what 800 bucks gets ya these days

[motzingg]

i'm actually in north carolina right now, i just moved down here a few months ago and couldn't stand not having one of these beautiful rust free old trucks anymore.

I'm going to pick her up first thing tomorrow morning and pics to follow. I don't think it will take much more than a carb clean and a new set of plugs at this point.

thanks for making me feel better about my buyers' remorse!

[occupant]

Spare points and condenser would be wise to bring too if it's still running points, remember most Ford vehicles didn't get electronic ignition (or solid state/Duraspark as they called it) until the mid-70s.

[SecondCamperSpecial]

Seems like a great deal to me. Welcome form Illinois.

[Mancar1]

Welcome aboard from Tehama County Ca. Enjoy the project.

[motzingg]

Got her home yesterday, loading on the trailer, towing her home and getting her off couldn't have gone better. My buddy Chris (the only actual friend i've made since moving down here and a fellow 'moped guy') helped me out. We were able to tow the truck to a hill, then park the trailer at the bottom and roll it down hill and up onto the trailer.. couldn't have gone better.

Right away once she was on the trailer we noticed the front wheels barely cleared ( I measured a 74" edge to edge when i bought it, and my trailer was 77") but the rear wheels had almost 5 inches in on each side!! So the front wheel base is way wider than the rear? Is there an obvious answer to that one? The stock wheels were wider or had more backspacing in the rear than front and when someone swapped the wheels to 4 spaced the same it got screwy? It shouldn't cause any problems right?

Anyhow the son of the guy i bought it from was at the dealership working on some cars, he told me about a junkyard a couple miles away with a bump that was literally in line to the crusher on monday! So we went and checked that out, it was Chris' first time in a junkyard and he was geekin' out... not to mention the fact that i go completely nuts in junkyards too!

We weren't sure if we found the doomed bumps or not, but we did find one very hammered farm truck full of trash. It was a custom cab and it had all the odds and ends trim i was missing. Got two decent taillight lenses, the lower reflectors (not sure if i'll use them) the hood emblems and the F-O-R-D that is critical (IMO) to these trucks looking good.

I also found a piece of intake plumbing that might work to add a 'cold air intake' maybe.. i dunno it looked useful.. a muffler for my gas air compressor, and on the way out i grabbed this little air horn off a jeep!

Quite a haul for $25 !!





I'm actually really excited about the air compressor because it works, its all metal, and i was hoping to add something like that for when i set up my air shock load control in the back... hopefully it can make 125+ psi.

be back with more in a couple hours, gotta get some work done.

[motzingg]

This is going to have to turn into a 'project' thread before long, but for now i'm getting this truck running and driving. Once I get it registered and legal and have some time to shake it down, I'll start tricking it out.

So picking up where we left off, I got the truck home and here it is in my driveway ('driveway'- its really just a slightly gravel-ey part of my yard).



The carb came off right away, I knew it needed cleaned at the very least, the whole truck smells overpoweringly of varnish. Here's the engine bay, not much to look at, but it will be nice to compare for 'before' and 'after' photos:






I've taken a lot of nasty carbs apart but this one is up there, maybe just because of the sheer volume of filth. Must have been water sitting down there for awhile. Hard to tell if its ever been apart, the 'tag' is still on it and the screws all look unmarred but the needle tip looks like its in good shape.





The carb all apart:


So I got the carb clean and re-installed, the truck only had a little varnish gas floating around so i hooked up a 1 gallon gas can to the inlet of the fuel pump. Seemed to work pretty well.

The distributor and points were rough, the guy who had the truck before me slapped in a new set of points but they were gapped way too big, I gapped them down to .016 as a starting point.




Went to the auto parts store and got plugs, the old ones were solid black, gapped them at .030 and popped them in. They didn't have the cap and rotor.

Tried a couple times to get it to fire, got a cough sputter and managed to keep it running for a couple seconds by stomping like hell on the accelerator, but nothing substantial. Had to call it for the night. Today it was pouring rain so I ran to another parts store and got the cap and rotor. They had the wrong rotor listed for the 240 but the 300 rotor was the right one. They listed the same cap, so that's weird.

I installed them and gave it a couple shots, not much improvement, cough, sputter and running for a second. Looks like its not going to be a matter of jiggling the cord, so as soon as the rain lets up I'm going to take the methodical approach going back and checking everything over. Probably pull the whole distributor and make sure its clocked right, then do what others had suggested and cut a hole in my old distributor cap to check that the points are lining up with the contacts in the cap and check that all the plugs are firing.

I noticed today that the old distributor cap had the carbon button burned or broken off.. dunno what that is about. After getting it running a little yesterday the whole distributor cap was hosed in reddish dust. Seeing as the entire truck is covered in red clay dirt and dust its not surprising, but it shouldn't be able to get in there from anywhere. It looks like it could be some kind of arcing or oxidation residue. Anyone seen this before?

Also noticed that the plug wires were pretty hammered, maybe i'll try to round up some of them this week and go ahead and replace them just to be one less thing to worry about.

oh yeah grabbed the door sticker too, mostly just curious about the original color and axle ratio, everything else is obvious.


so it was originally a Whimbledon White from Utah... 3.70 gears in the back, ford 'light duty' 3 speed.. all obvious. Interesting to know it was orignally white with a blue interior under all that. Looks like it went from White to black to crappy blue... the only original colored part was the steering wheel! Crazy!

Now the decision is, do i put it back to original white or do I really care? My wife is pulling for the Pebble Beige and I'm not sure where to go with the interior. Would this truck originally have had the custom cab dash if it has the fancy horn ring steering wheel or is the plain jane dash stock? I assume it would have been aluminum grille too, and not the white one?

[motzingg]

Got a chance to dick with the distributor a bit tonight, cramming it in between a million other things i need to get done here.

Wow, what a mess. I was going to try to avoid taking it off and worrying about clocking it and all that b.s. but it became apparent that it needed to come off when i noticed there was a small pile of sand/rust dust/unidentifiable gritty matter piled up in the bottom of it.

I was too busy to take pictures but long story short it was all froze up. All the moving parts were rusted to hell and locked up... took it all apart, cleaned it up, hosed it down with PB blaster and slapped it back together as quick as possible, as it was getting dark.

Not sure if i got it in the right place or not, but it sounded a lot more energetic when i cranked it this time, it really wanted to light... almost like the distributor was way retarded and the spark was blowing the pistons down but not enough to run.

Tomorrow weather looks good again, maybe i'll get a chance to play with it for awhile. I think at this point, as i go through and get into more advanced troubleshooting I'm going to start a project thread.

[occupant]

New dizzy for a 240cid six is $40 at RockAuto with a $35 core, $40 at Autozone with a $20 core for single vacuum and $30 core for dual vacuum.

Just sayin'...

That's what I did for my Torino, decided I didn't want to spend $28 on a vacuum advance when I could have the whole dizzy for $40. Took care of a lot of issues I think.

[motzingg]

yeah i'm trying to just get it running on stock points so at least i know it runs, this weekend i'll be grabbing the TFI distributor and module from the junkyard and going electronic. Now i spent 15 stupid dollars on a cap and rotor that i shouldn't have, oh well.

being 'between cars' as in- i've bought this truck as my new daily but haven't sold my old car yet- means funds for any modification or upgrades on the truck right now are frozen, just get it running as is so i can sell off my other car, finish up my other other car and drive that while i go back to the ford and do some mods like a 2v carb, shocks, paint, anything else that rears its head in the next couple weeks.

[Jenna]

gorgeous!

[motzingg]

HOT DAMN SHE's RUNNIN!

I was digging through some old threads on here just to make sure i hadn't over looked anything last night while re-clocking the distributor and someone had suggested having a buddy rotate the distributor back and forth a few degrees while you cranked it.

Well my neighbor was leaning over the fence today when i got home from work so i put him to work. He's had 3 or 4 of these big 6 trucks and was part of the motivation talking me into getting this one... anyhow he laid hands on the distributor and I barely turned the key before the thing lit off purring like a kitten.

In fact, I thought for a second it was going to die because it settled down to such a nice idle. I don't know if Raymond is magic or if he just intuitively knew where the distributor was supposed to sit by feel or what but it was really quite amazing to see him touch the thing and have it light off like that!

So I put some more gas in my underhood gas can rig job, took it up and down the block a few times, took it to the gas station and filled it up. Tried driving it home from the gas station hooked to the tank but she died in the middle of a rather busy road with no shoulder.... good thing its a truck and I could coast over the curb onto the grass...

Hooked my gas can back up, got her home, and switched back over to the proper fuel tank and she stayed running for a good half hour while i played around with the carb idle jet and idle setting.

First impressions are:
Holy crap where are the brakes! Not surprising unboosted brakes feel like you are stopping a large truck with drum brakes and a dead engine. I am pretty sure they are out of adjustment too because the pedal goes through 2/3 of its travel before the brakes grab, and 2 or 3 pumps make them grab at 1/3 travel. Hopefully I can get these stopping better, they aren't bad at low speed but once I'm towing or on the highway this won't be good.

Where are the gears? Oh, is that first, or second, is that third, wait did i start in second? Is that reverse that is grinding or first... ok I think i got that figured out... Driving a column shift is weird, very strange and yet oddly dignified. This whole thing feels a little too 'luxury car' for my tastes, yet it kinda works. The slow loping torque of the six cylinder, the wide ratio steering, the dainty click of the shifter. I was expecting something more akin to the 1.5 ton 1964 chevy dump truck my friend used to have with a blue flame 6 and split ratio 4 in the floor, thrashing the piss out of every short ratio gear shift, howling and bucking under the torque. This feels like a city slicker truck not to offend anyone, not a he-man, tobacco spittin, leathery-skinned gear jerker designed with the obvious possibilty of needing to run over some zombies (or 'reds' given the era).

No, this is a pretty pleasant cruiser, the engine clicks along like a well balanced sewing machine, taking its time to respond with a low groan when you prod it with the spur attached to your right foot. It feels like we're rolling along on marshmallow tires, soaking up everything with a gentle undulating nod of the head. No, this truck doesn't want to fight, give it a straight stretch of road, an open itinerary and a western sunset and lope along with a pair of perfect tanned legs hanging out your passenger window, and it will roll on forever.

Me, I'm not satisfied, never will be... maybe this truck will teach me that lesson, maybe not. I'm ready for 2 more gears, a mouthful of throttle, the whine of a turbocharger pulling with an stomach turning thrust as you grab fourth gear and leave the shiny, sterile, desensitized diesel penis enhancements in your rearview up a tough grade, causing their insecure owners to question the thousands they have spent in the pursuit of supremacy. Those 20 seconds pulling out and passing last for hours in your memory knowing you're little rattletrap has more spit and fire than all the kings horses and all the kings cubes, and chrome, and technology that added up still wont grant the communion of listening to six well balanced pistons churning along in an infinite dance of pressure and torque.

Tonight I feel like we've had our first date... she pushed me away for getting too hasty, but I'll be back for more.

[motzingg]

oh yeah! thanks Jenna, she's for sure a 20-footer but i'm not afraid of paint. my wife is pulling for pebble beige and i'm just barely smart enough to know when to listen to her on things like this.