Rembrant

I need one of those friends! We have a little table top drill press at work, and I'm going to bring it home for a couple weeks and try it out and see if I can handle having it on the bench, etc.

good deal!

Merry Christmas to you guys as well! Thank you to all of you for the things you do to keep the forum truckin' along! Enjoy your 'warm' Christmas haha. It's 12F here today, but not a flake of snow on the ground.

Very cool John! Something I desperately want/need is a drill press...for various reasons...but I don't really have room for a full size floor model, and I'm not sure a bench top unit would be heavy enough for what I want to use it for. I've been torn on the topic for several years. I mainly want it for drilling out broken bolts, in which case it needs to have a good size table on it to be able to bolt down something like a SBF timing cover (I happen to have a used one with 2 broken bolts in it lol).

Cool!

Terry, The original Flareside tailights were made by Grote, and up until recently Grote was making new lights almost identical to the originals. Look up Grote part numbers 52802 and 52812. Unfortunately, Grote obsoleted them earlier in 2021 sometime so they are no longer making them. If you check with heavy truck parts suppliers and Ebay, Amazon, etc, I'm sure you'll still find some kicking around. They are 'almost' identical. The wiring pigtail is different, but you can cut your old plugs off and splice them on to the new lights. You'd have to do this anyway to get the factory original rubber grommets that go into the rear stake pockets. The other difference is that the driver's side light has a bottom window to illuminate a license plate. I simply painted over mine with satin black and it matched perfectly (it's on the bottom of the housing so nobody will see it anyway). Here is the lens on the bottom of the driver's side light I'm talking about: I simply masked it off and painted it satin black. Matched great. Once installed, they look factory original, and they're way brighter than the originals, even with bulbs. The new 'fresh' plastic lenses are much nicer. An important note about the Flareside taillights that a lot of people don't know is that they came from the factory with NO ground wires. The taillights are grounded only through the three mounting studs to the bed itself. I think Ford may have run a dedicated ground wire later on...either in 1985 or 1986, but the earlier trucks definitely did not have it. Best thing to do is run a ground wire...either to a ground wire on the truck, or to the frame (that's what I did). You can attach it to one of the mounting posts and hide it somewhat. You don't necessarily need it, but I think the lights will work better and be more reliable with a ground wire. JMTCW. You can see my ground wire below: As for the LED taillights, I'm not much help with those. I did buy two sets of these Grote 52802 and 52812's for both Flaresides, but as of this past summer they were getting harder to find.

Well done!

I received an order from Rock Auto this week with a damaged item. It was a 1pc oil pan gasket for SBF, and oddly in was broken in the packaging. Kind of odd, because the packaging was not marked or damaged in any way at all, but the gasket was definitely broken. I didn't even have to open it. I started a warranty/return claim, and they ended up sending me a new one, all the way from California no less. I don't have to return the old one or do anything, they're just sending the new one and told me to hang on to the old one for two weeks in case they do ask for it. Took me all of 2 minutes online, and within 24 hrs I had an email saying a new gasket was on the way. I thought it was going to be a pain, but it ended up working out being simple and easy. (Likely because it was a cheap item, but still).

I have actually checked the factory tach against my digital timing light, and the RPM's were bang on the money at least up to 2500 RPM or so (as far as we checked). I was doing some timing checks and we checked it in increments from idle all the way to 2500 or 2750, I forget now.

I've taken the time to drill out the rivets and remove those SBF perches not once, but twice, thinking that somebody would need them sometime and I ended up throwing them out with scrap about a year later, Ha! That's how it always works. Welcome aboard to the new guy. Beauty of a truck you've got there.

Well, they definitely sold short wheelbase versions right up until 1996, and I'm pretty sure the gas tanks were the same dimensions and mounted the same all along as well. I would guess that the short wheelbase 4x4's didn't get the E4OD, or the electric t-case shift? The E4OD only came out in 1989 as the heavy duty replacement for the shorter C6. The standard 4spd auto in an F150 at that time was still the AOD. 1991 was the last year for the speedometer cable, so that issue went away in 1992. I'm guessing the E4OD is just too long...

Sorry, I read too quickly the first time around and missed this question/comment. I bought a 1995 F150 4x4 SWB last year just for the chassis and drivetrain. I then swapped a 1980 bod on to the 1995 frame...cab and Flareside bed. I re-used the factory 1995 drive components...the M5OD trans, and BW1356 transfer case. In converting the truck to a 1980, I ordered and installed an 80-86 short wheelbase 16 gal side mount gas tank, and a new set of straps, and it bolted right in, and there were no clearance issues at all with the BW1356 transfer case. The E4OD is quite a bit larger than the M5OD that was in mine, but that wouldn't change the left/right position of the transfer case. It might change the front to back position by an inch or two, but that's it. My BW1356 would be the same size as yours also, but mine was manual shift, not electric. This is why I asked previously about the crossmember. For all intents and purposes, the F150 frames were the same from 1980-1996, 2wd or 4x4. However, I bet you there were 30 different transmission crossmembers.

What transmission crossmember are you using in this swap? When you say there is a motor on the transfer case, does that mean it is electric shift?

I only made one purchase from DC, and that was for a set of NOS Ford Flareside bed sides. They somehow found 20+ sets of these a few years ago, and were selling them for what I thought was an outstanding price, at $149 USD each. I didn't know until then, but they have a separate division called Dennis Carpenter Surplus, as that is where I had to buy the sides from. Same location, but had to talk to a specific guy to get them from their warehouse. They were a great deal for NOS items that nobody else is producing. They were decent to deal with, and the shipping was fair too.

That was movie was so good! Back when Robert Deniro used to be cool lol.

I had a Holley 4160 on my '84 302, and I quite liked it. It was a 600CFM with electric choke and vacuum secondaries. I did call their tech support line a couple times and they were helpful enough. Local performance shop has lots of parts for them, and Holley books are plentiful (I bought 3 of them myself). Full disclosure: I don't have much to compare the Holley to. My previous carbed vehicles many years before were mostly Chevy's with Quadrajets, and a handful of Fords with small factory carbs (nothing bigger than a 2bbl). Pros? I'm fond of the name brand, and it feels like it has some curb appeal. Cons? That stamped serial number they use bugs me...it tells you the year, but not the decade? What's up with that anyway? Oh, it has a 7 stamped on it? That means it's a 1977, a 1987, or a 1997 lol. (Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) My own personal story sort of contradicts the general consensus of the out-of-the-box Holley carb. If you read about them online, you will find hundreds of stories of people claiming that Holleys run rich right out of the box. Since my 302 was broken in on a dyno with the brand new 4160, we were able to test it precisely. In my case, it was slightly lean out of the box, and we had to bump the stock #66 jets up to #68 to get the AFR correct. On the street at cruising RPM's, the AFR was slightly rich, so I likely could have dropped the #66 jets back in it. Just my 2 cents worth!

Nice truck! That's a heavy duty looking steel bracket/mount on the front of the engine. Is that a homemade piece or something factory that I've never seen before? Was there a spotlight on the cowl panel on the driver's side?

And do the Bullnose era trucks use standard fittings? I just checked the output fitting on this 1996 C2 pump, and they are M16x1.5 metric. Seems like they can be converted to regular AN fittings pretty easily.

The fitting is quite big, and it seals with an O-ring, but I don't what size it is, sorry. I had a spare valve here for the longest time, but it went away with a bunch of parts that I sold. Some of the aftermarket replacement masters come with them. The one new one I bought did not, so I grabbed a couple of them at the junkyard.

Hey Lima, Ya, I removed the prop valve on both of the trucks I swapped. The switch in the F150 masters is just a float, nothing more...so it only knows if the level is low.

Very interesting. I've not seen one on a rad support before, and I have looked at a few of them.

I'm a big fan of this swap! I did it both Bullnoses. On my '84, I even wired in the float switch so that my Brake warning light in the cluster would illuminate of the fluid got low. I put the same master in my '80 Bullnose, but it was a used one and the float switch was bad in it, so I didn't bother wiring that one in. They worked fine for me (on my little lightweight half tons)

There were two buck tags on each truck, or at least there were on the ones that I've looked at. My '84 had it mounted over near the brake booster, partially tucked up under the cowl lip. On the Flareside beds, I've found them on the passenger side front corner. See below.

Good question!

Dave, Good call on the hubcaps. Ya know, I see those hubcaps all the time and I don't know if I've ever been too sure what years they're from. I know they carried over into the Bricknose era for sure, but when they started with the Bullnoses I do not know. Shifter way back by the seat like that it's a 4spd OD for sure, but which one I don't know. I'd say it was the SMOD with the shifter position a bit to the left like that. SROD was similar though. They're both RUG's.