Habu's 69 F250

[CrypticRacer13]

Coming along great man keep it up!

[habu]

Little update:
read the instructions from Thorley's site that said to remove the engine perches. After messing about and trying to figure out how the hell that was gonna happen and finding one nut, drivers side, pretty well rounded off I figured that there has to be another way. Jacking the motor all around and having it lean this way and that I was able to get the passenger side headers in. More jacking, cussing, head shaking I was this -> <- close to throwing in the towel, and the Kings were playing (GO Kings GO!) I figured to remove the steering box AND jacking it up would let me get the drivers side in and it WORKED.... Heck Yea. So the biggest challenge after the motor and trans, the header install, is outta the way. This lets me start working on the small things to get ready to fire up this coming weekend if all goes to plan.

After so long to be so close is killing me. I'll be out there everyday this week after work, luckily the sun is up late this time of year, and one-by-one I'll get the little things done. Pics are on my phone and I'll have to upload to the computer so there is a record, however incremental, on the project build.

I'm going to have to start looking at the next project, the suspension as the next step. Maybe the A/C overhaul. Need to sort out the damage, mess under the dash that dropping the AC unit to get to the heater core is then work from there.

A/C, Suspension, Brakes then I'll get the body and paint.
How do you eat a whole elephant.....
one bite at a time.

[habu]

A little further along now.
Got the headers, steering box...etc figured out. Had the motor mounts on the wrong sides LH on the right and vis-versa. Brought the motor forward almost an inch or so. Once I had that figured out everything started to line-up and fall into place.

Dad came over and another friend of mine. Got the wires set, dist dropped in, Alt, PS and fan & fan clutch installed. Still more little things to do, but they're little things now. Could get it fired up this week or weekend. Graduation is happening for my daughter so that's going to take a lot of time getting the house ready for the party for family. So hoping that I get some time to do the small items left, it looks like I am almost there.




how I left it yesterday.

[ximy]

Awesome build! Appreciate the pics during the process. Interesting sharp bend after the left header collector. What kid of muffler(s) are you using?

[habu]

sorry for the delayed response. I am running Magnaflow.

There are more pics to come. Most of the truck is back together and with my dad's help I've gotten a lot done.

We tried firing up the motor to break in the cam and it wouldn't run. It seemed like a timing issue. Any little movement of the distributor advanced or retarded would make it seem like we went a couple of teeth off. No movement would fix running it. It would start but after that it would blubber all over itself and die. No throttle input would work. nada.

Because breaking in the cam is so important we didn't do much to continue getting nowhere. So we stopped figuring it's a timing issue and the distributor is off.

Tried moving it to 180 off, just in case... no joy.

I worried that it was a massive vacuum leak ( the street master needed to be milled on the cylinder head side because the water ports were very corroded.
It could be bad fuel, it's been sitting for two years without running
it could be timing, ?
it could be cam timing, timing chain, timing pointer and a MILLION other things.

So I didn't do much. without knowing with a good certainty what the problem is, I didn't want to attempt to start and potentially damage the cam. Not much was put back together because if I had to take it out I didn't want to take everything apart again.

After much fretting, dad came over two weekend ago and we tried to make sure he dist was on #1 at about 15-18 degrees BTDC. we did that and lined up as much as we could. The truck wouldn't start. Either the battery, solenoid or starter was dead. jeez.

I began to review google university and figure out my problem. Searched here too and came up with a bite. Another member also has a 390 and an MSD 8595 and had similar problems to me (see engine forum and fresh 390 build thread) jp2005 had issues and he was struggling as I was. I asked some questions and something that I had totally forgotten about seemed to be the culprit. Ford Factory wiring. The wire from the ignition switch to + on the coil in the run position is a resistor wire and cuts power to the coil/distributor to 6v. After consulting with jp2005 and MSD it turns out that that is very likely the issue. If the dist. doesn't get 12v, "it won't work right".

Impatient to find the source I ran a wire from the + on the battery to the + on the coil just to see if this would work and wouldn't you know it, it did.......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WDiiCSa-x0

it runs... it's alive.... holy-ee crap-ola.......

So much to do now, but a serious and major hurdle has been cleared.
I'll update this with more in-progress pics and once it's broke in a better video or two.

[ximy]

Congrats on getting it running!