terry dean's '68 f-250

[tdc]

haaa i got a "smoking vehicle courtesy letter" in the mail today. i knew i was blowing some smoke and totally plan to take care of all that here pretty soon but i guess it's worse than i thought. whatever, though. i'm going to drive it ~800 miles to la and back this weekend, i look forward to getting more of these in the mail in the following weeks!

i'm thinking about picking up a head from pick n pull to rebuild to swap on, that way the truck can stay on the road as long as possible. while i have the head off i might drop the pan and pull the pistons to do the rings, make a weekend of it or something. being new to this engine, is there anything i should look out for when sourcing a 'new' head? stay away from efi models? also, should i do crank bearings and seals while i'm doing the piston rings? i kind of want to do as much as i can without having to pull the engine as i don't currently have to equipment to get that involved.

[motzingg]

wow man, only in california, huh?

i dunno about the people's republic out there, but by me 300-6's are about $200 complete and running and about 3-4 of them come through on craigslist every month. Sometimes they'll sit on there for weeks. My long term plan is going to a good used 300 to replace the 240. Cheap cheap and i can probably still sell the 240 for $150. Chances are you could probably buy a full sized ford van for less than $600 and scrap it for $500, then you'd get all the modern accessories too!

From my research it looks like the early 80's were the best years for the 300, the bottom ends are better on the EFI models with hypereutectic pistons, but the heads have the shrouded valves or whatever. The early 80's heads had the hardened valve seats but didn't have the EFI chambers yet. Anything pre-unleaded fuel is best to avoid. There were also some forged cranks floating around in the HD engines, you might have one of those in your 3/4 ton truck, it might be worth saving if so, but it doesn't look like people break the cast cranks very often, if at all. That '10 second turbo maverick' should have a cast crank I think, and he hasn't broke it.

There are also some differences in the rocker studs but i don't understand that part as well. I've had a rocker stud pull out twice now while messing up my timing and backfiring it, so while you've got it all apart you might want to consider drilling and tapping for chev. rockers and studs.

[motzingg]

wow man, only in california, huh?

i dunno about the people's republic out there, but by me 300-6's are about $200 complete and running and about 3-4 of them come through on craigslist every month. Sometimes they'll sit on there for weeks. My long term plan is going to a good used 300 to replace the 240. Cheap cheap and i can probably still sell the 240 for $150. Chances are you could probably buy a full sized ford van for less than $600 and scrap it for $500, then you'd get all the modern accessories too!

From my research it looks like the early 80's were the best years for the 300, the bottom ends are better on the EFI models with hypereutectic pistons, but the heads have the shrouded valves or whatever. The early 80's heads had the hardened valve seats but didn't have the EFI chambers yet. Anything pre-unleaded fuel is best to avoid. There were also some forged cranks floating around in the HD engines, you might have one of those in your 3/4 ton truck, it might be worth saving if so, but it doesn't look like people break the cast cranks very often, if at all. That '10 second turbo maverick' should have a cast crank I think, and he hasn't broke it.

There are also some differences in the rocker studs but i don't understand that part as well. I've had a rocker stud pull out twice now while messing up my timing and backfiring it, so while you've got it all apart you might want to consider drilling and tapping for chev. rockers and studs.

[tdc]

yeah, i'm definitely thinking about just replacing the engine. i haven't looked around to see what i could get one for yet, hopefully not too much. would make life alot easier to just find a good running 300 and swap it in. i guess i need to do my homework and figure out what year model i want.

[motzingg]

whats up you A.D.D. son of a b!tch?

Did you spazz on this project already?

Did you make it to LA in this pile or did you have to ride your sweet watercoold Hondaimler back?

my 2 barrel carb is running like tits, jetted perfecto out the box, starts on the first kick. i'm glad mopeds aren't this easy or i would have got bored 5 years ago.

[tdc]

truck made it to LA and back and only consumed ~30 quarts of oil! it did for about 20 or so going down, i put in a quart of that lucas seal fixer stuff down in la and it consumed much less on the way back, smoked less and was generally happier about life.
after getting back i pretty much just parked it in front of my house and haven't done much with it. i'm looking around for a new engine, but it's going to be a month or two before i can spring for one.
i'm currently a week away from wrapping up a one month motorcycle build off thing, which has been sapping my time and extra money. once that's done and over with i'll put away some cash and see if i can find a new lump to dump into the bump.
threads like this suck because there's never any pictures. here's some pictures.

my buddy doug was my copilot to la, he took this picture.


here's a lovely shot of my dash. i gotta get this cleaned up one day. maybe.


six mopeds and two spare tires with a bunch of room to spare. doug approves.


yeah, that's all i've got for the moment. i promise once i start actually doing interesting things with the truck i'll get some good pictures to post up here.

[motzingg]

damn that looks awesome! love the pictures.

[tdc]

so i haven't really done much with the truck in the past month. every year i participate in this month long bike build off thing called the dirtbag challenge (http://www.dirtbagchallenge.com/), that pretty much occupied the last few weeks and whatever pocket money i had.
now that that's over, i'm going to start throwing my change in a jar to get a replacement engine for the bump.
is this weird? while sitting for the last month i suddenly developed a gasket leak around the water pump. one day i went out and noticed a puddle of coolant sitting under the thing, popped the hood and sure enough. it pretty much came out of nowhere.. it hadn't been leaking at all before, now it's a pretty good drip.
oh well. i know it's a quick and easy fix, but it's not worth the effort since i'm shopping for an engine.
so yeah, that's my worthless update.
in case anyone's curious, here's the bike i built for ~$300 in a month's worth of spending a couple hours every night after work in the garage!
67 kawasaki roadrunner! 120cc two stroke, blew it up on the freeway! hah.

[sargentrs]

Cool bike!