Larry the Lariat - My 86 F150 4x4

[Gary Lewis]

I can't quite tell how you used the two layers.  Can you show a closeup?

But I'm glad it worked.  Did you seal it to the cowl with Blackjack or something?  That's where my first leaks were coming from - behind the seal.

[chirkware]

Gary Lewis wrote

I can't quite tell how you used the two layers.  Can you show a closeup?

But I'm glad it worked.  Did you seal it to the cowl with Blackjack or something?  That's where my first leaks were coming from - behind the seal.

Here's a side view where you can see two thicknesses sandwiched between the cowl and the metal strip. I didn't use any other kind of sealant.

[Gary Lewis]

Thanks.  Now I can see.  But it is strange that one of them curled and the other didn't.

As you can see from the pics I posted, Big Blue's seal did initially have a series of waves to it, but now that it has been on for years it has evened out.  But I think your idea of a piece going across to spread the load would do away with the wave.

[mat in tn]

when you absolutely positively have to know over night. pour a gallon of water on it

[chirkware]

mat in tn wrote

when you absolutely positively have to know over night. pour a gallon of water on it

LOL, Yep! Forecast was showing a LOT of rain heading our way. Quite a while back I started leaving a trash bag over the breather to keep water out. Not sure what my first clue was that there was a problem. 😜





Nice and tight bonded sealing washer plus wingnut will hopefully help keep any moisture that make it in out the breather.

[Gary Lewis]

That cleaned up very nicely!  

[chirkware]

Gary Lewis wrote

That cleaned up very nicely!  

A little paint may have helped with that look. 😁

Mostly notes to sell below…

I'm gonna try to do a little tuning and see if I can't get the engine running better. I really haven't dialed the carb in at all yet. I also need to get under it and find all the grease fittings. Not sure when the last time was anything got greased.

From there, I just need to drive it a bit and see how the suspension feels. I still need too flush the coolant and maybe replace the really old looking rad hoses.

Haven't even tried 4wd yet. I need to check fluid levels in the differentials and I guess the transfer case. Probably should inspect the PS fluid too (PS seems to be working fine).

Checking into the AC would be nice too. It blows but no cooling, not that I'm surprised with that.

[chirkware]

Got the carb dialed in a bit better, though it’s not quite there yet. I’m gonna try to get a friend who’s good at this to walk me through tweaking it.

Got up under it with the grease gun. Didn’t find a zerk fitting on the front most universal joint but the other three had them.

Finally tried out 4wd. Was disappointed it didn’t feel like it was locking in quite right. Then I came in to work on dinner, and it finally dawned on me…manual locking hubs. LOL, it’s been a while since I’ve driven a 4wd. 😂 I should give into those hubs a once over.

Really itching to start driving this old truck around.

[chirkware]

Plug, wires, cap, and rotor

Lovely old plugs. Apparently there was no shortage of fuel.



All went well until I got to the coil wire. Set came with two, both wrong. Not sure if I ordered the wrong kit or if maybe my coil isn’t correct.



Annoyingly, the old wire won’t go back in place, so I’m waiting on one I ordered.

Two steps forward, one step back.

[Gary Lewis]

Wow!  Those plugs are BLACK!  I don't think I've ever seen a set so black.

Two steps forward and one back is still progress.  Hope you get to take another one or two forward soon.  But what are you or have you done about the excess fuel?  Was the choke stuck on?

[mat in tn]

heck those plugs look fine. they'll clean up with a good high speed drive

[chirkware]

When I was first getting it running, it backfired and I had flames through the carb. I'm assuming the excess fuel caused that

That's why the carb for a rebuild.

Once I started resetting the carb to a baseline, I did find that the carb was setup with the idle very high, so hopefully that all fits together.

If course, I'm no expert on these carbs so if it doesn't tune now that it's got fresh plugs, wires, etc., I'll have to suspect the carb still has issues.

Hoping my friend who's an old time tune by ear guy can come over and give me some tuning lessons.

Here's what I've been doing today...






Poured rain all day yesterday, so a perfect day to get a safe controlled burn done.

Now that it's down to a hour smolder, I can spend some time under the hood. 😃

[BigBrother-84]

Wow, what a huge pile of branches!
You're right, better having a rainy day in order to control it.
Don't know on your side, but here spring is always very dry just after the snow disappeared, before we get the leaves in the trees.  Very risky to spread fire.
Couple of years ago, a neighbor almost put the surrounding forest on fire, fortunately the fire fighters responded quickly and were able to stop it.

[chirkware]

We’ve had several rainy days in the past couple weeks in East Tennessee, so it was a good time to burn. I keep a hose handy and I knock the fire down every few minutes to keep it going slow. Within 45 minutes all the little stuff has burned and in two hours it’s just big stuff smoldering. I mow about 10’ or around it very low and blow the trimmings into the pile so there’s little chance of it spreading.

I recall when I was a kid a fire getting away from a neighbor and it burned several acres of woods. Not good!

There was a big ole cedar tree right on the property line fell a few weeks ago. Neighbor cut the limbs off leaving the trunk (I’m hoping to mill a lot of it) and my son and I hauled about five truck loads of limbs to what was already a sizable pile.  Probably the largest burn I’ve done so far.



To tie back to Larry the Lariat…just another reason to get the 86 ready, so it can take over tasks that my 70 always has to do. 😁

[mat in tn]

here I burn small but often. my brother says just light the whole pile. but he thinks like a renter!

[chirkware]

mat in tn wrote

here I burn small but often. my brother says just light the whole pile. but he thinks like a renter!

My problem is that me burning in our back yard will give my wife a migraine for several days. Her and my son go see her folks without me occasionally so I wait until they are out of town to light the pile. This is the first time in a couple years so this was the pile from at least two full years. Then the big cedar coming down just really put it over the top!

I just put out what was left rather than letting it smolder. I’m gonna build a raised bed where this pile was, so what’s left will get dumped in so I don’t need quite as much dirt.

I always toss my old oil filters (sans the rubber seal) into the pile. After pulling out what’s left of them from the ashes it looks like I haven’t burned in 8-10 oil changes between four vehicles and one lawn mower. 😂

[mat in tn]

got to keep the home happy! I'm lucky in that we all enjoy a campfire so it's a regular thing. sometimes it's just yard clean-up and sometimes it's the hangout spot for the guys. tonight, I had my four-year-old granddaughter helping carry brush to the fire place. priceless! she has more energy than the rest of the family put together.

[chirkware]

Decided it was time to get serious and learn to do some stuff myself, so I ordered a timing light with digital advance and RPM reading settings. Also picked up a vacuum gauge from Hobo Freight. I was trying to just tune based on listening like some of the guys do on the videos I've been watching but I wasn't getting anywhere and I don't think I've got a good baseline so I'll start over once I have some tools.

Who else went to Harbor freight this past weekend? They were packed when I got there. Really good sale going on. I haven't shown my wife the receipt! 😁 Did I mention they were out of town? 😂 There was no one to supervise me! 😜

Decided tonight to repurpose my burn pile location...



The "dirt" in it right now is what was left of the cinders when I put the fire out. I just scooped it all up and dumped it in. That'll be a bit less soil I'll need. Should have done this weeks ago but there was a huge pile of limbs in the way. 😂

I've got less than $75 in it. Just had to buy 9x 2x6x8 PT.  Gotta find some good soil now. Definitely want to get some tomatoes, cucumbers, and green beans going. Hoping for cantaloupe too (can't ever find them actually RIPE in the store).  

[chirkware]

Haven’t updated in a while.

I started focusing on timing to see what may be going on and found that the distributer vacuum advance hose was connected to the carb on the port labeled Full Manifold Vacuum instead of the one labeled Timed spark vacuum source.

From what I’m reading, that would be causing the timing to be way advanced.

I moved it to the timed spark vacuum source, hooked up a timing light with digital advance, cranked it, and started hunting to see if I can figure out where the timing is currently. So far, I’m not having any luck. Doesn’t help that I’ve never used a timing light before.

Next complication is that the distributer seems to be frozen in place. With the bolt loose, I can’t get it to budge a bit. I know it has to be off, thought maybe if I set the light to 10 degrees and carefully turned the distributer I might get it back there.

Trying to make it easier to see, I used a silver sharpie on the groove, and a black sharpie on each side.

I’m gonna try to get get some penetrating oil on the base of the dizzy and see if that helps free it.

I’m hoping maybe the timing being way off explains it being so rich (or perhaps that the carb adjustment was way off to compensate). I looked back at older pictures from when I first got Larry running, and the plugs were black as could be before I ever started the truck.

[ArdWrknTrk]

You can say that, but most Fords were set up that way, they just had a vacuum restriction in the hose going to the distributor after the thermal vacuum switch.

If you still have your colored plastic vacuum lines you can tell that red is manifold vacuum. (yellow is switched, green is EGR, or emissions, white is timed, etc..)

This is mostly down to how a factory vacuum canister is sprung and how resilient the vacuum diaphragm is.

Getting a truly stuck distributor to turn is not fir the faint hearted.
With a V8 you can pour a pool of oil around the base and start with a torch, strap wrench, moving to a pipe wrench.

There used to be fork or claw like attachments you put on a big slide hammer that would (in theory) jerk an obstinate distributor straight out the hole without working it back and forth.
But of course the objective is to turn the distributor and set the timing.