1980 F350 Farm Truck Re-Build

[TRINDU]

May break your budget, but I had good luck suspending pistons(etc) in evaporust. It doesmt work worth a damn as a spray, but soaking does wonders.

 

[Provience]

and about as big as I could possibly get it below the top, this is the maximum ring wear line. Yes, it could stand to be bored to a happy 0.010" over, but 4.005" isn't very bad at'all, so imma run it

insert 4" ball hone of whatever fine grit is

after a few whacks, didn't want to go very aggressive with it, probably 20 strokes is what I think I was counting.

before pictures

after measurement, no real loss from the quick hone. hopefully it helps the rings set. measured not at the absolute worst spot and still 4"

 

[[486]]

the fact that you're using a caliper on a snap gauge has me questioning that you're operating that snap gauge properly

it isn't immediately obvious how they're used, just in case

 

[Provience]

May break your budget, but I had good luck suspending pistons(etc) in evaporust. It doesmt work worth a damn as a spray, but soaking does wonders.

took a long while, but hand polishing and sanding and hammering gave me appreciably good results

 

[Provience]

the fact that you're using a caliper on a snap gauge has me questioning that you're operating that snap gauge properly

it isn't immediately obvious how they're used, just in case

1) it's a harbor freight caliper and it doesn't reliably return to zero, so multiple measures get taken and then the mean gets used

2) I can't remember offhand if I have a 3-4 or 4-5 mic at the house and didn't care enough to look

 

[Provience]

and figured while I was at full rebuild mode, might as well deck the block

before picture

and after picture, 400 grit sandpaper, some oil, and a convenient piece of wood. Would have been better to grab a full sheet of paper so that the edges didn't want to catch and tear so much. regardless, cleaned up most all the old gasket stuff and whatever gunk was hanging around

1/2-13 tap for all the head bolts

Remembered to beat this heater outlet that had snapped off out/in of the block

almost all cleaned up. used an old ring to get all the debris off the hard to get areas that the pressure washer didn't want to touch. ran the tap down all the water pump 5/16-18 bolts. whatever one that stripped out of the block is larger than that, helicoil flopped right out

and flopped out all the cam bearings.

need to pick up a 3/8" helicoil set and some assembly lube from the store, then a good cleaning to get as much of the grit out of it as possible and ideally going back together as a short block tomorrow.

 

[arse_sidewards]

Unless you have a flat object that you actually know is accurate-ish (not just a random steel ruler you stole from drafting class in highschool) to measure against you're not really flattening anything. That said, there's merit to smoothing out localized variation so you probably still made it better instead of worse.

May break your budget, but I had good luck suspending pistons(etc) in evaporust. It doesmt work worth a damn as a spray, but soaking does wonders.

Feed molasses will work too. I use it for those kinds of tasks. Under $15/gal and 1gal makes 5gal after you thin it out with water.

Both will eat aluminum so you can't just forget about them in there and come back in a year.

the fact that you're using a caliper on a snap gauge has me questioning that you're operating that snap gauge properly

it isn't immediately obvious how they're used, just in case

The caliper is just there for moral support.

 

[Provience]

Unless you have a flat object that you actually know is accurate-ish (not just a random steel ruler you stole from drafting class in highschool) to measure against you're not really flattening anything. That said, there's merit to smoothing out localized variation so you probably still made it better instead of worse.


Feed molasses will work too. I use it for those kinds of tasks. Under $15/gal and 1gal makes 5gal after you thin it out with water.

Both will eat aluminum so you can't just forget about them in there and come back in a year.


The caliper is just there for moral support.

I wasn't really going for flattening anything, mostly just cleaning up all the surfaces and it is much easier to do that with a piece of wood than just sand paper by hand. 400 grit wouldn't be my choice for material removal either

didn't know about the molasses, that's interesting.

and the calipers are 100% there just for you. I wasn't planning on measuring otherwise. regardless the accuracy of the calipers, the repeatability is somewhat there and that is nice reassurance that I didn't change anything significantly other than cutting up some of the cylinder wall glazing with the dingle ball hone. which is again the point of buying the fine or very fine one rather than a corse

 

[Provience]

welp, 3/8-16 is what the stripped out water pump bolt hole is now. conveniently, when it pulled the threads out of the block it went right to the 3/8" pre-drill size, so straight in with the tap

and here is a picture if you can tell of the threaded insert being 1 turn too high, it may seem flush or near, but the top ring is still above the threads

and turned it in so that the top bit of spring is below the top line of the thread, just an easy way to see if you are down far enough

pretty well done making a mess of things, fresh clean oil, pipe cleaners and brushes and rags, oh my

all the oil gunk that came out just from the oil galleys at the lifters

and after rubbing on things, new bearings going in. hopefully once everything is tightened down it still spins freely, otherwise i'm going to have to measure these and see if any are too tight or loose and can be swapped around for better results

trying out this lucas green assembly lube. seems fine, it is a fun color at least

and the rebuild kit i bought didn't come with a rear main seal so no point in tightening any of this down. nobody in town has one in stock either.

oh well, pistons are officially 100% rebuilt and brand new now

and no rebuild is complete without some fresh paint. going with a darker blue than what was on there. also bought some light blue for probably the intake and transmission, just to mix it up

and back to waiting on parts. rear main + valve stem need to order. then I should be ready to get more progress this week

edit: since I had to order anyways, went ahead and used rockauto. also went ahead and bought their cheap clutch set so another ~$150 at it. cost of paint doesn't count

 

[Provience]

Ford Cleveland & Modified Torque Specs

help.summitracing.com

this will be important later

 

[Provience]

alright, rest of the rubbers showed up. lots-o lube. this green stuff is actually a little bit sticker than slippery-er

and then caps in place

bonked the pistons in place, this was a good reminder of why I don't like the strappy style ring compressor even though it is far more versatile than the tapered cylinder ones

and should have put the cam bearings in before the pistons, but didn't so they went in afterwards

timing gears lined up, got to do this a couple times as I forgot to put the oil plugs in first

Speaking of oil plugs, they are the correct size to replace all the doo-dads and whiz-bangs on the thermostat neck.

and then tossed on the new water pump, still need to get 3 more of the long bolts to replace the ones that failed during removal. Replaced the temp sensor for the gauge on the block, put the old sensor in the water pump.

and rolled it over onto the other side, tomorrow might be clutch and bellhousing and then clean up the heads. working on the ground sucks a whole bunch more than I remember it. Almost sucks enough to buy an engine stand again, just now quite.

 

[Levigarrett76]

Coming together very nice. I hope it fires up and breaks in without a hitch.

 

[Provience]

alright, had planned on just cleaning up some stuff on the garage so that I can walk around in here again. looked at the old clutch for this thing and though "that don't look as bad as I remember, it'll probably be OK for a little bit" and then found an unopened box from rockauto....

...with a brand new clutch kit! what? happy days! early christmas, no idea I had this thing

might as well get it tossed together. gotta do a rebuild on the flywheel first, continuing with the theme of the truck. Dawn soap, water and some scrubbing first to knock off the big stuff.

a couple cycles with the nylon brush and a couple cycles with the soft steel

and then it was ready for final machining. WD40 and the old trusty 400 grit sand paper. Didn't want to go with the wood block this time, used the straight edge from my finger break. Many laps of little swirlies and the surface doesn't feel nearly as slick as it was before. Not substantial texture like you'd get from turning it, or how it feels outside the wear area on this one, but seems more decent than it was before. Certainly still able to feel the waves, but that's fine.

finished results

almost forgot the backing plate, don't forget about the plate

and new parts installed. not sure if the bellhousing should be painted dark blue like the block or the lighter color/gray that I was thinking of painting the transmission. Maybe fade one to the other?

Couldn't make up my mind and the mosquitos were heading on out. So there it sits for the day.

 

[Provience]

probably going to end up dragging the truck back into the driveway this weekend. in an effort to continue cleaning the garage, went ahead and did a complete rebuild on the transmission. Rebuild guide attached.

lots of dawn dish soap, water and wire wheel on the grinder, entire thing was as or more grimy than the top, got probably 97.5% of it removed.

pulled the top off and the little plastic shifter smoother-outers are still in pretty good shape. this is a solid plus, because those don't come with the gasket kit I had.

the inside looks damned good, some wear, but no chips, no pocks, no lumps, no bumps and everything moves smoothly.

so of course I had to clean up the factory tag with a dec 13th, 1979 date. look at all that background mess for shame

since I had the paint out, gave the two tone bellhousing a shot.

never did get all the crap off the top but hey, it's now all together and ready to get put back into the train tomorrow, once the paint dries.

 

[Provience]

paint dried, ended up taking the cover off twice so that I could get it to bench shift right and have everything lined up and back together transfer case is still rock solid glued together, decided to say #fawkit and put it back onto the train without a clean up and repaint.

and noticed the fuel pump is now a two piece design....i've got another fuel pump, figured this one would be dried out as it wasn't snapped when I left it

time to address the heads. the cheap chinese valve spring compressor isn't required, but it sure is nice.

before picture

the intake runner behind the valve looks like it could be inspiration for an adventure book for tiny elves or something

which of course means the valve itself is pretty sweetly decorated. Most people would take these heads to a machine shop, pay the $300 or whatever it is these days to get them professionally cleaned and cut. Then pay the whatever 10's of dollars new valves are. That'd be the smart thing.

but i've got a grinder, dish soap and a concrete floor to work on

grinder, dish soap, 60 grit sandpaper and some coarse steel wool, went to work on the custom hand polish job

and the valves clean up in almost no time at all, just a little bit of pitting remains.

alright, so it still doesn't look great, but there is significantly fewer stalactites now

 

[Provience]

and with the major debris cleaned up, might as well give the valve seats a polish. Don't have any polishing compound or lapping compound. Did have some not-gel toothpaste though. Baking soda mix would probably work fine as well.

worked each one until my hands got tired and I could no longer feel any grittiness. had a clean line all the way around of decent thickness on all of them. Really had more work to do for the intakes, the exhausts were all pretty smooth and cleaner. Each valve stem except for 1 exhaust created substantial suction when removing the oiled valve, which means they are more than good enough for what i'm trying to do.

and all cleaned up. spent damn near 4 hours on this one head

oh yeah, snapped exhaust bolt. shouldn't be no problem.....small drill was cutting good, all my larger ones didn't want to do it. Rather than regrind the drills, I decided the broken bolt can stay where it is after a burr cut my finger.

flopped it on, put the valve train stuff together, there's about a 15% chance those are in the same order they came out in.

and set a valve cover on top, need to pick up a handful of 1/4-20x1/2" botls for those and need to go dig through some boxes to compare intakes and see which one is going to clean up the easiest. THEN it will be ready to get out of the garage.

fenders/grill/radiator support/hood all getting removed before putting this in, this time.

 

[Provience]

Other head day today. This was the most interesting runner. For this head, the exhaust side were all pretty darned good. Thought I might get this one done more quickerly, still took me about 4 hours to be done

the other day the wife walked out while I was hand sanding and says "why don't you use a little spinny tool? i've got one inside" so I says "i've got a dremel, just no reason to use it" and continued on. I hadn't thought of it so certainly I wasn't going to take some girls advice

broke out the dremel today, what a time save it was wife did happen to walk out while I was using it though one of the whip ends wouldn've been sweet.

Since this was the worst of them, spent the most amount of time on it. Came out pretty decent. Advantage of an iron head is that you can just wail on the poor thing with far less concern than aluminum, disadvantage is that it grows more stuff and needs to be wailed on from time to time.

both heads and covers on. never did go get the bolts i need...

next things next, took the wire wheel to the exhaust manifolds. One of 'em has this real low spot at the edge, conveniently right where the broken bolt remains.

while the correct thing to do would be to build it up with weld and then mill it back flat, at least with the freehand 4-1/2" mill, went digging instead and found the other manifolds surprisingly quick.

the "complete gasket set" that I had bought didn't come with intake gaskets figured it'd have the cheapo ones, so had to clean up the tin one that'd been sitting outside all year.

lots of soap, water, stiff nylon brush and steel wool later and it cleaned up decent. Had to rebend it by hand to get it close to the original shape.
Had some new speed holes in the tin, sacrificed a can to use in combination with form-in-place-gasket to plug them. Hopefully it stays, if not, oh well. no harm, no foul.

scissors work great for cans

Since I was reusing the tin gasket and it was still a bit mis-shapen, decided to try a thin smear of silicone gasket maker onto the manifold and head sides of the tin. Ran a fat bead between the tin and the valley crossing as well. Only went on the intake holes, don't really care about the exhaust crossover/intake heater stuff.

 

[Provience]

and intake in place. Since the manifold already had the carb on top of it, i'm going to leave it there. It's a manual choke, truck was originally electric choke. I probably won't swap them across, but I will need to find/source/buy a cable from somewhere

started tossing on accessory things. For the thermostat, it came with this o-ring which made it too large for the relief, popped off the o-ring and going to use just the gasket.

cannot remember where the dang distributor is, going to put that off for a bit yet.

need a pcv/oil fill cap and a filter/vent though. Got the pickup swept out, need to get it drug across the yard still and get all this stabbed back in.

Then the real fun stuff can begin, rebuilding brakes, u-joints, steering, fuel lines and whatever else I forgot about....getting close.

 

[rattle_snake]

Nice backyard blueprint and balance rebuild. Spinny tool for the win.

 

[Levigarrett76]

Pretty damned cool

 

[Provience]

I appreciate the kind words decent bit of therapy in spending time doing these things. Makes the day fly by.

Got the chassis untarped, tow bar was conveniently stored inside the cab.

Hooked up to the other old ford. Everything was wet this morning, so I was curious if i'd even be able to move on the grass.

and while it doesn't look too impressive in the pictures, i'm pretty happy with doing this as a (near) 1 shot. The gate out of the yard is about 20' to the side of the truck, had to go up and weave around a tree to get it out to the road. Managed to avoid my 2 cars on the street, the neighbors 1 car and camper. Made a lap around the block and backed it up and into the driveway. That was the near one shot, I did pull forward about 10' to reset another foot over from the fence and keep the tires all on the concrete instead of the dirt. Wife holding the steering wheel came in handy.

nutcracker penetrating oil is a sponsor of this build. Removed the radiator support/grill and attempted to pull the bumper off.

3 of the 4 carriage bolts for the bumper were loose, only 1 had a washer, which was loose, and they all spun happily in place. Used the grinder to cut them apart, would've been easier to to use the torch, but the grinder was closer at hand.

looking pretty wide open now

some hose love.

Distributor was in the engine bay. The clip was a bummer to get apart and ended up breaking a spot. Prolly just going to use a different connector. or run it, haven't decided.

This thing didn't want to spin or do much of anything as it was.

guess we'll take this apart and see what we can see. neat little tag for something on the vacuum advance.

 

[Provience]

little e-clip is all that holds the vac advance in place, well the clip and a bunch of corrosion

one of the screws that hold the base plate down and serves as the ground lug for the signal wheel signaler decided to fall apart. Hit it with a drill and freed it up.

the other screw on the other side held up fine

and lots of hammering after removing the drive gear and bushing looking thing gave me an empty body

the shaft was pretty caked

and a small snap ring of sort inside

more hammering and more removing.

scrubbing revealed another snap ring

not sure what this clip actually does, removing it doesn't let the pickup come apart

the above mentioned snap ring, this is easy to lose

 

[Provience]

and sanding and scrubbing and etc until it all looks clean again

This was the last time the little plastic things on the weights were seen whole. You can tell one is already cracked if you look reeealll close at the picture.

and this guy was also worthy of getting cleaned up

used some #2 red n tacky all around. good idea or not, figure anything that gets real oil will clean itself eventually and this made all the moving parts move much better.

you can also see above where I ran a new screw rather than mess with doing the full extraction for the broken screw. It sticks out of the case just a touch, so that everybody will know there is some custom stuff going on with this rig

the pickup wheel was previously only held on by corrosion, or whatever had been in there was so bad that it destroyed itself when I was hammering this thing apart. Dunno, either way, need a new key.

The oil pump drive rod, 5/16" hex bar, is supposed to be installed from below. I didn't do that, figured it'd go in from the top. Was wrong. This picture shows the retainer being used to mark the absolute max space I have in the bottom of the distributor. Reading on the internet, the concern is that it will slightly stick to the distributor and then fall into the pan upon removal. The small orb has a small magnet on the end.

smash orb with pliers and hammer

verify magnet will fit between limit of shaft and wear mark on shaft

 

[Provience]

and installed the magnet into the distributor. Not that it matters, maybe that it matters, either way. Drive shaft installed.

and then got the distributor in place. Mighty nice now that it spins, be even nicer once I get the rotor to stay stuck to the shaft.

They didn't have any square keys at oreilly, picked up a bag of various woodruff keys to cut down and a 6' choke cable. They didn't have my heater hose to block fitting that I need or an oil cap. dang. Otherwise, I need to find/pick up some 1/2" bolts and i'll get this thing plugged into place.

Ended up going with 1/4-20x3/4" for the valve cover bolts.

 

[reptillikus]

The magnet is clever. I definitely forgot to put an oil pump shaft in once and had to drop it in from the top. Of course it would come out with the distributor every time i pulled it. Never dropped it into the pan though.

 

[Provience]

The magnet is clever. I definitely forgot to put an oil pump shaft in once and had to drop it in from the top. Of course it would come out with the distributor every time i pulled it. Never dropped it into the pan though.

thanks, hopefully I never have to find out if it works. I've got a couple more stabs to take, but once it runs, i'd like that to be all. I almost just used some silicone to glue the shaft into one end, but want it to be serviceable in a sense.

 

[Provience]

Bellhousing bolts for an international slant4 are 1/2-13xlong enough. I've had these bolts for close to or over 15 years, super justified to keep them around now. the small corner is 5/16-18

and I about couldn't believe it, but the whole powertrain was dead flat neutral balance using the rear bolt locations on the intake to pick it up, just ahead of the bellhousing

moving on over, always fun with gentle slopes in the concrete

pushed it back as far as I could like that, then lowered it down onto the bellhousing to grab from the front

while laying underneath, transmission jack down below to finangle the angle, I notice this stamped "R" on the drivers side engine mount weird, wasn't there before and I looked at them twice before putting them on, didn't see anything so...swapped those around.

the difference 2" can make is pretty dramatic, went right into place.

the one inner fender is mangled, I need to pick up some 18 gauge sheet steel. Don't want to keep using up my alu-minium. that's the floors for the racecar. Snapped off 2 of the 3 bolts holding the spark-maker-sender-box in place.

and all the jelly has melted out of it. Anybody have any reason why I can't just put a layer of clear 100% silicone in there instead to act as an insulator/humidity keeper-outer?

Hooking back up the clutch rods and though "there should really be a spring or something here, that'd be nice"

well gosh golly, there is one right there on the cradle! that'll do nicely.

 

[Provience]

on to the transmission crossmember, pretty obvious that the relief for the driveshaft goes on the driveshaft side.

less obvious is why the side with the angle piece doesn't go on the driveshaft side, or hell, why this upper mount is asymmetrical at all so flip that guy around...

There's got to be a nylon bushing for the transfer case arm.

fuel pump for a 78 2wd will not work on an 80 4wd. Doesn't clear the mount, dang.

It was going to take a bunch of grinding on the generic woodruff keys to be anything close, after looking around the garage, decided to cut a small bit of copper-coated brake tube and hammer it flat, then trim into a triangle.

tapped it into place and now seems to hold the things in place.

feeler gauges weren't in the first or second drawer I opened, but this real thing piece of brass was. Shooting for a .005-0.020" air gap....probably close enough.

and then went inside to do the choke cable, found a spot that seems reasonable and had to get the old intake air temperature gauge out of the way. Super cool wire wrapped around a screw for ground.

and again with the wires shoved into the fuse box to tap power guess it's only temporary unless it works

 

[Provience]

6' was far too long of a cable, pulled out the handle and chopped 3 or 4 feet off the end.

and it now opens and closes on demand

set the old air cleaner housing on top, thing has a whole bunch of cracks in the sides

almost convinced myself to just go buy a generic 2 piece exposed filter style one. Wondered what it would look like cleaned up and free of mouse house, turns out it looks a bunch better.

Super cool and strange that somebody welded this nut and washer in an odd spot for the housing hold-down

found a sticker from a few years back the other day, went to install it on this truck and the adhesive was no good. Applied the first can of sticky stuff I grabbed. Not sure how long it will hold up under the hood though.

Really ties the room together.

since i'm sort of stuck needing to figure out what all parts I still need to order, wanted to get as much of the accessory stuff together and see how it would stack up.

I'd bent this bolt removing the engine. The bolt I got to replace it with is a 1/4" too short, applied hammer and a die and got the old bolt mostly straightened out.

worked good enough to get the power steering mount in place, this'll all need to come off once I get a fuel pump.

 

[Provience]

new washers and sanding of the contacts is all the love i'm giving the alternator today. Maybe at some point it will get opened up and brushes inspected, probably see if it works first before deciding.

I did reference my earlier pictures for the alternator mount brackets, wanted a better reference picture.

removed a whole gang of vacuum lines and the vacuum reservoir can. Near as I can figure, only going to run PCV, Distributor Advance, Brake Booster. Can't think of a reason to run anything else.

pile of removed high quality product

and set the hood on and left it to sit. list of little stuff is growing, likely going to put some of them things on order and shift over to the brakes/joints/other stuff i've already bought

oh, it's now sage and brown every time I look at it, eventually it might be that way for other people as well