The chronicles of Lou, '70 F350 dually Cummins project

[Ranchero50]

Yeah, me too but taking little bites out of the problems is better than choking on the whole thing. Patience and I'm at work until Thursday.

Jamie

[BobbyFord]

Man!
That's a first for me, I haven't ever seen a cam that broke!

The reason the cam broke is because that broken rod and/or other crank related parts came up and slapped it in half...

[Ranchero50]

Lou lives. Got the 360 swap finished up, fired it off and even found the missing alternator bolt and spacer. The power steering doesn't work and one of the rear brakes isn't doing anything but rattling around in the drum. The boy and I put about a mile on it riding around the neighborhood without a tag (or bed).

Felt good to be running a bump again after two years without one.

Jamie

[BobbyFord]

Wow, 2 years. I hope I get mine driveable soon...

[fomocoguy]

Good deal! So whats the plan now? Are you going to fix the little stuff and plate it like it is or are you going to wait till you have some sort of bed for it?

Btw, with the loose brake and steep gearing it should be easy for you to get us a pic of it doing a smokey brake torque...

[Ranchero50]

The plan now is get the little stuff working, like windshield wipers and maybe get the heater selector cable to free up so it's not broiling me. BTW, the sliding rear glass is The truck is fun to drive. You can feel it's longer than stock, the front shocks are gone, the rear is too tight without a bed (no suspension movement). Shifts good, runs smoothly, seat is really nice and springy, forgot about that.

Read up on the power steering last night, there is fluid leaking out of the front of the pump too so I'm not sure if I have a pump problem or a valve body problem. It steers the same left or right so I think the spool valve is just stuck or the pump is shot. Maybe I'll make a manifold and test the pump pressure.

The wider mirrors are going to be an issue, too wide. We did get a bunch of thumbs up as we tooled around the neighborhood. The truck is pretty quiet, has 2" with a pair of big mufflers. The engine was smoking pretty bad when I started it but cleared up after running for about a half hour.

I have feelers out for a bed or I'll make one. I want a low bed height, would like to have it tilt to either dump or tilt load. I'd also like to either beavertail it or make the last 3' drop to the ground. I have a couple ideas floating around in my head. I want to be able to ground load some heady stuff and also tilt the bed to load a tractor or small car.

One final thing, with the original FoMoCo headlights, the light pattern off to the sides is really neat, noticed it taking it down the alley as dusk was setting in.

I took the heads off of the 390 and they look really nice and are rebuilt so I'll probably sell them.

Jamie

[FLATBEDFORD]

I just found this. Nice to see another big one getting on the road again. What wheels does it have? 16" or 16.5"? Splits or one piece?

[Ranchero50]

It's got 16's with nice lumpy flat spots. Fired him up yesterday and other than the choke not being set up right it runs great. I think the power steering is starting to come around, the pump is whining a little while turning so I think the spool valve was frozen. I also got a letter from the city about the disassembled auto's... So the blue one os bound for the farm and I'm thinking about just putting tags on this one. I needed dad's extension ladder and if it had tags I would have went after it without a bed. It also needs front shocks, the ones up there now don't do anything except make you feel sea sick...

Some pics taken by the kid when we were getting ready to get it out, five point turn to get it aimed the right way...








That's mud all over the valve cover. it baked off the exhausts prettu quick

Jamie

[FLATBEDFORD]

Those flat spots will come out after a few miles at speed. Mines has bias-ply tires too and if it sits for a week or more, the first few miles are pretty rough ride. It feels like a slow moving tractor with ag tires until the tires warm up and get round again.

[Ranchero50]

Lous got a new bed on the way tomorrow!!!

http://westmd.craigslist.org/grd/1719226813.html





It's a beast even being aluminum, former welders rig so I get to reconfigure it a bit but it'll go right on the truck frame. I was surprised to say the least. The openings will hold common side boxes but I may get rid of them if I go dump with it. The front (in front of the box opening) is a 12" section for holding big welder and cutting bottles. The pipe rack is even schd 40 pipe and heavy. Someone spent a lot of time making this bed.

Jamie

[FreakysFords]

Nice!

[Ranchero50]

Ok, got the bed this morning, got it home and now it's sitting on the truck until I decide what to do to it.

Made a 40 mile trip like this, mostly interstate just waiting for DOT to get a hard on...


These pics give a pretty good idea of how big the bed actually is.


Plenty of support, 3" 'C' channel every 12" and the outer lip is 3/8" x 4" flat stock.


The front 12" is set up for torch bottles. I'm going to cut mostof it away and leave a 6-8" deep pocket in the middle and run stacks outboard.


Using my friends '89 F450 to lift the bed. It's a Cummins swap about 80% done.




Used the wheel lift to angle the bed so I could back the truck under it.


Almost

[Ranchero50]

Ok, I've already decided to get rid of all the crap on the sides and narrow the back to something sensible. The step in the back is really nice so it may stay. The pipe rack is leaving as soon as I can get it unbolted and of course the front end is getting redone. I have $400 in the bed (and gas for dad's truck.

I think I did decent

Jamie

[robroy]

Good afternoon Jamie,

That's really exciting! I'm always fascinated to see how others handle such heavy and difficult objects like your new flatbed.

I'd say you got a marvelous deal on it too--I'll bet having something like that built for your truck would have cost quite a few thousand dollars. And you probably have barely over $1,000 invested in your whole F350 by now!

That is a lot of truck per dollar.

Robroy

[Ranchero50]

Well, the boy and I got the pipe rack off, it was around 400lbs and is going for scrap or some other project down ont he farm (I made round bale holders out of one last year (keeps the goat food out of the goat pee)). I'm going to raise the bed about 3" so it lines up with the bump a little better and to get some much needed tire clearance (have about 4" right now).

Money wise this one is working out wierd.

I paid $300 for the truck.

The bed is heavy, around 2000lbs so at 50 cents a pound it's $1000+ for $400. Both the seller and I knew it but niether had the heart to scrap it and he wanted it gone to a good home. Poor thing.

The blue truck was a freeby so I don't have much in that motor (gaskets and hoses).

So I have $700 in the truck so far, the bed is worth $1000, the truck around that again in scrap but the wife thinks I'm just pissing money (as always)

The coolest thing though is I got a set of big rig air horns to mount under the new bed

Jamie