Gary Lewis

Thanks, Bob. Yes, it is progress, but not as much as I'd planned for the day. Had hoped to get the AFR gauge bezel off so I could drill it on the bench and the PC it black like the bezel on the other side. But that's not going to happen. So now I'm wondering if I can drill it in the truck and leave it chrome. Luckily I've not ordered the clear/white tape for my Brother label maker as if I leave it chrome it'll need to be clear/black tape. I have a work day at the church building tomorrow, so maybe Wednesday I can see how to do that.

Good to hear from you! Radiator looks good. I left my polished radiator alone, meaning w/o paint. I just couldn't scratch it up to paint it, and I know it'll transfer heat better w/o paint. On the exhaust, I don't think I'd use the cones to pull things together. I'd first talk to Flowmaster and tell them the problem and ask for their recommendation. As for a Black/Orange wire, go to the salvage. A lot of Ford vehicles have a long Black/Orange off the alternator, and I've used those. And in '85ish Ford changed from dots to stripes. The EVTM implies it was between '85 and '86, but it wasn't. Big Blue is an '85 but has stripes where the EVTM says he should have dots or hash marks. So just go with the Y/White stripe wire. As for the breaker vs fuse, I don't think you can go wrong. I'm running a fuse but if I'd had 150A breakers handy I might have gone that way.

Cool!

He is good!

Well done on that letter! And I know what you mean on the tires/wheels and steering. My SiL has an 83 with wide wheels and tires on it. The guy he bought it from thought they were cool, but they not only look wrong they seriously degrade the steering.

Not making much progress, but some. I pulled the AFR meter's bezel off today thinking I'd disconnect the meter and work on the bezel. But there's a lot of wiring that would have to be fed back through things up under the dash in order to get the gauge out. So either I find another home for the switch and the LED or just drill the bezel in place for the LED and the switch. Then I wired the relay board up to pull in a fender-style starter relay and it wouldn't do it. Turns out they apparently put the on-board LED in the on-board relay's coil circuit. And since I'd removed that LED the relay wasn't coming in. But when I wired in another LED the on-board relay came in just fine and it pulled the starter relay in. However, the clack that starter relay made suggested I find out how much current it is pulling 'cause it sounded like a lot. Turns out it is "only" 3.5 amps, which is well within the 10A capability of the on-board relay. But that got me to wondering what kind of back EMF that starter relay generates and what problems it might cause. I tried to measure it with my min/max DVM but it didn't seem to catch it, and I was loathe to drag out the 'scope. So instead I dragged out the left over 10A diodes that I bought when I put one on the air conditioning compressor's clutch to protect the ECU, and made one to fit Big Blue's starter relay. You can see it, the snubber diode, in the bottom center of the pic on the right. But as I started to pull the nut that holds the trigger wire on the starter relay it occurred to me that the nut & stud right above it was hot, and touching the socket to either of them while on the trigger stud would engage the starter. And while the tranny was in neutral and the park brake set it would have caused a quick reaction on my part, so I pulled the starter relay fuse out of the PDB and worked w/o surprise.

Three? Not Four?

Congrat's!!! I'll bet that made a big difference.

Thanks, Jim. I didn't know of that. I'll check it out.

Jeff - I understand what you are saying, and I fully agree that membership needs to be free. I have no plans to require a fee of any kind to participate. As for contributions, I'd hope to keep them confidential. There are mechanisms for donating, both through a Weebly plug-in as well as via InVision - should we choose to use InVision. Also, all costs and funding will be kept track of via a page on the website. And funds will be held in a separate bank account from our personal one. No mixing of funds and complete transparency. Dane & Jeff - We've not decided to use InVision, but I think you are voting for moving this Nabble forum over to some other platform, meaning migrate the whole thing. And if we have a major upfront cost that you'll help defray it. Is that what you are saying? What I hope we can do is to find the best fit for us, meaning a platform that allows my friend Jay to create the migration tool such that we don't have a cost for migration. And that it has a reasonable monthly cost. So we will keep looking. But we are making progress. All - I'd appreciate hearing from others. So don't stop now.

Well folks, I think it is time that we slow down and decide if InVision is really what we want to do. That's because I'm starting to get a view to what the costs will be. There are basically three ways we can do this: (Boy, do I miss the ordered list function on Invision!) InVision Service w/o Nabble Migrated: We could spend $50/mo to run on the InVision servers and just lock the Nabble forum so no one can post there. But we'd still have all of our history and could search it - until Franklin turns Nabble off, which surely will happen some day. InVision Service with Nabble Migrated: InVision does not let individuals migrate their own data to their servers, and I just got their estimate for doing the migration as "starting at $1850". So we'd probably spend $2000 up front and then at least $50/mo, which isn't bad monthly but is a huge cost initially. Standalone Service with Nabble Migrated: A friend of mine says he can migrate the Nabble information if we can get the InVision file layout. But InVision doesn't allow you to migrate your own data to their servers, so you have to run InVision on a standalone server. And you have to buy their package at $500 one time and then pay $150/year for their support. My limited experience running the Amazon Webhosting Service is that the servers will cost $35 - $50/mo, so all up we'd be looking at $500 one time and $750/year. Obviously we are talking real money here, so I'd like your thoughts about this. Chris hasn't quite gotten "there" with the redirect, so let's step back for a few days to discuss this. Perhaps we don't need our Nabble forum to be migrated to the new service? Maybe InVision isn't what we want? What are your thoughts?

Interesting conversation. Very similar to one I had recently with Kel Ertl over on her FB page called Bullnose Bronco's And Truck's (80-86). She made the "mistake" of asking for pictures of our engine compartments and details about what we've done under there. Having one of, if not the, most highly-modified Bullnose trucks on the planet I just outlined a "few" of the things I've done. And somehow we got into a discussion of "restorations" and she said "Gary Lewis if you're replacing it and it isn't broken for the betterment (and reliability) of the rig then yes it's restoration 👍 even if it's a Frankenstein restoration 😉." (Emoticons are all hers.) So I guess there are as many dafynitions of "restoration" as there are people 'cause I never would have thought Big Blue would be considered a restoration. I don't consider it that. I built it to "overland", although that isn't really what I'm using it for. But it certainly is getting used. But in my book, and in the books of most in the automotive world, a restoration puts the vehicle back like it was when it left the showroom floor. Somewhere I have the judging booklet for Mopars in concurs competition and the detail they go into when judging is incredible. Vehicles then were not powder coated anywhere, so that is completely out. In fact, the amount of "flatness" of the paint on various components is judged. Reproduction decals are allowed, but only if you can't tell they are reproductions. So Chris Lott's Broncos aren't true restorations in my book. But they are beautiful "restomods" or "reformations" and I'd love to have one of them. I'd take the white one if given a chance, and I'd keep the hood shut and amaze people with how quick the thing is.

I like it! I was looking at the first pic thinking "How do I tell him I don't like the wheels? Well, I can't so I'll just be quiet. But, I DON'T LIKE THEM!" And you solved my dilemma - you got new/old wheels and tires! Well done!

Good! As soon as I made that new page and it showed up in the menu below everything else I knew I had to fix it. But didn't find a way for a while as everything I did let it keep wrapping down. Then I realized why - the little dropdown arrow made the menu line one character too long. Had been thinking about changing Manuals & Literature to Library for some time, and that was the time.

Reading! I know where that is as I used to live in Kennett Square. You are now on the map.

Welcome! Glad you joined. Nice looking truck. Would love to see what you've done. Maybe start a thread in the main section and tell us all about it? Where's home? We have a map (Bullnose Forum/Member's Map in the menu) and can add you with a city/state or zip.

Wow! Love those trucks, especially the 81. And that "silver" dash is beautiful!

My experience is that the 90's parts are better than the 80's parts. Ford was experimenting on how to do things in the 80's, and they didn't get it right until the 90's. So my truck is a '96 under the skin, and you can buy parts for that easily.

Nice! That thing was massive! (I guess "is massive" is more accurate as it still exists, albeit somewhat hard to get to.)

That IS a lot of work! Well done! And I'm with you on the hitch. That's a big chunk of metal and it sure has to come off to get to the tank.

Good luck on cleaning that tank. My experience with doing that was fraught with problems. My brother and I put a chain inside one and sloshed it around with a couple of gallons of gas in the tank. Poured that out and went again. And again. And again. After about 5 times we realized we'd just spent $30 in gas & 10 in medicine for our muscles in trying to revive a $100 tank. And to top it off we still had enough silt and/or rust in the tank that it plugged the accelerator pump jets several times, even though I was running two paper filters in the line. Won't do that again.

Right. 30379 is rear tank, 30387 is side/midship tank.

Aluminum Four Barrel vs Air Valve Secondary. The AVS was a redesigned AFB with the main advantage being that you could adjust the air valve easily and w/o taking the carb apart. In fact, exactly the same way as adjusting a Q-Jet. My '58 Chevy w/a 348 came with a Will Carter Four Barrel. The AFB came out soon after that and was the go-to carb for hot rodders for about a decade. My first '69 Super Bee, which had the 330 HP 383, came with a Holley, but my second Bee with the 335 HP 383 came with an AVS. Chrysler was using Holleys on the pedestrian engines in '69 but the "hot" engines got Carters, with the Hemi getting a couple of AFB's IIRC.

Chris didn't add the new page, I did. Yes, it was causing the menus to wrap. So I made these changes: I added a new non-clickable item in the menu called Test Forums Moved both test forum pages under the Test Forum menu item But the drop-down indicator on the Test Forum menu item was just enough to still cause the menu to wrap so Manuals & Literature became Library. That reduced the # of characters in the menu so it seems to work.

Bummer! Maybe whomever he reports you to won't stop you? Maybe there's no problem, or one that you can easily fix?