My F150 project (Page 2 of 5)

Past couple days have been busy. We've got the motor moved over to a work area and ordered a new master gasket kit for it (which will be here tomorrow) and we started digging all the brackets and bolts we could find out of half-rotten paper bags and 5-gallon buckets. We refinished the flywheel and gave the clutch a good once-over, and it's fine, as expected, since it only had like 7K on it before the truck got parked. This is some of what has gone down in the last week or so:

Trying to determine accessory placement. Haynes proved completely useless for this, because it only had a picture of the V8 FEAD. We did eventually figure it out.

The air pump (which is completely seized) is going bye-bye, but we were trying to figure out what the 10 or so brackets actually support.

Meanwhile, outside, the frame and front suspension was drying after application of Rustoleum Rust Reformer. About the worst thing I can say about the product is that it runs like a Kenyan, as you'll see in the frame pics...

It's not foggy, that's touchup work. The flash really makes it pop...

Like I said, runny...

Especially on the vertical surfaces - and Tim's "I've never spray painted before" technique needed some correction.

All the brackets sorted out and wire-brushed; alternator and water pump are being replaced, air pump is being deleted (along with EGR) and the AC compressor is being rebuilt (one of the big advantages of having a Ford master tech as a next-door neighbor)

Me after spending an hour and a half sand-blasting all the parts, hosing them down to remove any leftover sand in preparation for paint.

Beautiful plumage.

I really, really want a blasting cabinet now.

Big hunk of cast iron after a liter of #80 blasting sand and about 10 minutes.

Oooh, satiny black.

Another advantage (?) of having a Ford master tech as a neighbor: he's an enabler. Tom explained that the steering gear was super easy to re-seal, so with his assurance that "a monkey could do it" I ordered the seal kit and we yanked it apart. N.B.: this box was leaking at the output shaft, not the input. This makes it a much easier job, as there are no little ball bearings to go flying...

Before putting it back together. It's actually remarkably simple in this end of the box; all the complicated hydraulic-y bits are in the input side.

Cleaning it up in preparation...

... for shiny. This is also the Rustoleum Rust Reformer. I'll explain why below...

After we got all that done, we decided we should get started on our home-made quasi-downdraft paint booth, since we had an extra set of hands, err, on hand.

Basic frame (1x2 and 2x2 attached to outriggers on the walls)

4mil plastic sheeting going up on the first side...

Second side...

Third side (aka the top...)

Tim demonstrating his T. Rex arms...

The wall plastic gets overlapped by the ceiling plastic, and everything will be taped up once we get a roll of duct tape that actually sticks to something (besides itself)

Floor will be done just before we're ready to paint, so we don't track dust in and out; ends will be done at the same time for ease of access.

I'm heading over today to finish-sand and shoot the frame. We had to wait a while for the hardener to get shipped, so we couldn't do it this weekend like we planned, which puts us now something like 4 days behind schedule. We've made some progress elsewhere though, so we're ahead on one or two other items. Which is good.

Anyway, this Rustoleum Rust Reformer stuff. I should send them a letter and a plea for some free product, because I really love the shit. You have to be pretty careful when spraying it because it does like to run, but once it has a day or so to dry in the sun, it's a seriously durable finish. Take the front suspension arms, for example. We used two MAPP gas torches to heat them up to free the lower ball joints, and two sledgehammers to beat the sides senseless to try to get them free while the press held them tight. This went on for the better part of an hour, and the finish still looks pretty good. We'll clean it up and hit it once more anyway, but it *really* doesn't need it. I'm 100% sold on this product. From what I understand it's not UV stable, though, so we're going to do the frame and suspension with enamel just to be safe. Underhood, though, I'm gonna leave the raw finish.

Isn't it awesome stuff?!?

It is a little runny now that you mention it, but I just adjusted my spray technique with faster passes for a lighter coat. I cut in the corners and all the annoying details first, then do a final quick pass at a slightly greater distance.

Still get occasional drips but it's fine for something like frames, no worse than the factory would have done.

I wonder if leaving the part raw might eventually show some rust bleed-through in your area. A few spots I never topcoated did start to get some specks on the surface after a few years, but that might come from too thin of a Reformer coat as opposed to actually being exposed. We don't have quite the salt or rust issues here in Ca (except by the ocean) so my long-term results here may skewer yours there. Just a heads up.

The project is lookin' REALLY good! Wanna do mine next?

We've got a couple of big 220V squirrel cage fans out of industrial air handlers that we're gonna rig up with some creative ducting to create a forced downdraft. The creative part comes in restricting the flow so we're not moving so much air it affects the paint spray...hopefully it works, because if we're successful we're gonna redo my Ramcharger, then put a new bedside on Mike's Duramax Chevy, and my brother in law wants to repaint the bed on his Dakota.

Alex, this Energy Suspension kit didn't come with any grease, but Mike is an Amsoil dealer so we've got multiple tubes of their super heavy duty grease (it's made for lubing the hitch plate on tractor-trailers) and I think it'll work just fine in this application. We're definitely gonna grease the hell out of every single point we can think of.

Pete, I'm still torn on the final coating for the brackets and such. If I can figure out a good way to suspend them and access all the sides I may go ahead and shoot them with the same industrial enamel I'm using on the frame.

Today we got the paint and set about thoroughly cleaning the HF paint gun. Numerous sites said that a thorough cleaning before use is imperative with this gun, so that's what I did. Once that was taken care of we set about mixing up the paint.
Now, you'd think, based on the first pic here, that pouring this 16oz can into 128oz of paint (or 1:8 or 2:16, since the sprayer hopper is 20oz) would sufficiently reduce it so that it could be pneumatically sprayed - afterall, it says right there on the got-damn can "add one pint to a gallon for the perfect spray." Well, it turns out that this is NOT actually the case. My first attempts were butt turrible to say the least. Ever seen the spray coming out of a ceiling texturing gun? Imagine that, only black, and that's basically what I was laying down. Then Mike has the brilliant idea to cut it some more with some mineral spirits. So we add 4oz to the 19oz we had already (16 paint + 2 reducer + 1 hardener) and that thins it out enough to spray a little better. Getting annoyed at the wind's constantly-shifting direction and increasing chance of blowing the overspray back in my face, I continue spraying, while Mike mixes up the next batch with the rest of the spirits we have on hand, and as I empty the hopper we refill with this new batch, which is thinned about 1:2. This sprays acceptably, since it's just the frame, but I'm still not impressed. At this point, having run out of spirits (also Mike determined somehow that the reducer we bought is actually not the proper stuff for this paint, so we stopped using it) I finished up what I had left and cleaned the gun. Mike ran out to Autozone for another can of spirits so I could properly clean up (it's the closest store that had any in stock, and I started cleanup with the nasty used stuff I had cleaned the gun with initially) and came to the conclusion while reading the back of this can - which is Rustoleum brand and sold right next to the gallon cans of their enamel paint - that we should have been cutting the paint 1:1 all along. When we flip the frame for access to the underside we'll try that and see what happens, but for now, it's good enough. If the other side turns out better I'll take the sander to the rest of the thing and scuff it up and shoot it again.

We also got a proper second test of our home-brew moisture separator, which is the big copper apparatus standing up by the air compressor. It's a 10' stick of 1/2" copper, cut into two pieces 4'10" long, and connected together with the remaining 4" of copper and some 90s, and soldered together. There are NPT adapters on the bottom with drain petcocks in both sides, and the air inlets are soldered into a T about a foot off the bottom. The length of copper forces the air to condense and, believe it or not, it actually works PRETTY DAMN WELL. Amazingly, for sure. We've gotta mount it to the wall at some point, but right now, who cares, it's out of the way and it's not going anywhere.

Mr. UPS man delivered our first-round Rockauto clearance haul (thanks Brett85p!!!) consisting of brake hoses, upper and lower ball joints, radiator cap, thermostat, coolant temp sender, and power steering pump rebuild kit - a whopping $30 worth of parts.

Autozone also managed to get the gasket set in a day early, so that was good. Also the water pump and oil pressure sender.

Bushings arrived last week, but I never took a pic of them. Turns out the kit Summit sold us is actually for a 4x4, but pretty much everything will fit anyway, and what doesn't (leaf bushings, which are the right diameter but too long) will with a little persuasion from Mr. Sawzall.

So, yeah, back to the frame. You can see a lovely run in the 2nd rear crossmember, due to poor technique on my part. Fortunately it'll have a bed sitting above it, so this is the only time anybody will actually see it, and hey, extra paint = extra corrosion protection! Right? RIGHT.

This is only about a half hour after the final bit of spraying, so it's not dry yet, but you can see some serious orange peel in it. Hopefully it dries a little flatter, we'll see Thursday, after it's had a two full days to bake in the Florida sun...

Coils are gonna need some attention with a brush, but I'm OK with that. I didn't disassemble the leafs fully (Mike vetoed that plan) so they're cleaned up as good as we could get them and they got sprayed too. They still need some attention to detail with the brush, as well...

"greasy side" of the frame, as in "keep the shiny side up and the greasy side down." There better not be any fucking grease on this any time soon!

Drums are toast, as are the tires, so who cares about overspray here. It needs a second coat of paint.

Gas tank hasn't really been cleaned up. The whole bottom half of it (below the seam) is still NASTY, with a healthy coating of grease and dirt. It's gotta be pressure-washed, and I've gotta pull the sending unit out so I have a nice big hole to stick the pressure washer wand into to blow out some of the varnish that's in there. After that I'll probably drop some rocks and some kind of strong solvent in there, and give it a vigorous shake to try to clean it up some before putting it back together and getting it ready for paint.

So, Thursday we'll lift the frame with the loader and flip it over so that the rail that's facing the ground can be painted. If all goes well with the "new" paint plan, we'll flip it over Friday and do the side I did today once more. If not, whatever, it's still lightyears ahead of where it was. Gas tank has to be addressed, and the rear needs a second coat. Either Saturday evening or next Monday (Mike has family in town this weekend, so Sunday is off-limits) we'll either lay the frame down and start putting the suspension back together under the lights, or work on the motor. Current plan is to hopefully get the motor and trans in the frame within the next week, and perform an ops test before the body gets done.

And on the subject of the body, I was talking to Jeff (Speedycop, duh) on the phone earlier this evening and he said that instead of buying a sheetmetal brake and trying to fab patch panels for the rear window frame, why not just take my handy DeWalt 18V sawzall to the junkyard and cut a frame out of a truck with less rust. This is a BRILLIANT plan and when I told Mike a half hour later he had the same sort of epiphany I did. He's gonna start calling junkyards (there are LOTS of them around here) tomorrow morning when he gets home from Alro with a 4x8 sheet of 20ga and (hopefully) a 6' stick of 4" c-channel so we can make a new crossbar for my press, and if he finds anything I'll go to the yard Monday or Tuesday when I'm off work again. Oh, also today he got a regulator for our MIG and a bottle of CO2/argon welding gas, which will come in handy once we get the new window frame bits to weld in.

Hmm, muriatic acid... there is a pool supply store about 3/4 mile from me. Have to get a chain, though.

No reason to replace it, it's perfectly fine, just a bit dirty. And I'm trying to spend as little as I can, not drop $130 on a gas tank I don't need. That $130 will buy me a new vinyl floor, or wheels, or tint the windows...

According to Ford's 1986 Light truck shop manual, at:
10 ohms, the pointer should be at or above F by approximately two pointer widths,
73 ohms, the pointer should be at or below L by approximately two pointer widths.

Al (one of Speedy's A&Ds)

Measly iPhone 4 pics this time, since I keep forgetting to grab my real camera when I head over to the garage...

Did some painting Monday. Finally got the chance to shoot the outside of the d/s frame rail and do some touchup on other spots, as well as spraying the disc brake dust shields, spindles, engine accessory brackets, gas tank, and the driveshafts.

Also, I resolved to get some high-temp paint to do the new exhaust downpipe with. It's already starting to develop a little surface rust just from sitting outside for the past couple days, and I cannot abide that.

Still not super happy with the pattern I'm getting out of the gun, it's still splotchy and instead of laying down an even, uniform mist of paint it puts down a lot of heavier dots that remind me more of an acoustic 'popcorn' ceiling being sprayed. This last time, I thinned the paint 1:1 with spirits, as opposed to something more like 2:3 the last time. The paint is definitely going on, and it's drying nice and hard, it's just the application I have concerns about. I'm doubly concerned about what's gonna happen when I try shooting primer. I don't know at this point if it's a gun problem, or if it's just something inherent to the alkyd enamel paint we're using, Still need some experimentation, apparently...

Today I drove out to Eckler's Corvette in TItusville to pick up some Eastwood Internal Frame Coating, since they had it in stock. I decided that the long hose/omnidirectional nozzle arrangement would be useful and, more importantly, reusable. So, we'll use the Eastwood stuff somewhere on the cab, and use the hose and tip to spray the Rust Reformer product up into the crevices in the frame we can't get a brush into. Unfortunately the can cap itself isn't quite universal, but Rustoleum switched the Rust Reformer cap from the small, older style to this type, so it should work. Should.

I also hit several junkyards in search of a rear window frame and a price for the custom cut that would need to be made to get it. Finally settled on a super-clean late '95 F250 at Cocoa Auto Salvage (just a few miles up the road from NSF International Racing HQ) for a fair price. They're supposed to be cutting the cab around the C/D pillar, along the gutter, and up towards the windshield ~2 feet, and down the back wall outside the seams also ~2 feet. Hopefully I can get out of work an hour early tomorrow or Thursday so I can go pick it up...

Graphite spray gets on EVERYTHING. It's great for moving parts, like jackscrews, but I wouldn't recommend it as a header coating unless you want your arm coated in it every time you reach past your exhaust.

^^^ TWO Cell Phone Antennas! 

Baller!

I don't want to replace the whole cab, as detailed in the multiple paragraphs about the truck's family and sentimental value...

Sunday evening, after getting finally getting motivated and realizing that it was too late to go out to NSF Int'l Racing HQ, I headed back out and set to work on finishing out the interior. First and foremost in this was removing the steering column...

Having gotten that out of the way, and now enjoying the ability to actually reach up under the dash, I started figuring out what I needed to do to get the brake booster and pedal box out...

4 nuts, 2 cotter pins and several minutes of prying to no avail and then several more minutes of air hammer and squirts of PB Blaster on the booster studs, and it was free. One of the clutch master studs broke as I tried to take the nut off, so that has to be replaced, but I was pretty much already planning on that anyway. The real bitch of it was that the lower two studs on the brake booster punched through into the housing, and with the actuator rod exposed, I noticed how crunchy and generally terrible it feels. So, it's gonna have to be replaced, too.

The other real bitch is that, with all that stuff cleared out of the way, a significant rust issue was visible. Here's the problem area after some time with a wire brush:

So that's all gotta be cut out and repaired. Fortunately it's mostly flat there, so it *shouldn't* pose too huge a problem. My biggest concern is getting it strong enough to stand up to another 20 years of clutch and brake actuation...

And after all that, I decided we needed to finally suck it up and pull the windshield. My windshield removal tool was having a hell of a time with the seal, so Mike had the brilliant idea to try putting some heat to it. We discovered that 10-15 seconds of heat evenly applied over a section of seal softened it up nicely and the tool now went through it very easily. And we introduced several new cracks, too, but it already was gonna have to be replaced so it's not a problem.

With the glass out we could now easily remove the headliner, which is actually in really, really good shape. Does anybody have experience steam-cleaning a headliner with a cardboard backing?

Winshield seal came out mostly in one piece, with several sections removing large chunks of paint.

Gonna need lots of new trim clips, too. This was also expected.

But, it's pretty much done. Only thing left is to pull the door panels, glass and rubber, and the seatbelts, and it'll be complete and ready for blasting of the rusty areas and sanding.

And for no particular reason, here's the steering column. I've gotta order an intermediate shaft & rag joint and an ignition switch.