Gary Lewis

I've been in the Rockies in June and several of the passes were still closed. So I think later rather than earlier. But we need people with local knowledge to tell us. As for Utah, maybe we just get there, like just across the border?

Not sure how good NOS hoses would be, but those are indeed for an '86: 86 F150/350 - - (4.9L) eng. E6TZ 18472-A Reducer type - 3/4" x 5/8"—parallel hoses-E6TH 18C266-AA

Well done! Looks like they put a borderless windshield on so you can see the VIN. Good luck on the inspection.

Yes, cell phones don't work everywhere. About four years ago Janey and I came back across western Kansas on US 160, which is in the southern part of the state. It is a major highway and yet we didn't have cell phone coverage for a looooong stretch of it. So I'm going to bet that we won't have cell phone coverage for much of the TAT. Which does raise the question of how we communicate and how close we stick to the agreed route. Personally, I think we all have to agree to not deviate from the route w/o prior agreement with the team. Then the guys on bikes can go ahead and Big Blue will bring up the tail end. That way if anyone breaks down I'll find them. But, if they deviate from the agreed route w/o telling us and then break down we leave them. As for 9 days, does that include getting here and going home? Hmmm. That guy took: 3 days for Oklahoma 4 days for Colorado 5 days for Utah That's 12 days. So if you have 9 days and take 1 day getting here and returning, which is pushing it as you are 10 1/2 hours from me, we have 8 days. We could do OK & CO for 7 days. But then we'd be on the west side of CO and it would take you two days to get back home if you used the highways. (A quick check shows it to be 20 1/2 hours and 1381 miles from Grand Junction to Taylorsville, and that's running the speed limit.) So unless we can do better than that guy, who was running 50 MPH on the dirt roads, and if my antiquated math degree hasn't expired, that's 10 days: 1 day to get to Skiatook 3 days for Okiehoma 4 days for Colorful Colorado 2 days to get home

Sorry about your dogs. That brings thoughts to my mind of our last dog, whom had her last ride in my '82 Explorer. I can still see here laying there. So take care of family - we'll be here. But if your climate is that dry I'm at a real loss for what he problem could be. Time to pull the carb.

The camping looks like fun! Well done! As for the seats, I think I'd swap! I believe the buckets will bolt right into your truck as they were an option on the Supercabs. On the starting issue, if I understand what you are saying, the starter will engage but the engine won't start - without pushing the bypass button. However, once you push the bypass button and the engine starts you can let up on the key and the bypass button and the engine will continue to run. Right? If that's true then I'm confused as the engine should catch as you let off the starter but without pushing the bypass button. Will it do that, at least sometimes? I say that it should catch as the key comes back to Run as the engine should still be spinning and in Run there is power to the ignition module and coil. And if it does then the issue is with the wiring from the Start terminal of the ignition switch to Splice 216, as shown below. If it won't do that then I think we need to figure out what the bypass switch is doing. Perhaps the previous owner put it there as a safety precaution and took out the wiring to S216?

Bwahahaha! "Only a 12,000lb"....geez. Its not the bikes im worried about. Its Big Blue getting sucked down into mud or sand. Out in the flats of OK, you might want a set of meat hooks to pound into the ground. No trees for miles in some places! I think you are talking about something like is shown below. That might be a good thing to have. But, I've been looking at the GPSKevin maps and find them to be hard to use as there are no road #'s on them. I've pulled up Google maps, which does have road numbers, and with great difficulty could eventually figure out where Kevin's map wants you to go. But that's no fun whatsoever and I'm not up for that. We need to get someone to talk with us about GPS units. I think you said that there are downloadable GPS coordinates available. How do we put them on a map and how do we modify them? For instance, as previously discussed GPSKevin takes you up into Kansas instead of going through the Tall Grass Prairie. That's gotta be changed, but we then need to get back on his route. What app can we use to do that? Also, looking at his map for Okiehoma I find that he took the straight roads around Copan and Hulah lakes when there are other roads available that look to be more interesting. So we need to think about how he decided what roads to take and what's more important to us. Did he try to maximize his speed? Do we want to do that or maximize sight-seeing? How many days do we want to allocate to the trip? That's going to be a big factor in how many people want to go with us. Are we camping or staying in hotels? Kevin did some of both. How much cooking do we want to do? Soooooo many questions!

Those are surely REALLY good tools! Even the Craftsmans were probably from back when they sold pretty good stuff. Good find! Are you going to hang some of those up in your man cave?

Yes, that's gorgeous! Amazing how much difference there was between a '72, like the one we bought new, and the '73. But I like the Crown Vic in the back, too.

I like Cobras, and had at one point thought of building one of the kits. But got into Bullnose trucks instead? Good link, Jim. I looked at the OK laws and may want to register Dad's truck as a Vintage vehicle. We shall see.

Nice truck, but the price seems a bit high. I doubt it'll sell for that, although I don't doubt he has a lot more than that in it.

I really can't imagine a carb being that stuck. And I would have thought California would be dry. But is it damp where you are? I really can't say that this will be the last time 'cause I don't know why it is doing it in the first place. But if you've been soaking it and it hasn't freed up then it needs to come off. And we'll be here to help you.

Ok, so it is either the shaft or some part of the carb's own linkage that is blocking it. You haven't had the carb apart since last you ran it. Right? So the linkage on the carb hasn't been changed? Some carbs have lockouts that, if put together incorrectly might do that. If not, then I'd try penetrating oil on the throttle shaft of the carb as it sounds like it is stuck. And, if you know your way around the carb, I'd pull it and turn it upside down so you can get to the throttle plates. Are they rusted? And put penetrating oil on the inside of the throttle shaft where the throttle plates are so it can penetrate into the throttle plate's bushing.

Oh! So the pedal doesn't move? Not at all? That would explain why the engine doesn't rev. I've never seen a throttle shaft seize in the throttle plate, but I can see that it could happen. But, let's step back a notch first. Pull the throttle linkage off the ball on the carb's throttle and see if the pedal will move. The arrow on your pic, below, points to where the blue plastic end of the throttle cable snaps over the ball. You should be able to get it off with a screw driver.

Thanks! A 'respectable tread pattern' is what I was going for - something that looked better than the passenger car tires I had on it, without looking ridiculous on an un-lifted 2WD truck. I sent my brother the photos of the truck with the new tires, and we got to reminiscing about how much we liked the look when our grandfather had it - we're both convinced he ran tractor tires on it. (That photo is from 2002 - grandpa had been gone for two years by then, and it would be another eight before the truck was mine.) That's all I could come up with myself. This doesn't particularly bother me (although what you describe with Janey's tires would), although I had hoped for slightly smaller tires to give me some slight driveability improvements. I didn't feel any improvement on my test run w.r.t. acceleration and maintaining highway speed on hills, and this would explain why. Those look like Mud & Snow tires on the truck in the 2002 pic. A lot of pickups ran those on the rear back then. As for tire diameter, Tire Rack has the specs for rev's per mile and overall diameter for each tire, and it is amazing how much difference there can be. I'm guessing you got a large 215.

I don't have any Loctite primer. But the Loctite set up. How do I know? Because the first round I started to put the pieces together the wrong way 'round. Had them just barely started and realized that the hose barb was pointing the wrong way. But the barb didn't want to come off. It'd been maybe 3 minutes when I realized it, so I was sure it couldn't have set up. I got a drift and tapped them apart, which wasn't easy, and then had to scrape the hardened Loctite off of the parts. There's plenty of interference in the fit, so the Loctite is really just to ensure it seals. And it certainly did. I pulled a vacuum on it and it held. As for the fins, I've discovered that we have several 1 gallon water and milk bottles. And they have flat panels on the sides that will work nicely. Easily cut, thin but not brittle, and the hot-melt glue will probably adhere to them nicely. And, I'd planned on 3 fins. Hadn't thought about the weight, but Silly Putty would work nicely. Thanks!

Good place to start. But it sounds like your throttle linkage is disconnected from the carb's primary throttle shaft. I can't imagine anything else that would let it run at a nice idle since if the throttle plates open any it'll not idle - it'll either rev up or die. The throttle itself, meaning the pedal, moves an arm in the cab that pulls on the end of a cable. The other end of the cable snaps over a ball on the throttle shaft on the carb. So I think somewhere along that line something has come loose. If the cable moves and the throttle arm on the carb is moving, then it has probably been torn loose from the carb's throttle shaft. The arm should have a square opening in it and be slipped over the end of the throttle shaft and held on with either a screw or peening.

Yes, that was a good buy.

Getting old isn't for the faint of heart. I'll turn 73 in a week or so, and probably have you beat by a few decades.

Only a 12,000 lb winch. And a dedicated battery. Plus a 130 amp alternator. How many bikes do you think we may need to pull out in one go? It has synthetic line on it, and I have lots of chain and a tree-saver. Plus a pulley to go compound. Probably can get the bikes out of whatever you put them into, but I can't vouch for what shape they'll be in.

I think you are probably right - Rusty hasn't been converted. And with a loose connection there's obviously no hope for it having a charge. But, it may also not have any contamination inside. So it is possible that pulling a vacuum and charging it with R134 will do the trick. I'd take it somewhere that does A/C work and see what they find. I like the shirt & hoodie! I passed the link on to my family and we'll see what happens.

Interesting Econoline! Lot of work done on that one. And, is that a real Cobra?

The weird thing is, I wrote up a ride report as part of that first post but for some reason it kept cutting off everything after the second photo. I'm sure it's just some HTML fail on my part, but I couldn't find it. Anyway...the ride is good. Yes, the tires are a little heavier than the Mastercrafts and I can feel it going over breaks in the pavement - they 'clomp' a little harder than before. But not badly by any stretch, and the roads here are good in any case. Noise is fine as well. At highway speeds I cannot tell any difference. At slow speeds, such as coming to a stoplight, there's a little hum that wasn't there before. But again, well within my personal tolerance. Appearance-wise, they're A+...just the look I was going for. It will take a while to get used to them after ten years of riding on featureless doughnuts, but I think I can handle it. They may well bulge in the front as much as the Mastercrafts did, but they don't look as weak. Finally, an oddity. Despite being nominally smaller tires (215/75 vs 235/75 before), the ride height is completely unchanged to within the precision of my yardstick - 30.75" to the top of the front left wheel opening. I had expected to lose a quarter-inch or so, but I'm glad I didn't. P.S. I think my spare looks sharp as well. Your spare does look sharp. On the ride height, some manufacturers play games with the tire sizes. We put a set of "high MPG" tires on Janey's Subie years ago, and they sure helped the MPG. Or so we thought. One day I used the GPS on my phone and discovered that we were going quite a bit slower than the speedo said. Turns out the tires were well undersized for the size shown on the sidewall, and the enhanced economy was due to the odometer saying we'd gone more miles than before. So maybe your tires are a bit bigger than the old ones with respect to their "rating"?

Those two are nice, but I like the Colorado section better!

Yippee! They look good. :nabble_anim_claps:How does it drive? I usually think a vehicle drives much better with new tires.