Buford T - 79 Ford Crew Cab Powerstroke Swap

[Burns]

Good on you for making the pedal box how you wanted. The previous owner to my truck, built mine. It works, but its a touch awkward, as the pedal is super high. He did good work on it, its just not as comfortable/natural as it could be. The throw works with the ZF6 slave, so all good there!

 

[zerobalance]

Forward and backward today it seems.

I figured I needed to mount the hydroboost and clutch master to finalize mounting the PCM and relay box. So I measured up everything and drilled for the brake pedal, then moved the clutch pedal over a bit to be more comfortable. I'll cut a filler plate to cover all those old holes where the clutch master comes through.

Made up a quick conduit bracket to locate the column until everything is in place and I can machine a new collar for the top of it.

I never had a key with it, so drilled out the tumbler and replaced it.

And finally hooked up the clutch plumbing in hopes of it moving. Somewhere in the last year I lost the spring retaining clip for the clutch line, I dug all over any couldn't find it anywhere, on a whim I tried one from a VW jetta and it fits perfect. Filled the master, popped off the slave and tried to bleed it, but it would not get any pedal. So I pulled everything out (which takes less than a minute, thanks Ford) and tried to bench bleed it. Air bubbles kept coming, and kept coming, and kept coming.....as best I can figure it's sucking air back up the slave. No one local has the parts so I just ordered a complete, already filled and bled setup from Rock Auto. It will be here tuesday, so stuck in this spot until then.

 

[zerobalance]

Made a little headway this morning on figuring out the cooling stack The 6.0 radiator fits almost perfectly in the 79 core support with some trimming to the original radiator brackets. Plenty of room for the original fan and shroud as well, which was something I was pretty concerned about.

Moving onto the intercooler....I puzzled over this thing for a few minutes. it was intended to sit higher in the super duty, but the hood latch on the 79 was in the way. Mounting it lower was not possible because the frame rails are to narrow....I flipped it over and it dawned on me it would fit perfectly upside down with the tabs trimmed. Out came the plasma cutter to trim it up.

Perfect. The center grille hits it at the very ends, but I plan to swap to a pre 77 grille, so I'll see how that fits and not chop this one. Now I can build up some brackets to retain the radiator and intercooler. I'm not sure it's worth the hassle to try and keep AC. None of my other old cars have it, I can deal with it.

Now I need to figure this out. I think the guy I got the truck from gave me parts from about 5 different trucks. I'm not sure if this is the wrong bracket or I'm missing a piece. The grille is bolted to the fender, fender to core support, but this brace ends up an inch shy. The bracket shown in the LMC truck diagrams looks completely different, there is no way it can be an alignment issue since everything else fits correctly.

 

[Provience]

looks like the whole grill needs to come back that inch, in the picture above the last one, you can see the center brace is also about that far off.

 

[shortbus4x4]

Not much of a productive day. I had to do some actual work to pay the bills today.

I did manage to mill the 79 steering shaft to match the 06 U joint and get it mocked back up while I wait on the shaft bearing. Better than doing nothing I guess.

Show off.

My milling machine for turning ends of round steering shafts into squares or Ds. Looking good.

 

[zerobalance]

looks like the whole grill needs to come back that inch, in the picture above the last one, you can see the center brace is also about that far off.

Just the corner apparently. It was kinda hard to figure out because it fit the fender ok. That center bracket was all bent to shit so I was trying to kinda straighten it to be what looked ok, didn't really have any reference, just a pile of sorta bent parts. I finally managed to tweak that corner back somewhat straight, going to hit a spot I know this week and try to get an earlier grille.

I figured I should make sure all the charge pipes and such fit before I tear the front end apart again. The intercooler needed dropped about an inch and they were perfect. Of course the pipe to the intake is cracked, i don't know what the hell ford was doing making a charge pipe out of plastic, but it's garbage, I'll find an earlier aluminum one for it. I also sneaked the K&N air filter box in. Everything fits surprisingly well, just need some trimming here and there.

I also decided that if I plan to actually move this thing, I should wire up the key switch, so if things go sideways I can kill it from the cab. Pretty sweet having it start with the key.



Considering using this tablet as a dash and 3d printing a bezel until I learn enough coding to build a canbus dash from scratch.

 

[zerobalance]

Show off.

My milling machine for turning ends of round steering shafts into squares or Ds. Looking good.

The mill isn't mine, I have a junk old fadal I'm retrofitting to Linux controls tho. My good friend has a machine shop and let me use his shit, I told him I was going to use my angle grinder with a digital read out and he told me he would kick me in the dick if I did.

 

[zerobalance]

Rock auto delivered the new clutch hydraulics yesterday. I was somewhat suprised that they master and slave were metal vs the oem plastic one, and I was more pleased that it cost $58 vs $200 everywhere else. They literally take a minute to install too, no tools required, just twist them in, and it even is prefilled and bled.

So, I dropped that in and figured it was time to send it. I need my lift back to make some dough to pay for this turd, and commited to myself that I was not going to move this thing again with out driving it.

So I did.....helps with the motivation a lot to be behind the wheel. I need to crank out about a weeks worth of paying work, then I can devote some more time to buttoning up everything to make it actually driveable. I still need to tackle the powersteering and brakes on the mechanical side.

 

[GLTHFJ60]

That's a big milestone!

 

[FordFascist]

Rock auto delivered the new clutch hydraulics yesterday. I was somewhat suprised that they master and slave were metal vs the oem plastic one, and I was more pleased that it cost $58 vs $200 everywhere else. They literally take a minute to install too, no tools required, just twist them in, and it even is prefilled and bled.

So, I dropped that in and figured it was time to send it. I need my lift back to make some dough to pay for this turd, and commited to myself that I was not going to move this thing again with out driving it.

So I did.....helps with the motivation a lot to be behind the wheel. I need to crank out about a weeks worth of paying work, then I can devote some more time to buttoning up everything to make it actually driveable. I still need to tackle the powersteering and brakes on the mechanical side.

Sweet thread. Turn your phone sideways and film like a white man.

 

[zerobalance]

Sweet thread. Turn your phone sideways and film like a white man.

I actually do film sieways, but since it's uploaded to YT as a short (because it's way faster than going through and uploading a regular YT video) I think they optimize it for mobile viewing. Or maybe I just don't know what the hell I'm doing.

 

[rattle_snake]

It moves, excellent work man.

 

[zerobalance]

Trying to sort some small stuff here. The PS line to the hydro boost is about 6" short. I figure the easiest way is to just make some 6" whips to extend it out, that way it will still use an off the shelf line. The problem is I have no Idea what this fitting is to find a male and female. Any ideas?

 

[Provience]

I was going to say bubble flare off the cuff, but it looks a little different, maybe just because the fitting od is large for the line

http://www.fedhillusa.com/?page=flare#:~:text=There%20are%20two%20basic%20types,common%20is%20the%20SAE%20flare.

 

[zerobalance]

I was going to say bubble flare off the cuff, but it looks a little different, maybe just because the fitting od is large for the line

http://www.fedhillusa.com/?page=flare#:~:text=There%20are%20two%20basic%20types,common%20is%20the%20SAE%20flare.

It looks like a flare, but I think it actually seals at the nylon washer. Also there is a ring behind the nut, so it couldn't slide back to be flared.

 

[zerobalance]

Finally moving forward on this thing again. Sorting power steering lines out for hydroboost. I bought these fittings: Aeroquip FBM2608 Aeroquip AN to Metric Adapter Fittings | Summit Racing to get from the oem fitting to AN, now I plan to just make a complete set of lines, I wanted to make sure this fitting was correct before I ordered everything. This tiny little stuff is so time consuming but it has to happen.

I also managed to get my hands on some real paint stripper,the citrus crap sorta takes off the blue enamel but won't touch the OG paint. I plan to take most of it down to bare metal and start over, after repairing the one bad section of drip rail.

 

[Levigarrett76]

Man, this is Cool

 

[rattle_snake]

on that odd fitting, cut it off and flare it (45 or AN 37*) for extension.

 

[zerobalance]

on that odd fitting, cut it off and flare it (45 or AN 37*) for extension.

Thought about it, but decided it would just be better to make a complete line, it will match the truck inner fenders better that way too

 

[72blazer]

 

[zerobalance]

More dumb little stuff, but one foot in front of the other. When the oem peal box was removed, it took away the steering column mount. So, I threw one together in fusion and printed it up. I undersized the holes a bit, and heated rivnuts to press them in. Works perfectly. I made a tube bracket to go from the firewall to the dash as well to replace the missing bracket on top. I'll eventually mill this out of aluminum probably, but we will see how it does in plastic for now. Print quality kinda sucks, but its a $99 printer running $8 filament with zero tuning

 

[rattle_snake]

dope

 

[zerobalance]

In case I need to go back to this later. Power steering lines mostly solved.

Here's where I ended up, I'll post it here in the off chance anyone is googling around for it in the future.
On the box: 18mm-5/8 male JIC 90 w/ rubber o ring - > Hose (36" long 5/8" Female JIC-3/8" Female JIC)> 3/8" JIC elbow>Aeroquip FBM2608 connects to the left side port on the hydroboost. The other side of the box is the stock cooler line.

On the pump: Aeroquip FBM2608>3/8" JIC elbow> Hose (36" long 3/8"" Female JIC-3/8" Female JIC)>3/8" JIC elbow>Aeroquip FBM2608

The rest of the lines remain stock to cooler and reservoir

 

[Provience]

And you'll likely never need to touch it again

 

[Gots_a_sol]

Update?

 

[zerobalance]

I am back.

At the beginning of January I got stupid busy with some customer work, which ended up being nice to stack up some funds. I also kinda had a coming to jesus with all the projects I have sitting around of my own, and decided to cull a dozen or so cars from my life. In the midst of that, we came across an opportunity to buy another chunk of property, and I honestly was getting worried about my 2023 F250 getting out of warranty and having possible issues, plus I really wasn't that into it so I decided to sell it to cash out on it while it still was worth close to what I paid. My first instinct was to buy a nicer 6.4 truck and drop a cummins into it. So I did, dragging home this completely rust free theft recovery 2009 King Ranch from Florida for dirt cheap.

It still ran, and people pay a ton for even high mile 6.4s, so I yanked out the engine and trans, sold them and recouped almost the whole investment.

Then I scored another 6.4, this time with a bad turbo, but also with a Zf6 6 speed manual. Selling the sorta running engine, tailgate and back doors paid for it.

So now, I had a bunch of not driving trucks, and a pile of parts with like $1000 wrapped up in it all. My 2023 did one last duty of bringing home a 32k mile 24V cummins (non 53 block), and I determined I'm going to need bigger equipment for this diesel stuff, but I got it safely into the shop.

The next day, a Chrysler dealer wrote me a check for the 2023, it went away and I fixed up on of the neglected 6.0 trucks I had sitting around so I would have a truck again. I forgot how much fun a straight piped 10 blade turbo truck was....

I ordered up a kit to adapt the 5.9 to the Zf6 and 6.4 truck.....super nice parts.

Ok, now I will tie all this back to the 79. Someone came along to the shop where I had the 09 king ranch and made a STUPID big offer on the cab complete with full interior. I honestly didn't love the king ranch interior, so I did the reasonable thing and sold it. I also had been driving the 6.0 for a bit and figured a 6.0 would be fine for the few times I actually need to tow a pickup size trailer nowadays, plus the 09 was so damn clean, I felt like it would be ruined the first Ohio winter. On top of this, I was feeling liberated from selling all the cars and want less shit, so I decided to just have a cheapo 6.0 around, and put the cummins and this Zf6 into the 79, using the spotless 09 chassis. I still have the bed to sell off the 09 king ranch, which will put me about 10k ahead on this truck, so I consider that a success.

This all makes sense in my head, even if it makes sense to literally no one else.

Sooo...I yanked the 79 back off it's rolling chassis and sold it this morning for a ton of money thanks to the ZF6.

The kids and I are yanking apart the other 6.4 donor right now, once I have that Zf6 ready, we will get cracking on assembling the nice frame and drivetrain. I have set a lofty goal to be driving this truck, and I have freed up a bunch of spare time, so we should see a lot of progress quickly.

I know I seem indecisive, and I am, but I think I have figured out a plan that should lead to this thing getting done sooner rather than later. I really would have liked to keep the 6.0 in it to piss people off, but in the long run, I think going 5.9 is better, and I can bump it up to at least respectable numbers to push this thing reliably.

 

[Levigarrett76]

Holy crap you been busy!

What do you move all this stuff with?
Marketplace?

 

[KDXSR5]

What concerns did you have with the '23 truck?

 

[Levigarrett76]

Probably got tired of it beeping and dinging all the time. When sonething actually went wrong it prolly sound like an orchestra

 

[PAToyota]

This all makes sense in my head, even if it makes sense to literally no one else.

My father, mother, and pretty much anyone else who knows what I do: "Why TF don't you sell all this crap and use the money to buy one decent car?"