafuse for the aux power - somewhere that won't be in the way for the EFI swap. In fact, I worry that the current layout of coolant recovery/windshield washer tank with the Cole Hersee smart isolator tucked between it and the fender will have to change when I go EFI. And I think I may better take some time to think through that issue before adding a relay box for the lighting and making new aux power cables. Toward that end, I kept the driver's fender off of Huck. So I can bolt the air cleaner box and PDB to it and get a good idea of what space I have left. Thoughts? Suggestions? Better ideas?

The "headlights on" warning is usually triggered by the dash lights rather than the running lights. So if you dim your dash lights enough the warning will go off, even if the running lights (and headlights) are on. That's a nice feature for the "headlights on" warning because it lets you turn the warning off (by dimming the dash lights) so you can have the headlights on with the key off (and no warning) if you want to. I'm thinking it's less desirable for a power source for the fog light relay because it wouldn't be an on / off, 12V / 0V signal. It would be a variable voltage. If you dimmed the dash lights enough the fog lights wouldn't come on, and if you had them bright enough they would. But it wouldn't be a straight either / or. Maybe it would work out fine, but I didn't want to go that route. So I did sort of a http://www.garysgaragemahal.com/uploads/6/5/8/7/65879365/florida-man-42_orig.jpg approach and spliced into the wire at the left side front marker lamp. That meant running the wire through the firewall to get to the switch. But I put it in a loom with a bunch of other related wires I added, so that wasn't a big deal to me. I'm sure there's a wire at the light switch that would be cleaner to use. Bob - I'm looking at Circuit 14, the brown wire shown below. It doesn't dim, but is just on/off.

Jim - Getting the "lights-on" signal from that area an excellent idea! But, that got me to thinking about it and it turns out the same signal goes to the clock, and its wiring is poking into the Mission Control area. Scott - I think that answers the first question. But that brings me to the second, and much more difficult, question of firewall penetration. And the simple answer is no. So if you have something that would create an option, please let me know. That is a much more difficult question because I think I've stuffed the grommet for the speedometer cable with several wires that are headed to Mission Control, which packed it pretty tight. And now I believe I'm going to have to change the speedo cable. The speed control surges. I realized the speedometer reading was wavering, and lubed the lower cable since it was easy, and that helped a little bit. That cable is one that I replaced as the truck went back together, and I remember the speedo wavering well before I pulled it apart, so that cable isn't the culprit. When I had the instrument cluster out the other day as I was tapping into the fuel gauge wiring for the Meter Match I lubed the upper cable. That helped a bunch on the wavering and the surging, but didn't cure it. So I'm thinking I'll have to pull the upper cable's outer sheath and replace it. And I'm not sure how hard that will be with the grommet stuffed full of wiring. And if I'm going to run the wires through a different penetration point now is the time since there's nothing connected to the other end and I can pull them back out. What I haven't done is to change the speed control's transducer. Could it be dragging, causing the wavering and surging?

Yes, Jim, on both counts. But that was back on the other forum and many here won’t have seen it.

Yes, D8's are the bottom of the curve. Anything earlier or later is typically better. I spent considerable time porting a pair of D8's and got very little gain. Hard to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Congrat's! ~16 is great MPG for one of these trucks.

Loving it! And I certainly understand the Heinz 57 bit. I have two of those myself.

Welcome! Yes, I paused for dinner and a movie with my wife. Anyway, glad you joined! We can put you in the map if you give us the zip or a city. We don't want addresses as we don't want to get that precise and have people show up unexpectedly. As Jim said, hope you'll start a thread on the whole restomod. I have a "small" one, or two, of those somewhere on here as I like to document everything. GO FOR IT!

I have the same peg board, and love it! The only issue is in keeping things attached to it as the o-rings split over time and the "hooks" come loose.

Glad you found that, Frank. Well done!

John - That looks awesome!!! I am impressed!

I like it! There have been many instances that I've notched tubing and I usually resort to CAD to figure it out. This makes it easier!

Looks great! And I really like the flares.

This is just me applying the sniff test, but a tolerance of +/-0.025 deg doesn't smell right. +/-0.25 deg seems fairly tight to me. A tenth of that? No way. And I wouldn't get worked up about the fact that the tolerance is twice (or even four times) the nominal. The value of the nominal is very subjective based on where it's referenced from. If the nominal was measured off the axle axis it would be 89.94 +/- 0.25 which wouldn't raise any eyebrows. Still, it seems a little odd to me that they don't mind that much toe out. I'm no expert, but it seems like I've always heard you want neutral to slight toe-in. (And yes, I do get that if the tolerance was less than the nominal that it wouldn't allow toe-out, and I'm tearing my previous argument apart!) I'll get pictures tomorrow, but I'm running a complete 1995 F350 steering setup. That includes an F350 pitman arm and a tie rod connecting the front spindles. On the +/-, I'm just going to ask for it to be set to .06 degrees of toe-in. I'm thinking that is the main culprit in this, so I think going with the factory settings will be a good starting point.

I agree on the thousandths of a degree. I watched Steve play with the adjustments and it took very little to make a difference. So, maybe they really did mean it?

I put the dented on in the attic, and if I see people looking for one all they'll have to do is pay for shipping. But they can pound the dent out if they want to do so. Yep, they have some SERIOUS bargains - like your drag link. And excellent customer service.

Nice parts and good prices!

Oh, you missed the bit about the pump. Probably while you were AWOL. After our first trip I found dribbles on the ground and traced them to some place in the power steering/hydroboost system. Put bibs on everything and found it was the pump. Ordered one from U-Haul and when it came in it was banged up, but still usable. I called U-Haul and told them what had happened and he shipped another one and said to give that one away. As for the horn pad, it really does make a difference on seeing the add-on gauges. A big difference.

No Jim, you were spot-on about the front end. And while you are reading what the FSM says, I wonder if the spec's are wrong. Surely it should have said .025 degree, meaning from .035 to .085 degrees. But, looking at the spec's on the computer that the alignment shop uses, they show +/- .13 degrees for a total of .26 degrees.

That's packed, Jim. You win. As for what I got done today, not a lot to show. Starting last first, I have the power steering/hydroboost system apart to replace the Saginaw pump. Boy, is this a mess! There appears to be no good way to drain it cleanly, or at least I couldn't find one, and I got about a pint out and the rest went on the floor. But tomorrow I hope to swap pumps and put it back in service. And now for what I did first thing. I took apart the Bricknose steering wheel pad, with speed control switches, that Scott sent me. I did so to clean the rubber part of the pad. Here are the parts. And, fortunately it is wired properly to work with a Bullnose column. Note the foam piece on the inner part. The other pad doesn't have that, which is probably why it is a bit baggy. And here's a comparison of the pad w/o speed control buttons and the one with. As you can see, the latter is now installed and the horn works, although I don't yet know if the speed control works. Oh yes, the fog lights came in today. But I think they may get wrapped for Christmas.

I do too, David. I'd missed that.

I'm not suggesting you "just" change the length of the track bar. If you made it the same length as the drag link your front axle would stick a couple feet out the right side of the truck! I'm just saying that it's not clear to me what bump steer you might expect, or if there is anything you might do to minimize it. Like I said in my first post, typically adding a drop pitman arm to make the drag link closer to horizontal is a way to reduce bump steer. But I don't know if that would be a good idea here or not. Tell you what - if the toe-in adjustment doesn't dial it in close enough for me, or if the wandering is gone and I still have bump-steer, then I'll do some measuring and draw up the suspension. Then I can do what Bill suggested and see what happens when it cycles. (I assume there's a way in TurboCAD to connect parts and have them move in concert.)

As does this, thanks to you. It cleaned up wonderfully.