Greetings from the foothills

[nedc]

Hi everyone! I recently bought an '83 F150 shortbed 4x4 with a 300CI I6 and 4-speed from a neighbor. It has a 4" lift and seems to drive well but the engine is a wheezy, smoky mess. I have a buddy working on a 351 using up a block and parts he's had laying around and hope to have that in sometime this spring. The altitude here (7,600'+) doesn't work well with older engines that aren't running well. The 351 may get an FiTech injection system but the cost is a bit scary. I need to replace the front axle u-joints and clean up the interior but happily, the body and frame are pretty solid. Just some rusty bubbles over the rear wheel openings, like they all get eventually.

My wife and I are retired and enjoying life in north central Colorado.

...ned.

[Gary Lewis]

Hello!  And Welcome!  

Retired?  From what?  I'm retired from Information Technology and live in OK.

Speaking of "where", we have a member's map (Bullnose Forum/Member's Map) and I'd be happy to add you if you'd give me the name of your town.

But 7,600' is up there.  Were are almost exactly 1/10 of that.  And at that elevation you need good compression and spot-on air/fuel ratios, the latter of which is best achieved via EFI.  So I understand the need for your planned changes.

How 'bout starting a thread in the main section to show us some pics of your truck?  Not that you can't here, but most people like to have a thread(s) about their trucks to record their progress.

Welcome!

[1986F150Six]

Yes, welcome to the forum!

[grumpin]

Welcome!

[nedc]

I too and retired from IT. I was CIO and ran IT as well as several other things at a large community college in Illinois. We now live 14 miles west of Livermore, CO so please do add me to the map.

I will probably start a thread once I get closer to the engine swap. Right now I'm just messing with simple stuff like fixing the driver's door lock and filling the dash-hole where a radio belongs. I have enough other old stuff to keep me busy in the meantime: '61 Corvair Lakewood, '63 Chevy C10, '74 BMW 2002tii, '89 BMW 325i convertible. All are running "drivers", I don't have an interest in show cars per se.

...ned.

[Gary Lewis]

You are now, quite literally, on the map.  

Seems like you have an affinity for motor vehicles, as do I.  ('50 Chevy pickup & '69 Bee in addition to the Bullnose trucks.)

As for career, I retired from the #3 outsourcing company in the world, and was the Service Deliver Manager on one of our "wins" - a company that is currently in bankruptcy court and making headlines.  That seems to have been the type of company from which we could win business.  

[nedc]

Hah! My wife is a CSC refugee who ended up laid off/ retiring from AT&T. Small world, spinning ever faster.

[Gary Lewis]

Uh oh!  You knew!

I was w/DuPont when they o/s'd to CSC, but I was with Conoco in Ponca, London, and Houston before DuPont bought Conoco.  Then I was the SDM for the Eastern Region and then for GD, globally.

Might your wife and I crossed paths?

[nedc]

My wife was with Aon Insurance (Chicago) when CSC took over their IT. She worked in CSC Global Network Services on many projects for many customers until CSC sold that business line to AT&T, who then collapsed it into their own network services portfolio. I think your paths did not cross.

[Gary Lewis]

Interesting.  But our paths might have crossed.  If I remember correctly, a friend of mine (from near Burlington, NC as he was off that GD account and had been working for me) was one of the SDM's there - and probably the first one.  (I think they had a revolving door, as there was after me at Sears.)  He had me come into town and teach a class on Global Excellence at Aon just after the outsourcing.  We discussed how CSC was put together, organizationally, who the players were for each of the organizations w/in what was probably called the GIU at the time, etc.

It is a very, very small world.