Rembrant

OK, I'm back with the results of my fuel sender modifications: I put approx 180 miles on the truck, and the fuel gauge had dropped back down to "E". The needle was just starting to cross over the white mark above the "E". Fill up took almost 12 gallons. I'm actually pretty happy with this. I could have driven it father obviously, but didn't want to take any chances since I didn't know how much I really had. So I'll keep trying it until I find out where the magic spot is on my gauge where it takes about 14 gallons to fill. I'll consider this case closed for now. I'm happy with how it's working. Oh, and I managed 15.25 mpg, mostly all short city trips, and almost no time in 5th gear, so hopefully I'm still up in the 18MPG range on the highway.

As the owner of a 302, I can honestly say I wouldn't want a lifted F250 4x4 with one...lol, certainly not in it's stock form at least. It is a lovely truck though.

Gary, the good news is that right now I actually know exactly how much fuel is in the tank. It will take me a few days to burn that fuel and see how the gauge reads, but I'll be reporting back with an update when I get there.

Dave, I did all of the easy stuff...lol. There's really not much work to installing the bed. Myself and 3 coworkers lifted it on there, and then it's just the 8 bolts, 3 screws to connect the fuel filler, and plug in the left and right tail lights, and bam, it's done. I have to sort out the fender liners today, get the rear bumper and brackets installed, and then start working on the interior and cleaning up the engine bay.

So, for the Movie car chase fans, it looks like one of then original Bullitt Mustangs is going to be up for auction in January 2020, do I understand this correctly? I don't know much about how MECUM works... https://www.mecum.com/lots/FL0120-397388/1968-ford-mustang-gt-bullitt/ Anyway want to take a wild guess at what it will go for?...

Nice. I really like the idea of this headset. I developed an annoying case of tinnitus a couple years ago and now where hearing protection for EVERYTHING. I have a couple ear muffs like these, but without the Bluetooth. I wonder if they would bother me....hmmm. Oh, a quick Google search shows plenty of them in-stock locally, so I might have to try a set. Thanks for the heads up.

The more I look at other flareside, blue just seems to pop out to me the most. A green with tan interior flareside, 300 six 4 speed 4x4 I saw in tulsa is what started my love affair for the bullnoses. I ended up with exactly what I wanted, a blue one. Ray, I'll have the 3P paint code for you shortly by the way. I just asked them for it this morning along with the some other stuff as it wasn't provided with my paperwork.

I haven't come across this swap yet, but it seems like it would be a nice powerplant for a little Bullnose. I built a nice little 302 for my '84 Flareside, but I still suffer from "351 envy" from time to time. Anyway, that's a project for another time, far from now.

Thanks Gary! It does look really good, but it's far from perfect. The paint job is really nice, and I'm very pleased with it. The panel fitment, and panel alignment is not 100%, but as I said, it's an old truck, and it is what it is. Most people would never notice, but if you start examining it closely, you can see the gap imperfections. And still, I have a to-do list a MILE long....lol. That's fine though, it will give me some stuff to do over the winter. Right now, the short term goal (next few days) is to get it finished, and cleaned up. Then, I'm going to ride the wheels off it as much as I can until the roads get salted, likely sometime after mid-November.

I am! I got it mostly reassembled today...at least all the big stuff, which made it roadworthy again. Going to install the rear bumper tomorrow and F150 emblems. It is still covered in dust and grime here, but it is mostly assembled again! I'm a little disappointed with the fitment of the aftermarket fenders, but I can live with them. The truck looks fine. If somebody wants to look at the small imperfections and point them out, that's fine too. It's an old truck, and I plan on driving the wheels off it. Stay tuned, there's more to come. It's still filthy dirty and needs interior work, rear bumper, new F150 emblems, stereo and speakers, engine bay cleaning, etc, etc.

Ok, back on track with Rembrant's original issues and "weirdness" with his new fuel tank and fuel sending unit. I think the issue has been resolved, but I'll have to wait now until I burn through a full tank of fuel. I have to apologize as I made a bunch of mods here and didn't take ANY pictures (like I normally do). Below is what my new fuel sender looked like, exactly: I did two things. See how the last bend in the float is less than 90 degrees? Maybe it's 75-80 degrees, right? I ended up bending that arm about the same distance beyond 90 degrees, so it is now maybe 100-105 degrees. The problem then was that the bottom travel point of the float was below the lowest point of the pickup tube (I also measured the pickup tube to be approximately 2" above the floor of the tank.). I then bent the pickup tube down a little bit (Nicely, with a proper tubing bender), so now the pickup tube is about 1 1/4" above the floor of the tank. I'm OK with this. So...I put 10 liters in the tank, or approx 2.5 gallons. With the fuel sender float arm bent down, I had it reading on "E" at this point. I drove the truck and had it running a bit, and burned probably a 1/4 gallon of fuel. When I filled it up, it took 53 liters, or 14 gallons, and the gauge went past the "F" mark. VICTORY!!! I was able to fill the tank with the gas nozzle on full speed, and when it clicked off, I had approximately 62 liters in the tank, or 16.5 gallons, which is exactly what Spectra Premium specs it at. So now, between FULL, and EMPTY (indicated) should be about 14 gallons, or exactly where I was prior to changing the tank and sending unit. I'm pretty stoked about all this. It took quite a bit of trial and error, but I think it's OK now...or at the very least, far better than it was. I'll report back after I burn off some fuel and see how the gauge behaves. So...in conclusion...there are a couple things I learned here in dealing with aftermarket replacement part blues: If you install an aftermarket sender, make sure you stroke the float arm to make sure the gauge travels from empty to full. Even more important, make sure you place the new sender next to the old sender and compare the float heights and float travel. I didn't do this previously, but wish I had. That's all. Carry on. Peace & Axle Grease! Cory

I'm loving these Idaho trucks... The engine bay looks brand new, and the interior is nice as well. It seems unusual that the truck has a 302 though? That's fairly uncommon in a 4x4 F250 is it not? Other than the lift kit and tires/wheels, it looks like it's mostly original. https://www.ebay.com/itm/193123750750 More pictures here: http://s1190.photobucket.com/user/allmetalclassicsllc/1983%20Ford%20F250%204x4%20New/story

These forums are really great stuff. Since 1999 when I got my first real decent home computer, I have been loving forums like this. Although you usually don't get to lean over the hood of your project vehicle with your forum friends, you do get to "hang out" with like minded people, and that's cool. Most of the time, the people nearby not only don't have any interest in your rusty junk, they also think you're out of your mind for investing any time or money into it...lol. I can't tell you how many times somebody has asked me, "So, uh, when you're all done with this thing, you can at least sell it and make some money on it, right?". HAHAHAHA....uh, no...that's not the way it works. Never mind. Thanks for all you do Gary, and thanks for creating a place a bunch of OCD guys with dirty fingernails can hang out.

FIFY... I hope this hijack isn't inappropriate, but I want to say that I changed both tanks and senders about four years ago. I could not find the one year wonder '87 senders, so I went with '86 mechanical pump senders. These read completely wrong, so I've been just watching mileage with fill ups and figure I need gas around 160 miles per 19 gallon tank. Gary has mentioned an Arduino workaround for this. This has been working fine for five years. But now, the rear tank runs dry seemingly at a random mileage between 120-150. At first it thought it was because I'm pushing the truck so hard, or my speedo/odo was dying. So I've been using Google maps to follow miles and check speed. BUT when filling up I can only get 13-17 gallons into the tank. I can see the fuel in the fill neck, so I know it's full. If it was consistent, I would say the pickup had fallen off. I can leave the gas cap loose and it still happens, so not a vacuum problem. Tanks are fairly new, and clean according to borescope inspection. (Dont send a cheap $15 cellphone borescope into whatever they call gasoline these days ) Hard to imagine there's a random 2-6 gallons of water in there,and I didn't see any phase separation with the scope, but my next 'experiment' is to dump a couple of gallons of toluene in with my next fill up. That's miscable with water and pretty difficult to separate. It will burn in its equilibrium state and has a good octane #. Can anyone see something I'm missing? Any other ideas to fix or figure this out? Hijack/ How much does the rear tank hold? Or, how much is it supposed to hold?

I'm out...lol. That $38,900 USD would work out to around $52,000 CDN for me, and then I'd have to pay 15% tax to register it, which would make it $59,800 CDN. Plates and title transfer would be another couple hundred bucks...lol, so for me it's a $60,000 Bronco. It IS Gorgeous though, as Bronco's go. I'd love to have it.

Potential flood damage could be a big concern, but if the thing has been restored (mostly), I don't think there'd be much evidence of it, if any at all. It looks like it's just a warning that hey, this vehicle was registered in Alabama during Hurricane Katrina. It looks like it was a one owner vehicle for 30 years, and during that time it was registered in or near Tuscaloosa, 200 miles from the coast. When it was first sold in 2016, it was registered in Echola which is 20 miles further northwest. It only arrived in Florida recently. Maybe one of the Alabama guys on here can tell us how bad Katrina was 200 miles inland, but I'm guessing that on the Carfax it's just a vague warning. It's kinda cool that they do that actually. If it was flooded, at least it wasn't salt water...lol, not 200 miles from the Gulf at least.

I'm just outside of Halifax...between the city and Peggy's Cove. There weren't many opportunities to see my truck on the road this season unfortunately. I took it back and forth to Dartmouth a small handful of times for car night in Woodside, or to take it to work, and that was it. It was really only on the road for a couple weeks in July, and it's been in the body shop now since the beginning of August. In any case, I'll have it back this week and It will be back on the road by the end of the week. If all goes well I'm going to try and make the last couple car shows around...there's one near Bridgewater next weekend, and another in Moncton the week after that. Other than that, I just want to drive it, so I might even try to squeeze in a lap around the Cabot Trail if everything is working as it should;). I see your truck is coming along well. Nice work man! Got the old girl back late today. Couple pics in front of the body shop. Bed will be going on tomorrow as soon as I sorted out the fuel sender issues. Then grill mirrors new badges wipers and bumpers.

Ignore my awful spelling lol working on my phone tonight...

PS: I think the original tanks were specified at 16 gallons ya? My usually fillips used to be about 14 gallons so that makes sense. This new aftermarket tank is advertised as being 16.5 gallon. I don’t know if it is actually different or just the same and labeled different.

OK, I am getting my truck back in a few days and I need to rectify this fuel gauge issue before I reinstall the bed, so I need to come up with a plan. Dave, you mention that yours is reading empty with 5 gallons in it, and that's cool, but I believe my original tank was reading empty with more like 2-2.5 gallons in it. The few times I drove it any distance, I drove it until it was empty (on "E", or below) and to fill it took 14 gallons. I guess to start I'm going to drain as much gas out of it as I can, and then put 2-3 gallons in it and then bend the sender float arm until it reads "E" on the gauge. Would this be a reasonable or unreasonable thing to do? Anybody? My issue is that I really won't have much time to play with this before putting the bed back on. I'm also going to check and adjust the plastic vent tube if required. I know this thing will work, I just need to hold my tongue right. Ok go I got my old Bullnose back late today. Fuel gauge was sitting between “E” and 1/4 tank, so at the 1/8th mark more or less. I removed about 42-43 litres of fuel...about 11 gallons I guess. Interesting to note I found the filter sock had fallen off the end of the sender. I had to fish it out of the from the front of the tank with a piece of wire. No biggie, I’ll fix that. I bent the float arm but couldn’t get it to read past 1/2 tank, even with the 11 gallons in there. So after I drained it, I put 2.5 gallons back in, and the gauge goes to “E” when I turn the key on. I don’t really know what it will do until I fill it back up. The way it was, I think the float would have had to almost hit the top of the tank to read full, which makes sense based on how it was working. The sender looked fine, it just almost seems like it’s too short for the tank. Does anybody know how far the pickup tube is supposed to be from the floor of the tank? I’m trying to tweak everything to get the right balance. Right now the pickup tube is just barely submerged with 2.5 gallons in it. I can’t tell if the float is floating or if it’s bottomed out. I will check that tomorrow.

Well gentlemen, this bad boy F250 auction just cracked $10,000 with 3 full days to go. That's impressive. The "mint" half tons, in 2 and 4 wheel drive usually top out at $7500 bucks. I'd say between $6500 and $8500, depending on 2 or 4 wheel, condition, etc. Prior to this F250, and a couple F250's before it, nothing Bullnose was cracking the $10k mark except minty fresh low mile original rust free Broncos. Curious to see where this one goes. The auction bidding usually seems to top out mid way through, and then there are just a couple small up bids in the last few days.

Alright cheapskates, get your wallets out! https://www.ebay.com/itm/254369525057 It is a lovely looking Bronco for sure. I don't know if it's almost $40k nice, but it looks good.

According to Google, the part number is for a shifter bushing for 1983-1991 Mustangs with a T5 trans. It is possible that it is the same bushing for a truck 4spd though. Anything is possible.

lol, now there's one I haven't heard in a long LONG time. The band came and went before I was even born, but I grew up on AM radio and they played a lot of 60's stuff. I don't think I've heard that song in 25 years.

You guys have me curious... Since my truck was a radio delete model, there were no speakers, no wiring, no brackets, conduits, etc, etc. I bought a stereo and a set of 6.5" speakers for the doors. Would there be much benefit in me also installing a center speaker? And, what does it attach to?...last time I looked behind the radio delete bezel, it was just a massive empty cavern...