The Deuce Build Thread

[mat in tn]

That is excellent news!!!

Man, that has to have been a huge relief. Well done!

loud clunks make me nervous. hearing a little actuating noise is one thing. i think you said it is the 1356.

that transfer case has a rather weak link being the oil pump/pickup assembly.

[Pete Whitstone]

More to come. I'll get pictures when I get it all back together.

And here they are. Got the truck put completely back together. Here is the front and back of the 4x4 controller motor and power distribution stuff. I will be using more ports on that, as I get the motor converted to EFI.

Built a bracket to mount it up under the dash, here are some shots of it in place.

Bundled all the wires up as neat as I could, and put the dash back together.

It's pretty much the way it came out, except for the 4x4 switch now occupying some of the cubby.

Finally, the transmission controller was mounted into that little area on the left of the glovebox.

And I forgot until now, I was able to use those 2 speedo cables I had, putting a VSS in between them under the brake booster - shout out to Gary who sent me one! The other end of the cable, that had that big 7/8" screw on thing, was handled with a $15 ebay GM to Ford converter. Not sure yet if the gears I have will read accurately, I think they are 7/17 and should be in the ballpark.

Once I rebuild the 9 inch and install different gears and a helical worm gear diff, that will about wrap up this phase of the project. Next up is the motor. The general plan is this.

- Starting with the '95 351W hydraulic roller block

- 408 stroker kit

- Aluminum heads

- Mild cam

- Edelbrock Pro Flow 4 EFI system

- '95 serpentine belt drive and accessories

But I shouldn't have to have the truck down very long for that, since I'm starting with another engine. More on that when the project starts.

 

[Gary Lewis]

More to come. I'll get pictures when I get it all back together.

And here they are. Got the truck put completely back together. Here is the front and back of the 4x4 controller motor and power distribution stuff. I will be using more ports on that, as I get the motor converted to EFI.

Built a bracket to mount it up under the dash, here are some shots of it in place.

Bundled all the wires up as neat as I could, and put the dash back together.

It's pretty much the way it came out, except for the 4x4 switch now occupying some of the cubby.

Finally, the transmission controller was mounted into that little area on the left of the glovebox.

And I forgot until now, I was able to use those 2 speedo cables I had, putting a VSS in between them under the brake booster - shout out to Gary who sent me one! The other end of the cable, that had that big 7/8" screw on thing, was handled with a $15 ebay GM to Ford converter. Not sure yet if the gears I have will read accurately, I think they are 7/17 and should be in the ballpark.

Once I rebuild the 9 inch and install different gears and a helical worm gear diff, that will about wrap up this phase of the project. Next up is the motor. The general plan is this.

- Starting with the '95 351W hydraulic roller block

- 408 stroker kit

- Aluminum heads

- Mild cam

- Edelbrock Pro Flow 4 EFI system

- '95 serpentine belt drive and accessories

But I shouldn't have to have the truck down very long for that, since I'm starting with another engine. More on that when the project starts.

Well done! That looks great!

I assume the Pro Flow has a computer, so where is it going to be mounted? I ask because I'm looking for the best spot for my EEC V controller to go, but think it'll go roughly where your 4x4 controller went, which is where Ford put it for several years.

[mat in tn]

Well done! That looks great!

I assume the Pro Flow has a computer, so where is it going to be mounted? I ask because I'm looking for the best spot for my EEC V controller to go, but think it'll go roughly where your 4x4 controller went, which is where Ford put it for several years.

i only had one experience with the pro flow 4. that was last year doing a 78 vette. 350/350. classic edelbrock format. we NEVER got it to work correctly. many hours on the phone with edelbrock tech support. they tried to control it from internet. wound up boxing it up and sending it back to them. they sent another complete unit and we had different fails. returned that and used a performer rpm and an avs2 carb with an hei. voila! ran like a dream. we never found 'a' problem or a cure. handheld controller seemed to not communicate with ecu reliably. tech support was good, and service was also however we NEEDED both and still had to go another direction because the customer lost patience. understandably so.

[Pete Whitstone]

I assume the Pro Flow has a computer, so where is it going to be mounted? I ask because I'm looking for the best spot for my EEC V controller to go, but think it'll go roughly where your 4x4 controller went, which is where Ford put it for several years.

Not sure yet. I imagine it will have to go somewhere under the dash to the right of the gas pedal, maybe above the hump, but under the dash. Somewhere near the HVAC controller, I am thinking. I'll have to get it and see the actual size of the computer. I think it's pretty small, I am assuming it is the black box at the top left of this image.

https://static.summitracing.com/global/images/prod/xlarge/edl-35950_xl.jpg

If so, it looks like it's not much larger than a pack of cigarettes.

[Pete Whitstone]

i only had one experience with the pro flow 4. that was last year doing a 78 vette. 350/350. classic edelbrock format. we NEVER got it to work correctly. many hours on the phone with edelbrock tech support. they tried to control it from internet. wound up boxing it up and sending it back to them. they sent another complete unit and we had different fails. returned that and used a performer rpm and an avs2 carb with an hei. voila! ran like a dream. we never found 'a' problem or a cure. handheld controller seemed to not communicate with ecu reliably. tech support was good, and service was also however we NEEDED both and still had to go another direction because the customer lost patience. understandably so.

Thanks for the input, Mat. Not what I wanted to hear, but I'd rather know now. Looks like there are 14 reviews on Summit's website for this particular unit, under 3 part numbers. 12 of the reviews are 5 star, and 2 are 4 star, so your experience doesn't seem to be a common one. I wonder what the differences are between the Chevy and the Ford units? Might only be the intake manifold.

[mat in tn]

i only had one experience with the pro flow 4. that was last year doing a 78 vette. 350/350. classic edelbrock format. we NEVER got it to work correctly. many hours on the phone with edelbrock tech support. they tried to control it from internet. wound up boxing it up and sending it back to them. they sent another complete unit and we had different fails. returned that and used a performer rpm and an avs2 carb with an hei. voila! ran like a dream. we never found 'a' problem or a cure. handheld controller seemed to not communicate with ecu reliably. tech support was good, and service was also however we NEEDED both and still had to go another direction because the customer lost patience. understandably so.

Thanks for the input, Mat. Not what I wanted to hear, but I'd rather know now. Looks like there are 14 reviews on Summit's website for this particular unit, under 3 part numbers. 12 of the reviews are 5 star, and 2 are 4 star, so your experience doesn't seem to be a common one. I wonder what the differences are between the Chevy and the Ford units? Might only be the intake manifold.

i certainly wish i would have learned the cause or causes to report on but it seemed to be multiple issues. being an ecu we ran proprietary grounds to avoid irregularities. in some cases, we had injectors on one side and other cases it would revert to the other side. always proving the hardware yet it always seemed to be in the software or controller. it ran pig rich and sounded like a harley, not the good ones!

[Pete Whitstone]

More to come. I'll get pictures when I get it all back together.

And here they are. Got the truck put completely back together. Here is the front and back of the 4x4 controller motor and power distribution stuff. I will be using more ports on that, as I get the motor converted to EFI.

Built a bracket to mount it up under the dash, here are some shots of it in place.

Bundled all the wires up as neat as I could, and put the dash back together.

It's pretty much the way it came out, except for the 4x4 switch now occupying some of the cubby.

Finally, the transmission controller was mounted into that little area on the left of the glovebox.

And I forgot until now, I was able to use those 2 speedo cables I had, putting a VSS in between them under the brake booster - shout out to Gary who sent me one! The other end of the cable, that had that big 7/8" screw on thing, was handled with a $15 ebay GM to Ford converter. Not sure yet if the gears I have will read accurately, I think they are 7/17 and should be in the ballpark.

Once I rebuild the 9 inch and install different gears and a helical worm gear diff, that will about wrap up this phase of the project. Next up is the motor. The general plan is this.

- Starting with the '95 351W hydraulic roller block

- 408 stroker kit

- Aluminum heads

- Mild cam

- Edelbrock Pro Flow 4 EFI system

- '95 serpentine belt drive and accessories

But I shouldn't have to have the truck down very long for that, since I'm starting with another engine. More on that when the project starts.

I spent part of today trying to dial in the trans controller computer a bit. I left the glovebox door down and paid some attention to the small display on it. The "home" screen on it shows MPH and a few other data items. Since I wasn't sure where I would land with speedometer accuracy, I used a GPS speedo app on my phone to find actual ground speed.

What I was seeing was the display on the trans controller making sudden and unpredictable changes in speed. It would show 15 miles an hour (roughly accurate) then suddenly jump up to 42. This of course would make the trans lurch because it would think it needed to upshift. The needle on the mechanical speedo was a bit jumpy, but didn't display any such antics.

I swapped in another VSS, the kind in the middle of the speedo cable, near the brake booster. Same result. I checked all the wiring, checked that the VSS's were spinning freely, but the problem persisted.

Finally I decided to try to get the VSS to fit into the TC tail shaft housing again, and see what kind if reading it gave. That would eliminate the possibility of problems with the speedo cable or the mid-cable VSS's. After a bunch of messing around with the interfering seam on the gas tank, I finally got it to slip into position. Then I made a new cable to go up to the front where the pick-up point for the speed sensor was. I determined that I can probably get the long single-piece speedo cable in the end of the VSS without interference from the gas tank, but left it off for now.

Another test drive revealed a much more predictable speed reading. It still jumped around a bit, but from like 54 to 58... not enough to make the trans want to shift or anything. Still more than I think it should jump around though... if these things are designed to handle cruise control, I would think they would have to read rock steady.

One thing I had to do to get the speed in the ballpark was to play with the configuration settings on the trans controller. When I started off, it was reading about 20% low - it would think the truck was doing 35 when it was doing 45 for example. This made it delay the shifts, since it didn't see that the speed it wanted had been obtained yet. The computer has the ability to input a bunch of different things - axle ratio, tire diameter, drive and driven gear counts and so on. For now I just played with the "sensor pulses per revolution" and by reducing it from 8 to 6, got the speeds in the ballpark. I need to fix it right by setting it back to 8 and entering all the other stuff correctly, but that's for another day. I would need to change the axle ratio anyway after I put the right gears in it.

The trans seems to be working flawlessly, now that it doesn't think the vehicle speed is jumping around too much. I'm going to call Baumann/US Shift and see if the VSS wires are sensitive to being run with other wires and may be picking up noise. I might have to reroute them if that's the case, but the manual didn't say anything about any sensitivity there.

[Gary Lewis]

I spent part of today trying to dial in the trans controller computer a bit. I left the glovebox door down and paid some attention to the small display on it. The "home" screen on it shows MPH and a few other data items. Since I wasn't sure where I would land with speedometer accuracy, I used a GPS speedo app on my phone to find actual ground speed.

What I was seeing was the display on the trans controller making sudden and unpredictable changes in speed. It would show 15 miles an hour (roughly accurate) then suddenly jump up to 42. This of course would make the trans lurch because it would think it needed to upshift. The needle on the mechanical speedo was a bit jumpy, but didn't display any such antics.

I swapped in another VSS, the kind in the middle of the speedo cable, near the brake booster. Same result. I checked all the wiring, checked that the VSS's were spinning freely, but the problem persisted.

Finally I decided to try to get the VSS to fit into the TC tail shaft housing again, and see what kind if reading it gave. That would eliminate the possibility of problems with the speedo cable or the mid-cable VSS's. After a bunch of messing around with the interfering seam on the gas tank, I finally got it to slip into position. Then I made a new cable to go up to the front where the pick-up point for the speed sensor was. I determined that I can probably get the long single-piece speedo cable in the end of the VSS without interference from the gas tank, but left it off for now.

Another test drive revealed a much more predictable speed reading. It still jumped around a bit, but from like 54 to 58... not enough to make the trans want to shift or anything. Still more than I think it should jump around though... if these things are designed to handle cruise control, I would think they would have to read rock steady.

One thing I had to do to get the speed in the ballpark was to play with the configuration settings on the trans controller. When I started off, it was reading about 20% low - it would think the truck was doing 35 when it was doing 45 for example. This made it delay the shifts, since it didn't see that the speed it wanted had been obtained yet. The computer has the ability to input a bunch of different things - axle ratio, tire diameter, drive and driven gear counts and so on. For now I just played with the "sensor pulses per revolution" and by reducing it from 8 to 6, got the speeds in the ballpark. I need to fix it right by setting it back to 8 and entering all the other stuff correctly, but that's for another day. I would need to change the axle ratio anyway after I put the right gears in it.

The trans seems to be working flawlessly, now that it doesn't think the vehicle speed is jumping around too much. I'm going to call Baumann/US Shift and see if the VSS wires are sensitive to being run with other wires and may be picking up noise. I might have to reroute them if that's the case, but the manual didn't say anything about any sensitivity there.

I saw something similar on Big Blue's speed control. I was running that VSS I sent you, meaning in the middle of the speedo cable, and couldn't get the speed control to be as stable as I wanted. So I switched to the VSS in the output of the transfer case.

But, at the same time I discovered that the speedometer drive gear in the t-case was slipping. So I fixed it and took the truck out to test it - much improved. But I don't know if it was the VSS or the drive gear, or both.

However, I can't imagine that the output of the VSS in the middle of the speedo cable is as stable as that of the VSS in the t-case. That long, skinny speedo cable probably has some whip to it.

Anyway, you are making progress!

[Pete Whitstone]

I spent part of today trying to dial in the trans controller computer a bit. I left the glovebox door down and paid some attention to the small display on it. The "home" screen on it shows MPH and a few other data items. Since I wasn't sure where I would land with speedometer accuracy, I used a GPS speedo app on my phone to find actual ground speed.

What I was seeing was the display on the trans controller making sudden and unpredictable changes in speed. It would show 15 miles an hour (roughly accurate) then suddenly jump up to 42. This of course would make the trans lurch because it would think it needed to upshift. The needle on the mechanical speedo was a bit jumpy, but didn't display any such antics.

I swapped in another VSS, the kind in the middle of the speedo cable, near the brake booster. Same result. I checked all the wiring, checked that the VSS's were spinning freely, but the problem persisted.

Finally I decided to try to get the VSS to fit into the TC tail shaft housing again, and see what kind if reading it gave. That would eliminate the possibility of problems with the speedo cable or the mid-cable VSS's. After a bunch of messing around with the interfering seam on the gas tank, I finally got it to slip into position. Then I made a new cable to go up to the front where the pick-up point for the speed sensor was. I determined that I can probably get the long single-piece speedo cable in the end of the VSS without interference from the gas tank, but left it off for now.

Another test drive revealed a much more predictable speed reading. It still jumped around a bit, but from like 54 to 58... not enough to make the trans want to shift or anything. Still more than I think it should jump around though... if these things are designed to handle cruise control, I would think they would have to read rock steady.

One thing I had to do to get the speed in the ballpark was to play with the configuration settings on the trans controller. When I started off, it was reading about 20% low - it would think the truck was doing 35 when it was doing 45 for example. This made it delay the shifts, since it didn't see that the speed it wanted had been obtained yet. The computer has the ability to input a bunch of different things - axle ratio, tire diameter, drive and driven gear counts and so on. For now I just played with the "sensor pulses per revolution" and by reducing it from 8 to 6, got the speeds in the ballpark. I need to fix it right by setting it back to 8 and entering all the other stuff correctly, but that's for another day. I would need to change the axle ratio anyway after I put the right gears in it.

The trans seems to be working flawlessly, now that it doesn't think the vehicle speed is jumping around too much. I'm going to call Baumann/US Shift and see if the VSS wires are sensitive to being run with other wires and may be picking up noise. I might have to reroute them if that's the case, but the manual didn't say anything about any sensitivity there.

I decided to go with an electronic speedometer rather than a mechanical unit. The 92" cable I switched to, rather than the 2 piece, came a few inches short and so I would have had to deal with extending it somehow. And I am about to change the rear end ratio, and would have to deal with changing the speedo gears... and in the future I may want larger tires... with all those things considered, it was easier just to install an electrical one rather than mess with cables and gears. I got basically the same speedo as I had, just the electrical sender version. So now I didn't need the speedo cable (I've got a small collection of them, if anyone needs one), and I removed it from the truck. However, that left the end of the sender open, and I didn't like that. So I fired up the lathe, starting with a piece of .625 aluminum, and turned an analog for the cable end. Here it is in mid-development.

After finishing it and parting it off, I added the O-ring from the speedo cable and installed it.

Plugged it back into the transfer case tail shaft housing and called it good. Now the sender should not have any whip or resistance to make it read weird, but I haven't had a chance to test that yet. Instead I dove into getting the pumpkin out for the new gears. Got it out and on the bench.

And started breaking it into its subcomponents.

The gear oil was smelly and thin-chocolate-milkshake looking. Probably some water in there.

Teardown went well except for the yoke. When I pressed it out of the pinion carrier housing, parts of it stuck with the yoke. Specifically, the bearing, front seal, and what I think might be the oil slinger. This is what it looks like after I tore off the seal.

The triangular thing on top is what's left of the bearing. The weird thing is, at this point the entire thing appears to be one solid piece. I can't find a parting line anywhere on the thing. I know the bearing comes off, but I can't find where they separate. Got to do some more research on that. I'll start on the assembly of the rest tomorrow.