What Have You Done To Your Other Vehicle Lately?

[TaurusKev 1088]

Ooooh, a manual in a Colony Park would be amazing! Sucks that the transmission is being a pain, but glad to see it still around ❤️ 

[Brian_05_SEL 1417]

I sold my Fox body last month, and then picked this up. 
 

 

[Jeff 383]

That’s a beautiful ride, my friend!  Congrats!

[machausta 155]

On 7/11/2021 at 7:23 PM, Thub said:

The F150 had a blend door motor failure earlier this summer when we were on vacation in South Dakota, finally got around to replacing the motor/actuator. Also dropped the big bucks and upgraded to Sync 3 when I had it all apart.

You can see the actuator tucked in there on top of the duct work, its a pain to remove that rear bolt holding it down. And this is the easy one of the 2 actuators to replace...

Sync 3 is like a space ship compared to the old Sync 2. So much faster and actually responds when you tell it to do something...including just turning the radio on or off which Sync 2 would struggle with.

I actually came here looking for this -- I need to do a sync 3 conversion (I have the 4.2" display on my 2018 F150 XLT). Any suggestions on where to find the display and bezel? 

[Kodachrome Wolf 472]

I have a unique set of problems, and apparently saying no is one of them.

Hello 1986 Dodge D150 Royal SE with 360 V8

Luckily I don't think I'll lose too much money (if any) if I try for a re-sell on this. Got it for $400 (within CVN Pricing) since the owners wanted $1000 and the scrap man offered $250. It's cheap because the transmission is in the bed. The skinny on this is the original owner gave the truck to his daughter and her husband about 11 years ago. The husband was driving it several years ago and so found it wasn't catching in drive and had issues engaging in low gear selection. Limped it home and parked it. The father said he knew someone and that chucklehead picked up the truck to "repair" the transmission and kept it for two years. He managed to cut a hole in the floor, and while doing so set the carpet on fire and damaged the lower air duct work and two of the dash vents. He also then attempted to get the title off the original owner who was now well into his 80s to "figure out what transmission it needed". Needless to say, at that point the daughter got the guy to drag the truck back.

Now I don't know what chucklehead did, but this poor TorqueFlite got the shit end of it...

The remainder of the bell housing is still attached to the engine. Ouch.

Anyway, the owners were pretty relaxed about the deal thanks to the fact the current owner (the daughter) is a co-worker of a close friend of mine and were glad the truck would be going somewhere it hopefully can be brought back to life. I figure finding a A727 for the LA-family of V8s shouldn't be too bad given how many things they were bolted to. I'll probably start with making sure the engine runs okay. It was indicated as a healthy runner prior to the stupidity. Looked very clean under the oil filler cap, and the engine bay was very unmolested save for some replaced vacuum lines from age. Odometer reported 12K, but I'd argue 112K. Truck has been in the southeast its whole life and is rust free from what I could tell.

[Thub 673]

On 9/13/2021 at 9:23 AM, machausta said:

I actually came here looking for this -- I need to do a sync 3 conversion (I have the 4.2" display on my 2018 F150 XLT). Any suggestions on where to find the display and bezel? 

I ordered from 4D tech. Its expensive but otherwise you need to do all the programming yourself. You enter your vin, they send you the programmed unit and all the parts you need...bezels, wires, etc.

Edited September 19 by Thub

[TaurusKev 1088]

On 9/18/2021 at 9:55 PM, Kodachrome Wolf said:

I have a unique set of problems, and apparently saying no is one of them.

Hello 1986 Dodge D150 Royal SE with 360 V8

Luckily I don't think I'll lose too much money (if any) if I try for a re-sell on this. Got it for $400 (within CVN Pricing) since the owners wanted $1000 and the scrap man offered $250. It's cheap because the transmission is in the bed. The skinny on this is the original owner gave the truck to his daughter and her husband about 11 years ago. The husband was driving it several years ago and so found it wasn't catching in drive and had issues engaging in low gear selection. Limped it home and parked it. The father said he knew someone and that chucklehead picked up the truck to "repair" the transmission and kept it for two years. He managed to cut a hole in the floor, and while doing so set the carpet on fire and damaged the lower air duct work and two of the dash vents. He also then attempted to get the title off the original owner who was now well into his 80s to "figure out what transmission it needed". Needless to say, at that point the daughter got the guy to drag the truck back.

Now I don't know what chucklehead did, but this poor TorqueFlite got the shit end of it...

The remainder of the bell housing is still attached to the engine. Ouch.

Anyway, the owners were pretty relaxed about the deal thanks to the fact the current owner (the daughter) is a co-worker of a close friend of mine and were glad the truck would be going somewhere it hopefully can be brought back to life. I figure finding a A727 for the LA-family of V8s shouldn't be too bad given how many things they were bolted to. I'll probably start with making sure the engine runs okay. It was indicated as a healthy runner prior to the stupidity. Looked very clean under the oil filler cap, and the engine bay was very unmolested save for some replaced vacuum lines from age. Odometer reported 12K, but I'd argue 112K. Truck has been in the southeast its whole life and is rust free from what I could tell.

That is one gorgeous truck and I hope you resurrect it. Looks like it'd be a sweet ride once done. 

[Kodachrome Wolf 472]

Worked the '97 a fair bit yesterday. It was supposed to only move a light trailer, but my plans to move a vehicle fell through with more adequate equipment so...

...I moved my '86 D-150 40 miles one way with it. Kinda arduous working up and down the hills between Augusta and Waynesboro. I maxed around 50 MPH with it in tow as the rear tires on the truck were questionable at best and I wasn't going to push my luck.

 

I planned on dragging the combo down into the building, however after walking in and opening the garage door, I realized there'd be no room to turn my car around in, or back the trailer out if I couldn't get the truck moved, so I opted for the next best idea for a one man movement. I aligned the combo facing down the hill towards the building, set the parking brake on the truck, removed all the harnesses, and yanked the dolly out from under it.

Now it's time to "drive"  the truck for the first time.

With the door opened, I popped the parking brake, and started shoving on the A-pillar, first at a walking pace, then running pace, and as it started to take off I jumped onto the step, got into the seat, and rode it on down, through the door, and into my planned parking space.

Brakes still worked pretty good! I'll definitely be going over them at a later point, but at least they weren't frozen or sticking to uselessness.

Then I went back to Augusta and picked up my friend's trailer who has the property in Waynesboro.

Much nicer towing that, despite being from 1996. He just put brand new tires on it and I helped him repack the bearings after it got parked in 2005. Rolled very nicely and gave me no trouble on the journey.

 

Hopefully it'll be a while before I ask so much of the '97 again. Overall, it did quite well given the assigned tasks without running hot or acting funny. It also rolled 231K while moving that darn truck.

Edited September 27 by Kodachrome Wolf

[Kodachrome Wolf 472]

This is more so What Did You Do To Your Friend's Car than mine, but it was plenty involved.

This is all on the gray '99 Crown Victoria I've spoken of that I helped my friend get several months back. There's been two things that had gone somewhat un-repaired after getting the car as roadworthy as possible. That was the cooling system and the heater. Originally the cooling system smelled awful, looked like pond water, and the heater core had been bypassed for sometime.

I've flushed the cooling system with water on no less than four separate occasions. I've never gotten it to stay clean. Coolant always turns brown, sometimes in a few days, and the last time within hours.

I pressure checked the heater core, it was absolutely shot.

Knowing that we were gonna have to put a heater in, I refused to pump garbage coolant through a new heater core. I took a spin with some Thermocure since it touted rust removal, which was the big issue I couldn't defeat with water flushing alone. We also decided it would get new hoses and a new coolant reservoir since the old one was seriously gunked up.

Three days before the job, I drained all the nasty coolant mix, flushed as much as I could until I had clear-ish water, then filled the system up and tossed in the Thermocure and sent my friend on his way. Saturday he brought it back so we could start, and man that stuff stinks! It reminds me of combustion gases and rotting road kill, absolutely awful and the smell definitely permeates into things a bit. But, a good sign it was working, as the water in the reservoir was black.

Party Time!

Rotten Heater Core

All Done!

Managed the heater job in about four hours from start to finish, so pretty good all things considered.

 

After getting that done, I flushed all the Thermocure/water mix out. Came out black and stinky with debris and other trash, but damn, it works! I had looked in the upper radiator hose and it was all coated in a red rust coating prior, and it was completely clean inside. Same for the radiator and thermostat outlet. Once getting the water running proper clear, I ripped off all the old hoses, plumbed the heater back into the loop, and filled it up with coolant.

Got the system purged of air, heat works great now, and the hoses don't look so shady any more. Hopefully the coolant stays green this time, otherwise the nuclear solution is plumbing an entire coolant filter setup into the system to catch anymore trash.

Gave the car an oil change before it left as well.

[Thub 673]

On 9/26/2021 at 8:26 PM, Kodachrome Wolf said:

Worked the '97 a fair bit yesterday. It was supposed to only move a light trailer, but my plans to move a vehicle fell through with more adequate equipment so...

 

 

The Panther benefits from that truck power train, I would be more worried about simply overloading the car's GVWR and not having enough brakes or horrible handling with all that weight in the back. Luckily car dolly trailers don't have much tongue weight.

Motorcraft also makes a cooling system iron remover...VC9 that is probably similar to that Thermocure. I used the Motorcraft VC1 cleaner in the SHO earlier this summer and it cleaned up the cooling system very nicely.