More Pickup Progress

I spent the weekend buttoning up the exhaust on my '84 F150. I had started out with this grand plan to fabricate the y-pipe and weld up my own custom setup. Yeah...that didn't happen.

I gave it some thought and since I'm running factory exhaust manifolds I may as well go back with factory pipes. I found the y-pipe online for about $170. It was $100 higher from Summit, but Google solved that problem right quick. Came with a catalytic converter. Yeah, that's not getting used.

Never heard of the website before, but they shipped it to me for $20 and it fit like it was made to go there. Probably because it was. Interesting bit is that it's actually for a '95 F150 with a 351W. I figured that since the engine and manifold came out of a '95 it should work unless there was some funky difference on the frame of the '84 vs. the '95. It also has a provision for an O2 sensor that may get used at some point to monitor air/fuel ratio but for now an oil pan plug closes that up nicely.

Like I said before, it fits great. Well, mostly. It does rest on the transmission cross-member. I'm gonna notch the pipe and put a small bend in it. A little welding and it'll be good to go.  The flex pipe may or may not be temporary will just have to see how well it lasts.

Once I solve the issue of the turn signals blowing their fuse, it's ready for inspection and tags. One interesting thing on this truck though is the factory tool box under the hood. No idea how common they were, but it's the first time I've seen one.

One last thing. In small towns all over the country life is kinda jacked up right now, but some things can bring a smile. One of my trips to the parts store gave me this little moment of zen. The gentleman's wife has taken his keys in an effort to keep him at home because he's on oxygen due to pretty severe COPD. He was determined to take care of an issue, so he did what any red blooded American would do. He found alternate transportation.

Have a good one.

-Wayne

Daily Driver Drama

I have had an ongoing issue with the 1989 Mustang that I use as my daily driver. Any time I set my climate controls to anything other than off the car behaved like it had a vacuum leak. It would misfire and stumble something fierce. I had done all of the usual searching in the engine bay. Used all my best shade tree mechanic tricks. Spraying carburetor cleaner around the intake didn't give me a bump to the idle speed. Used a piece of tubing as a stethoscope never showed me a leak. 

The selector switch that changes from vent to heat to a/c and so on had lost all of its detentes, so it never clicked into position when i set it to anything. Since the climate controls are vacuum driven, I finally decided the leak was inside the car. I had a backup control panel in a drawer in my tool box. I just hadn't had the time to swap it out.

With my weekends pretty well shut down right now I thought this would be a good time to do the swap and track down the leak. I was no prepared for what I would find.

This is the plug that goes to the back of the fan controller. It MIGHT have gotten warm at some point.

Traced the wiring back behind the glove box and found this wonderful repair. Dammit.

Now I follow the blue "patch" wires on up into the dash and see these. Notice the beautiful coloring on the one connector that started its life as yellow?

I did find several places that could be my vacuum leak, and I will address those as soon as I address all of the rest of the wiring mess I found when I said "the hell with it" and did this.

While I'm in here I am going to go ahead and change out the heater core, evaporator coils, and fan motor. Dash is out...might as well.

I've also got several wiring pig tails coming for other broken plugs I found while I was in there.  I also have some fiberglass repair work to do to the heater box where someone tried to do a heater core change through the firewall instead of pulling the dash. Oh and that silver you can see on the heater box is metal duct tape like you would use on air conditioning ducts.

Just case you haven't cringed enough yet, here's a few more photos of what I found. In addition to the broken plugs, I had several unpin as I was unplugging them. Time to find a pin-out for every plug under my dash and put them back together.

Duct Tape

(This is the shortcut way to change the evap coils.)

Fan Motor Resistor Plug

Ignition Plug

Ignition Wires

(Not sure but from the tape I think this was done at the factory.)

In all honesty I'm just glad I haven't had this thing burn down around me.

If Tole were real, I might have a job for him. 

Wayne