Gary Lewis

Be VERY careful with things like hoods. You can easily heat the metal and cause waves in it, which you cannot get out.

You need some way to kill any rust that is lingering. But the texture will allow paint to adhere nicely. As for the less-than-perfect experience, yup. Now let's see how many days you find media in places you didn't know you have.

Glad it worked and that your experience was better than mine.

Probably because of the move to the rear axle-driven speedo. I don't know when that happened, but if you go very far into the 90's your tranny won't have a place for a speedo cable.

The 49 is for the axle. The transmission is a K, which means your truck came with the venerable C6. The E4OD didn't come out until 1989 in these trucks, so you could tell them you have an 89. But 91 also works. As for " axle ratio/speedometer gear and whether it has parking brake on the transmission (rear-mounted)", the 49 means you have 3.55 gears. And you won't have a parking brake on the rear of the transmission. However, the question about axle ratio and speedo gears may be getting to whether or not you need a transmission with an opening for a speedo gear. You do. Some later trucks had the speedo driven electronically from the rear axle, but you have a speedo cable so the tranny needs to have a hole in it for the cable.

Glad Janey's project went well as mine isn't. But I guess three steps forward & one back is still progress. Step 1: Got the hole drilled in the dash bezel Step 2: Got the wire run through the bezel & dash & wired up in the box Step 3: Connected the pigtail to the clutch switch, which was a major win as that is hard to get to Step 3: Fired it up and the LED wouldn't come on - one lead was broken off of it That was my fault as I'd ordered the wrong kind of LED - ones w/o strain relief on the leads. I just ordered these from Amazon and they'll be in tomorrow morning. So I should be able to get the red one installed and maybe get this thing buttoned up.

Then you need the IDI section of the service manual, which you will find at our page at Documentation/Engines/IDI Diesel. You'll find illustrations, specifications, the shop manual section, and even a tab on timing.

Welcome, Troy! Glad you joined. What part of east Tejas? I ask because we have a map (Bullnose Forum/Member's Map) and can add you with a city or zip. Tell us about your handle? Have you been to Moab? I'm headed there in June with Big Blue. As for a free service manual, I doubt you'll find a complete one for free as several companies are licensed by Ford to reproduce them. But we have many of the sections thereof scattered about this site, so most of what you need is buried herein. Just ask and we'll point you to where they are.

I absolutely agree that Janey’s requests deserve to be treated as a matter of priority, compared to Gary’s hobbies. There is no question about that. That’s why I am always hesitating to get rid of my over-stock. You never know the way it could be useful. Progress! Morning, Jeff. Yes, Janey's projects/requests get priority over mine. And this was an interesting one. The wiring to the 1952 sewing machine, a Singer Featherweight, was in bad shape. So she ordered in a wiring kit, which consisted of a power cord and a cord to go to the foot pedal/speed control. The two cords connect in the plug going into the sewing machine, so I took that apart to find what's shown below. They'd wrapped the wires to make a knot large enough it wouldn't go through the hole in the connector, which provided the strain relief. And each wire wraps clockwise around a hollow stud and nestles down in a groove, and then a knurled nut is run down on top of it. I got it done, but my fingers were certainly sore. The challenge was getting all three studs down in the holes in the connector at the same time. The holes are perfectly sized to take the connector with the point of the hex pointing down, and they don't want to stay there while you wrestle with the other two.

I would check the seal around the windshield. The mastic that was used dries and cracks and then leaks. So I'd put a hose on it and see if you have a leak.

The largest online stack. The biggest stack is in my shop, much of which is not online - yet.

Go to our page at Documentation/Suspension & Steering/Steering/Power Steering. There you'll see illustrations that give you the base/group part number, then to to the Part Numbers page and you'll see what they fit. 3A719 is the base number for both the pump/gear and gear/pump hoses, and you'll see that there have been many different hoses.

It is pricey. But I've already had several volunteer to help and it might be worth it to have a supported platform. Anyway, Chris and I are talking in the background on what to do next. Stay tuned...

Yes, that is almost certainly it. And InVision is our most recently-tested platform. It seems to work nicely, but the conversion or migration from our current forum to it is the problem. If we run on their server they have to do the migration and that is going to be about $2K. I have a friend who says he wants to do it, but that means we'd have to run on someone else's server and buy the InVision software plus pay an annual maintenance fee. And that approach gets pricey quite quickly. So we are still thinking about this. Chris/ckuske is traveling but when he gets back and settled we need to figure out our next move.

Didn't get as much done as I'd expected today. Had to write up a meeting for church and send the minutes out. And I re-wired a 72 year old Singer sewing machine for Janey. But I did get a bit done on Big Blue. First, I undid the wiring I'd done in the box because I realized that I'd wired in the spare push button switch, but have one already mounted on the bezel. And since the connector on that switch is so big it has to be the first thing through the hole, everything else had to cone out. Then I took the box to the truck and tried to run the mounted switch's lead to the box and discovered that's not going to work. The plan had been to run the wire over to the steering column and then past the trim piece and back to the box. But the wires aren't long enough to do that. So the plan now is to drill through the instrument bezel directly behind the AFR meter and run the wires through that hole. However, reaching up behind the dash I could feel that there's some kind of opening there and it would be nice to hit it rather than drilling through the dash. So I went upstairs to my spare dash panel and did some measuring. Sure enough, the hole for the fog lights is exactly where I need to go through. So the plan for tomorrow is to pull the AFR meter and bezel, again, drill the instrument bezel, feed the wire through, and put it all back together.

I don't know about 31-spline axles with the smaller pattern. But the differential won't care what length axle is inserted. As long as the side gears where the axles go in have the right spline count for the axle that differential should go in any 9" case. I think.

Thanks. I'll check it out. But if you could ask on there what forum package they are using it might help. Sometimes it is hard to tell from the outside.

The factory tachs have a 6/8 terminal. The wiring harness for the 8 cylinder engines has a ground that goes to the tach on that terminal. Without the ground the tach is in 6 cylinder mode.

Could you give me a link to that forum? I found two different ones when I looked.

Congrat's! You'll like that tach, but maybe the trip odometer even more. I really like the HIPO LED's for the gauges. I did a fair amount of testing and you can see the results in this post.

I'm talking about pickups, not aerodynamic cars. And my point is that fully-electric pickups aren't even close to being capable of doing what many that I know do with their trucks. Maybe they are for tradesmen, and I can see that. As for "20 minutes in the welcome center ... should get your vehicle to 80+% of charge", that's not what Motor Trend found. Their chart shows 15 minutes to get you from 68 to 94 miles. So 20 minutes might get you 90 to 125 miles, which is about a 50% charge.

I loaned my portable media blaster to my brother on a "permanent" basis. I hope to never need it again. The amount of media I found in my body cavities as well as the huge amount of media it took to do anything made the thing far less than fun and very expensive to use. They require a lot of air and you need very dry air or the media clogs. So you need a very large compressor as well as a drier to get rid of the moisture.

Sorry, my misunderstanding. But you've done a pretty good job of cleaning the best you can w/o dropping the pan. But I'm not sure I'd worry about doing a compression check just yet. The rings may or may not be sealed now, but might down the road, literally, if you drive it.

Yes, mine is the wrong use case for a full EV. But I don't know that I'm the only one around that uses his/her truck that way. I know of several that use their trucks similarly to the way I use mine, and an EV would not be appropriate for them - especially the guy that uses his to pull a trailer into the back of beyond to go elk hunting. In fact, around here there are probably more pickups for personal use than professional use. Far more. And for some reason the people who show up to work at the new house being built across the street seem to drive as many cars as they do trucks. So while I think EV's are a coming thing, and I'm glad that Ford, Rivian, etc are making them so the problems get ironed out, I don't think they are "there" for how many people I know use their pickups. And Motor Trend's "real world" tests gave me the numbers to really figure that out.

Right. That's pretty much what I was going to say. But I'll add that I would seriously consider staying with the bolt pattern you have. Otherwise you'll either need two spares or have to change the front to the larger pattern as well.