Didn't make December, but finally took my first drive in January, but it wasn't without it's issues. Stuff I did five years ago when I started this project came back to bite me. The wiring harness I bought for the engine was wired incorrectly and the VATS wasn't turned off in the computer. The injectors had been sitting for over five years and were used when I got them. Ran pretty rough so I took them down to have them calibrated and cleaned. Much smoother. Header flange was so leaky, I thought I had a bad bearing or a collapsed lifter. New header gasket and everything is fine with my junkyard motor. The factory shifter I'd modified to use in my truck sucked - it was so vague I couldn't tell what gear I was in. Installed a Pro5.0 shifter and it is heaps better Progressed from driving it up and down the street to going to the gas station for $10 of gas. Wasn't very impressed with the ride quality, but then I realized I'd left the airbags fully inflated and was riding on the suspension bump stops, so I'll have see how it behaves in subsequent trips with pressure adjusted for correct ride height. My power steering is giving me fits. It is really noisy and wants to suck air into the fluid after it has been bled. Need this fixed before I can continue the shake-down runs and get a few miles on this thing
Power steering fixed by changing to the LS truck pump setup. The old pump came with the motor out of the junkyard and it must have been bad. New bracket, pulley, pump, hose adapters, belt and just for good measure, new Delco fluid. This fixed the problem and I was able to take a ten mile drive. The hydroboost brakes are going to take a little getting used to, and the five speed is a blast to drive. Had its first bath afterwards.
Your truck looks great! I have been following this from the beginning. I am curious as to how the Jag front end worked as I am doing a similar install on my 55.1. I am getting ready to finalize all of the mounts that are based on your design and wondered if you had any things you would do differently. Did you encounter any alignment problems? Did it ride and steer as you were expecting? Thanks,Dave.
"I am curious as to how the Jag front end worked " Well, the jury is still out on the Jag front end. I own a 85 Jaguar XJ6 with the same front end, and it is one of the smoothest suspensions ever. My hope is to get the truck to the same point as the Jag for ride quality The truck is roadworthy, but so far I've not sealed up the cab so its pretty distracting to drive- the doors rattle a bit. Castor at a little less than 5 degrees is perfect. Has a little tendency to follow expansion joints in the road, but I put very little toe-in so a little more should straighten that out. Power steering ease and turning radius are both excellent My truck has an airbag suspension with a 7" bag up front and doesn't ride as smooth as my Jag. I used KYB gas-adjust shocks and they might be a little stiff for the truck (the truck weighs about 900# less than my Jag) I've got about four different shocks laying around including originals, some Monroes and others I'm going to try. If I can't tune this suspension with airbags to my liking I'll probably modify my spring pans to make them ride height adjustable with factory coil springs and shocks
Out of the shop into the garage. Driving it a few times a week now. Made a AC vent to go in the radio speaker hole Put a 'dummy' radio together to fill the hole in the dash. This is just for decoration as I'll likely run the sound system off of a phone. Going to try to run my speedo GPS antenna inside of the radio shell and see if it will acquire signal ok The dash trim and glovebox mostly installed. Couldn't get the front windshield trim to fit properly so I took it to a pro. He said the reproduction trim isn't quite correct and won't fit correctly into the rubber seal. He ground the glass a little, trimmed the spline on the stainless a little, relieved the center chrome strip and caulked the gap. Best $100 I've spent in a long time. I had this in and out a couple of times before I called the pro. Still fighting a mysterious squeak in my power steering but tired of fighting with it. Going to run it to failure and see what goes toes-up. Trying to understand why my gas gauge isn't working. Sofseal door seals are here and need to go in. Had a speedometer for about a mile till the Speedbox GPS speedo drive blew a fuse. I have a feeling this truck will never really be finished, but it is fun to play with Driving this truck takes some getting used to. I try to be really careful about my blind spot but my old neck does not swivel to look near as well as it used to. Some folks will follow me in my blind-spot for quite a ways, looking at the truck, presumably. A lady in an Explorer followed me for a couple miles the other day hanging about 5-10' back from my left rear fender. She finally zoomed around me with someone in her passenger seat taking cellphone pictures. Feel like I'm in a fish bowl sometimes (or I look like someone in a wanted poster in the post office). Some guy at a stop light said "I'll bet that's great for picking up women" and I told him 'I wouldn't know, my wife won't let me.' It is a great conversation starter, sometimes awkward ones, but you can count on a couple comments every time it goes on the road.
I'm somewhere around 9 months from getting back to my truck project... Seeing your truck looking as nice as it does makes me look forward to working on mine! So, as far as Hydroboost goes... are the brakes touchy as in "these things will lock up all 4 wheels"?
I've never tried to lock the wheels, but the brakes seem to work very well and it tracks straight under braking. The hydroboost actuates a Corvette master cylinder and there's Girling disc brakes all around. Mine has an adjustable proportioning valve installed. One of these days I'll find a deserted parking lot and set it up so the front locks up before the rears. Unlike a diaphram booster, the hydroboost only lets the pedal go down a little and you have to modulate the brakes with foot pressure. Pushing harder and the pedal doesn't move but braking power increases quickly. It was a little strange at first but I'm used to it now. If you're going to run a hydroboost, here's a couple of things I learned.......... - Make sure your brake pedal has the correct 'leverage ratio' for hydroboost. A stock pedal's leverage ratio will make the brakes very twitchy. - Shorten the arc portion of your brake pedal. I shortened mine so that when the pedal hits the floor the piston in the master cylinder is at its max travel. This put my size 13s in a much better angle to modulate the pedal. - Hydroboost is a PITA to bleed and get working properly. Use vacuum to sweep the air out of the power steering fluid.
? I was wondering why no covid-19 thread here ...... We're doing O.K. here in So. Cal. MWMBO is more or less hiding under the bed because she's 77 now and afraid . I'm working my behind off, plus I bought another old Motocycle and up fixed it to run and ride again.... Hopefully all are doing O.K. and following the 6' minimum distancing thing ~ working in the yard is good for you .
Nate and Robert -nice to hear from both of you. Here's my quarantine report- Just as I got the truck ready to start driving, the Covid19 quarantine in place orders came out from the governor. To be honest, it is a fresh build and I wasn't crazy about the potential of having to come home on a JerryDan, so I've not been driving it too much. I've driven it a few times to go shag parts for the other cars in the fleet. The last time I drove it to the auto parts store (curbside pickup is kinda nice) the clutch wouldn't fully disengage, so I need to take some time to troubleshoot the hydraulic throwout bearing. Hope to hell it is the master or the lines leaking and I don't have to pull the trans to get to the bearing. I need to put an ac unit in it and my upholstery is just an old Mexican blanket. The upholstery shop should be open next week again. The wife is taking the COVID stuff pretty seriously - we're in our late fifties early sixties and have come to the conclusion we're mostly house-bound till a vaccine comes out. I tend to rationalize that it's ok to go out if it is an acceptable risk. The wife, however, thinks no risk is acceptable - unless it involves hunting toilet paper. On the other hand, she seems to like to pass the time cooking and we've been eating like kings. We linger over breakfast till 10 am talking a watching you-tube videos (had to stop watching the talking-heads on the news) before I head out to the shop for the day. Have the ac on in the shop, and projects that should take a couple of hours I manage to stretch to all day. Mostly doing body work on my 55 MG TF. My body guy was coming over every Saturday, but the wife put the kibosh on that for a while. Too bad, cause with a little help I was making great progress Got most of the metal work and panel fit done, so I need to start spraying polyester primer and blocking it all out. Going to spray all my primer in the drive way and think I've got a scheme to avoid catching hell from my HOA. With any luck I should make to to a booth to spray it by this fall when it is cooler.
Looking good there ~ is it a TF1500 ? . I had a TD long, long ago . Here in Los Angeles, home to fruits, nuts and flakes we are still plodding along . My Sweet is terrified, she's 77 and has a heart problem since birth, wasn't supposed to survive birth so on and so forth . I've managed to get her to let her daughter take her a few miles away to her apartment, they had fun, watched movies and did girl chat, no teenage Foster boys driving her crazy all day long... Some days I load them up and we go out on a social distancing mental heath outing far from every / anyone, they're enjoying it, I don't think it good to be cooped up all the time but how to get out safely is the question . We're lucky to have houses, so many are still stuck in densely packed apartments, I worry about them . I envy your fantastic shop but then, I have no H.O.A. nazis to deal with so it's a wash or trade off . I've been working on my old cars & trucks, Mtocycles etc. but after a while one needs other mentl stimulation (plus it was 104* F in the shade yesterday) so here's some musical thoughts for you to enjoy :
Enjoyed the video - going to show it to the wife! She'll get a kick out of it. Yep, it is the mighty 1500cc motor with an awesome 58? hp. One of the club members started it and had all the mechanicals done, but at 84 he didn't think he'd finish it, so I bought it from him. Still trying to figure out how I'm actually going to fit in it (6'3") I might have to follow it with the '49 GMC while my wife drives it. That way I'll have a way to haul tools and can pick up the pieces as they fall off. Been poking at my HOA for almost 30 years now. It is always been a bit of a cat-and-mouse game to see what I can do to push the rules a bit and I can usually fly under the radar. They're kind of a necessary evil - I need protection from people like me or there'd be three future car projects in the front as 'yard art' Of all the things I've ever bought in my life, the shop that I built 30 years ago has returned the most personal satisfaction. At 24x28' and a single door, its a little small, but that size requires a little planning for tools and vehicles and keeps me from starting too many projects at the same time. Was hoping to be able to extend my shop enjoyment in my 'golden years' with a four post lift, as getting up and down from the ground gets harder and harder every year. The economy turned to poop so that idea has been shelved for a while, but there's always hope for tomorrow It is easy to loose sight of how fortunate we are. When Covid makes it to many of the poorer parts of the world with crowded conditions and poor medical support, it is going to be much worse. We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg now, I think.
On your fuel tank Phil are you running a stock sending unit as well as stock fuel gage ? I just found out that the mustang tank and sending unit I put in my truck won’t work with the stock fuel gage . I’m going to see if a aftermarket fuel gage will work and install it under the dash. Been looking on line haven’t found what I need just yet.
This may be your answer. I haven't tried one yet, but it looks perfect. MeterMatch Fuel Gauge Interface Module
The gas gauge in the AD trucks are looking for a 0-30 ohm signal from the tank. I have a Camaro tank and the sender for the Camaro is 0-90 ohms. To make the Camaro sender work with my factory gauge, I took the 30 ohm resistor track off of a new fuel gauge for an original tank and grafted it onto the Camaro sender. This is the resistor track for a '49 truck installed on the sender for the Camaro The resistor track's signal is transmitted through a copper ribbon. I cut the ribbons in half and joined the AD sender to the Camaro by drilling small holes in the tails of of the ribbon and joining them together with a #6 machine screw. I double-nutted the screw to make sure it wouldn't loosen while installed in the tank. Works fine.
I sort of did the same thing to my '57 GMC back in 1998 when I installed a junk yard tank from a Mazda pickup (fit well) into the rear frame of my truck. I cut about 4-5" of the stock tube that held the resistor from the old sender and used two small hose clamps to hold it to the Mazda sender. Pitched the Mazda float and arm and wired the GMC sender to the top of the Mazda sending unit. Worked well for 15 years until the truck was totalled.
Only took me five years (my brain uses snails instead of neurons) to remember, "hey, we did a Jimmy with the same color scheme only reversed". Customer wanted metal work and paint only so not memorable. Is the green and dirty white something that was a factory color scheme option? The butchered dash was smoothed so customer could choose radio option.
