Rembrant

Nothing says 70's / 80's more than hundreds of people just standing beside the track, literally a few feet away from a 3500lb lump of steel flying through the air, on the ragged edge of losing control at any time.

Bringing back and old thread from the dead for anybody new that hasn't seen these pics from the absolute glory days of the Bullnose! From the Mint 400 in Las Vegas 40 years ago. The 138HP 351M was never made to look so good, before or after, eh Gary Lewis??

That's the one that attaches to the radiator support and the battery tray. I've purchased the aftermarket ones, and they're good quality also. and iirc around the same price.

I don't think a 240 head would have holes for an air injection manifold. I don't think the carbed 300 even got that. I thought that only showed up when the 300 got EFI in 1987. Further evidence is those two threaded holes being close together...I didn't think that the carbed 300 had those, either. The 300 head got a few extra threaded holes on that side in 1987 when they switched to the two piece exhaust manifolds. A carbed head should only have one threaded hole there. I'm not a 300 expert by any means, so I could be way off base here. We need David or Jonathan, or another resident 300 expert!!

That would be a 300 EFI cylinder head, not a 240. I don't think there was any air injection happening when the 240 was still in production, was there? Here's a picture of what the air injection pipe looked like on the 300 EFI. It had little drop down pipes that fit into each of those holes with threaded fittings.

I was scrolling through junk on Ebay like usual, and came across this '86 Bronco. The dash caught my eye...not that the digital clusters are new, but I have not seen many pics of them installed. https://www.ebay.com/itm/194823498294?mkevt=1&mkcid=1&siteid=0&mkrid=711-53200-19255-0&toolid=20008&campid=5336658105&customid= PS: I dislike the body lift, so I chose a side shot.

Yup. Up here in the land of rust, it is very rare that the bumper carriage bolts can be removed by normal means. I drill them out. Might have to clamp the bolt with Vicegrips regardless, but I go through them pretty quickly with a drill. They're just regular steel bolts with thin stainless caps on them.

A lot of Bullnose Flaresides were sold new with rear step bumpers. They were aftermarket bumpers installed by the dealers. They were basically just a narrowed version of the Styleside step bumpers. These bumpers were installed on A LOT of Flaresides back in the day, so they're at least somewhat common. Something you'll notice with them is that they vary quite a bit. They're often just a little bit different from truck to truck. There were probably a few different manufacturers of them that were sold in different regions. Texas trucks probably had different bumpers than New England trucks, etc. Ford sold 3 different bumpers for the pickups, and all three of them took different mounting brackets. That's why they say the individual bumpers only fit certain style trucks. The bumpers don't come with mounting brackets, and the sellers are assuming that you'll be re-using your existing brackets. So if you're switching from one style of bumper to another, you'll also have to change the mounting brackets as well. That's the hard part of course, because although there are still companies making new replacement bumpers, nobody is making the brackets for them. (Ron/Reamer on here makes brackets for the Flareside skinny bumpers). As far as the frames go, I can only speak about half tons, but as far as rear bumper mounting goes, the F150 frames were the same from 1980-1996. The holes are in the same spots, and they even use the same bolts, all the way through for all 17 years. PS: Gary has a section on rear bumpers in the Documentation. This was my 1980 F150 4x4. I swapped in a 1995 F150 frame, and the 1980 bumper brackets and bumper bolted up on the '95 frame exactly the same as on the '80.

Haha, using the term Stepside just means he’s using the common term, lol. For the majority of people, even the Ford fans, the term Flareside refers to the 1992-up models that actually had the Flareside emblems on them.

Looks great and sounds great John! I love the tips, and the exit angles on each side. Well done.

I went through this with my '84, but mine wasn't reading over-full, it was reading under full...like 1/2 or 3/4 tank when full. This drove me crazy because it would show empty but then only tank a half a tank worth of gas to fill. Anyway, I took the sender out, and I just kept bending the float arm and testing it over and over again until I go it close. What I did specifically was start with the tank empty, then put in 10L (2.5 gallons approx), and kept adjust the float arm until it sat right on the "E", or a hair below it. Once I did that, it also read full properly. The down side of this was that I bent the float arm downwards enough that I ended up having to also bend the pickup tube down even lower as well (or the truck would have run out of gas before it read empty). After all that, it worked great. That was a fairly tortuous path to take to get a gas gauge reading properly, but they were all brand new parts, and I was lucky enough to have made all of these float adjustments while the bed was removed, so I didn't have to drop the tank. I thought I was being a real keener by checking the new sending unit before installing it...I made sure that it worked with my gas gauge before putting it in the tank. What I didn't know then, but I DO know now, is that I should have also compared the new sending unit to the old sending unit to make sure the float range of sweep was relatively the same between the two. I could be way off base here, but I think that some of the aftermarket senders are fine electrically, but just not bent/formed correctly.

Nice! I have the Dave Graham CD's for both 1984 and 1985, and while 1984 is my go-to by habit, the 1985 version is much cleaner, clearer, and crisper by comparison, so I assume the '86 version is nice as well. I know a lot of guys prefer the paper manuals, but I prefer PDF versions by far.

There's usually a couple dozen of them on Ebay in various states between well used and NOS, and I thought they were usually in the $25-$125 range. Could be wrong though.

If you like electronics and enjoy working on them, by all means man, get 'er done! I'm a card carrying member of the Bullnose Instrument Cluster Anti-Defamation League, so I'm one of those guys that's always hollering about how good the factory stuff works, LOL. However, I have been known to take on projects that were not understood by others, so I'm not the one who will tell you not to do it. As Gary said, post up some pictures!

Here it is... https://forum.garysgaragemahal.com/A-familiar-blue-bullnose-tp108533.html

I think one of the best (smartest?) upgrades you can do to an old Bullnose truck is to replace all the ground cables, and clean/lube/oil every bolt and connection to keep the rust at bay.

Yes pretty rare, I've only seen a picture of one once when I was doing my T19 swap research. Even then the 2WD ones don't seem to be very common based on the limited discussions on Foxbody Mustang forums. All of this looking around led me to the conclusion that it's not the transmission I want. Shifters are in opposite positions from normal like you said, which is why I'm including the special transfer case shifter and linkage that puts it on the passenger side. If you're in Sonoma I'm actually closer than you think: in Winters. I will warn you that as far as I know, this transmission in all forms only sat behind 300s in trucks and up to 302s in Mustangs. Parts probably aren't easy to come by either. If you're just genuinely curious maybe you could swing by and look at it. I just pressure washed it yesterday and removed the bellhousing. We had a member on here named Ray Cecil that had an '82 Flareside 4x4 with that SROD trans it in. https://forum.garysgaragemahal.com/Little-Blue-82-tp25913.html He left the forum a while ago, and has since sold that truck, but I did see it pop up somewhere again recently. Was the new owner on here Gary? I did see pics of it posted somewhere and the new owner saying it was ray's old truck...I just can't remember where I saw that. It was either on here or on FB.

I too assumed that was the case, but had no official proof other than installing a 1996 PMGR starter on a 1980 F150. Since the flywheels didn't change, another thing to note is that the starter shield, or engine-trans separator plate also did not change, and was the same for decades, right up until 1996. They changed in appearance...there's all kinds of different ones...in fact I have not seen two alike, but they have all been dimensionally the same, so the starters were always in the same place, and the flywheels were the same...so it stands to reason that the starters are 100% interchangeable.

This is what your firewall looks like if you remove the big black heater/AC box.(Credit NC Dave for the pic!) The tall vertical rectangular opening that is farthest to the left is how the leaves, dirt, debris get inside. The dirt travels along the cowl trough in front of the windshield, then falls down the passenger side and gets sucked into the hole, which by the way is right in front of your blower fan. That cavity is deeper than the hole in the firewall, so there's a lot of room in there for dirt to collect and build up. As Gary mentioned above, if you pull the passenger side interior kick panel you can get in there with a shop vac and clean it out. You might have to stir up the Potpurri of leaves with a screwdriver to get everything loosened up. At the bottom of that cavity is a rubber "duck bill" drain for the water (rain). Good idea to make sure it's clear and free as well...you should be able to pour water in there and it will run out from behind the fender. They do get plugged up after 40 years;). Here's the location of the "duck bill":

I think the SROD's were fairly rare in a 4x4 weren't they? Very interesting trans, and I'm a big fan of anything with OD, so if I had a project for it, I'd install one of these in a heartbeat. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it is the SROD that places the 4x4 shifter to the right of the transmission shifter doesn't it? It's unique, in that the shifters are almost side by side, and on the opposite sides of each other than typical. Good luck with the sale. The way gas prices are going, transmissions with OD will only gain in popularity going forward imho.

I would be at least a little bit wary of that ignition module, unless you can confirm that it is a 100% OEM part, and not an "aftermarket Ford" module. As Gary noted above, some of the aftermarket ignition modules for some reason or another have the retard on start feature deleted....even the Ford labeled modules. I bought one when I was cleaning up my engine bay (from Amazon) and my truck suddenly became difficult to start. I was running a lot of advance...like 17 degrees...but still, the truck worked fine with the original 35 year old Ford module. I ended up switching back to the original, and the truck started and worked great. I believe the Echlin TP-40 box from Napa has been confirmed to have the start feature. https://www.napaonline.com/en/p/ECHTP40 All of the original Ford boxes (Blue strain relief) are fine, obviously. If you're not running a huge amount of IGN advance, it probably doesn't matter...but it's just something to be aware of.

I don't know anything about starter bendix teeth count, but I know the conversation does come up once in a while. If it's any help, I installed a PMGR starter on my 1980 F150 with 300 inline 6, and that PMGR starter came from a 1996 F150 with 300/6. I didn't count the teeth, but I did remove it from that 1996 F150 myself, and installed it on the 1980, and it worked great! So while I can't guarantee the teeth counts, I can guarantee the year differences. The 164 tooth flywheels didn't change. I kinda miss that old '80 sometimes. It was a cool truck...in a "if ya squint, it's mint" kinda way! PS: If it's any help, I have a new PMGR starter here in my garage, and it has 10 teeth. It's for my 5.0L build, and I believe I ordered it for a 1996 F150 w/5.0L V8.

Gary, I saw a comment on one of the Facebook Bullnose groups the other day where a guy said, "Why on earth would anybody buy an archiac device like a carburetor when there are so many aftermarket EFI systems available that work so much better?". I didn't read the comments, but the obvious answer is price, if not simplicity, or both of those things together. I thought your thread was timely considering this was fresh in my mind from the past couple days. Prior to me turning back in time and buying my 1984 Bullnose project in 2017, I had played around with ECU tuning in everything that I had owned for years previously. Anything that I could buy software for, I did, and used it too (Cars, and EFI motorcycles mostly). Problem is, the newer the vehicle is, the less improvements there are for the vehicle owner to make....you're basically left removing emissions tunes, or safety tunes (rev limiters or speed limiters). Still, they were fun to play with. I may still install and aftermarket EFI system in my current project with the freshly rebuilt 5.0L engine. Time (and pocketbook) will tell. I will be installing a transmission controller for the 4R70W, and since there is no kickdown rod or cable like on older transmissions, I'll have to install a TPS on the side of the carburetor. That in itself has me thinking to just go with EFI, and make the complete jump...since the EFI TPS with interface with the transmission stand alone controller. Theoretically, they should work seamlessly together.

Ok, thanks Gary. I was curious if they just used wider top plates for both the 2.5" and 3" leaf springs, or if they had different sized plates. I guess that answers that. I thought about it after I asked the question though, and I assume the diffs were all the same, so the spring perches must have always been 3" wide?

This might be a dumb question, I don't know...but are the spring plates different widths between 2wd F150 and 4x4 F150 on the 8.8 rear diffs?