What Have You Done To Your Other Vehicle Lately?

[TaurusKev 1089]

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 1418]

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

 

[Jeff 386]

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 478]

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, 2021 by Thub

[TaurusKev 1089]

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 478]

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, 2021 by Kodachrome Wolf

[Kodachrome Wolf 478]

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. 

[Kodachrome Wolf 478]

Buddy with the '99 came by so we could put on the door trim we yanked from the junkyard a while back from a '09-'11 car. Something with the '98-'08 door trim on Crown Victoria seems to like getting brittle with age, then falling off the door and leaving chunks behind on the double-sided tape. We stuck his original trim back on several times before there was no more backing material left to adhere to and the pieces started to physically spit apart.

Looks a little funky since the later years didn't use a fender trim bit, just on the doors. It'll be back Saturday for an oil change and quick check up before he heads to Atlanta for a month or so for job training. He's put like 18K on this car already since May. Crazy, but its been putting up with it fine.

 

Got a replacement A727 TorqueFlite of unknown year for the Dodge. Plan to send it along with the wagon to the transmission shop to get both sorted out. Fluid in this is a darker red, but smells smoky. I don't feel like gambling on it, so it gets a rebuild.

Edited November 10, 2021 by Kodachrome Wolf

[Kodachrome Wolf 478]

Since Thanksgiving is coming up and I'm headed out of town to see family, I took the car in for tires on Saturday since I'd run the Kumhos down below 4/32nd all the way around. While some may argue about the style, I absolutely wanted another whitewall tire again. However, I did not want to compromise on tire width, as I found the 225/70R15 (fleet size) preferable over the 215/70R15 (retail size). Luckily, Nexen offered a all-season touring tire that fit the bill perfectly.

I also took the time to take the set of turbines Nick grabbed for me and did my best to clean and respray them in Argent Silver.

So far, the first 100 miles on the tires have been quiet, no odd vibrations or pulls, and they don't seem excessively squishy the way the Firestones I used to run years ago did. If these perform well, I'll get another set for the wagon next year.

[TaurusKev 1089]

Very nice and beautiful!

[Jeff 386]

I replaced the Flex today with another ram. This one is a 2021 Ram1500 Classic in Billet silver with the hemi!  I have really missed my 2019 and when I saw this one come up with only 3500 miles and at a relatively good price, I snatched it up!  I don’t have any pics of it other than the ones from the dealer.  It was like old times on the drive home.  The hemi felt a little more spry than my previous V6 truck, but I wouldn’t say it was surprisingly quicker.  This one is certified so it comes with a 100k mile power train warranty too, which is great!  Has the upgraded black cloth interior, line x bed liner, side steps, ram floor liners, this one actually has carpet floors too!  Planning to do some fender flares and a few accents like I had done to my other one.  Just can’t figure out how someone can buy a truck and almost immediately trade it back in.  These are still relatively affordable.  In this market I gave about $8k more for this one than I did the last, but this one is more truck than the last as well.  It is what it is.  That’s about it for this update.

Jeff

[machausta 155]

Found these Turbo S door handles and installed them onto the 1999, replacing icky gooey plastic and shiny chrome handles looks, feels, and works so much better.

[Jeff 386]

Well,  on my birthday my new Ram truck was involved in an accident and will require some work to look good again.  I was not even in the truck as it was hit in a parking lot by a gentleman dragging a gooseneck trailer in an area where a gooseneck trailer does not belong.  He wound up dragging the trailer into my, up to then, pristine as new 3000 mile truck that I had owned for 3 days total.  I had to fight with his insurance, Farm Bureau, all week and had to threaten suit to get them to admit liability.  Parking lot accidents are considered no fault accidents in Arkansas.  I was not having that as my truck was unattended and parked legally when the accident occurred.  My own insurance company told me, because I started a claim in both places in case I would eventually have to repair it on my own, that my claim was suspicious as I had just purchased the truck.  They wanted me to send pictures of it prior to prove that it was undamaged.  No matter the fact that I had to pay top dollar for it in todays market and nobody would pay a price like that for a damaged vehicle.  One thing I have learned after this is, I would never buy a Farm Bureau policy, and Geico is likely losing me as a customer after nearly a decade and having never filed a claim prior to this.  Here are the pics.  It's not too bad, but the door is jammed from the fender so I climbed across the seat from the passenger side and refused to drive it further than the body shop that will fix it.  Farm Bureau didn't appreciate that I refused to drive it until it was repaired so now they have to provide transportation.  It'll be 2-3 weeks before I see it again.  It better look like the truck I bought or I won't be happy.

Jeff

Edited December 5, 2021 by Jeff

[Jeff 386]

Got my truck back late yesterday from the body shop.  Looks just as good as it did before.  Damage came in just shy of $5500.  They had to replace the rad support, grille, headlight, upper bumper cover and support, left fender support, liner, fender, remove both drivers doors to repair the a pillar, and remove the bed to clear the entire cab side.  They butt matched the hood and blended onto the front door which luckily I couldn’t pick out.    I also had them paint my flares since they were painting the rest of the items.  I’ll get those back on Monday.  Three weeks roughly since the accident.  Just happy to have it back and looking good.  They even made sure to paint all the bolts to ensure no tool marks were left.  Also used all OEM new parts which I insisted on up front. Very thorough job. Southern Farm Bureau, on the other hand, was initially hard to work with.  I’ll have better pictures soon.  
 

Jeff
 

 

Edited December 18, 2021 by Jeff

[Jeff 386]

Some stuff has changed on Truck Norris since I last posted.  I got my flares(new aftermarket oem style) painted when they repaired the truck.  Also got the upper glovebox(used), footwell lamps(used),and 20” replica machine faced wheels(new)installed.  Wrapped in Goodyear Wrangler 275/60/20 tires.    Only thing I plan on doing in the future is to install the touch screen 8.4 unconnect w/nav head unit.  Really liking this truck even after having such horrible luck right out of the gate.  It doesn’t even look like the same poverty sled Tradesman that I bought.  Made my first payment yesterday.  That’s about it.

 

Jeff

[Thub 673]

On 1/7/2022 at 9:33 PM, Jeff said:

Some stuff has changed on Truck Norris since I last posted.  I got my flares(new aftermarket oem style) painted when they repaired the truck.  Also got the upper glovebox(used), footwell lamps(used),and 20” replica machine faced wheels(new)installed.  Wrapped in Goodyear Wrangler 275/60/20 tires.    Only thing I plan on doing in the future is to install the touch screen 8.4 unconnect w/nav head unit.  Really liking this truck even after having such horrible luck right out of the gate.  It doesn’t even look like the same poverty sled Tradesman that I bought.  Made my first payment yesterday.  That’s about it.

 

Jeff

 

 

Jeff, If you plan on keeping that truck long term I would get a tune to eliminate the cylinder deactivation. I know its the newer updated engine and they claim to have fixed that issue but I have seen several of those trucks blow engines at work. They will start ticking and get worse and worse and worse until you get a misfire and then she's gone. Latest one was a 2013 with about 150k miles. We have another...2012 that sounds like a rod is going to fly out of the bottom of it, only 120k on that one. I predict it will blow this summer when it starts getting used a lot again. Its the same as the GM GMT900 trucks with the cylinder deactivation...it will ruin the engine.

Edited January 14, 2022 by Thub

[Jeff 386]

1 hour ago, Thub said:

Jeff, If you plan on keeping that truck long term I would get a tune to eliminate the cylinder deactivation. I know its the newer updated engine and they claim to have fixed that issue but I have seen several of those trucks blow engines at work. They will start ticking and get worse and worse and worse until you get a misfire and then she's gone. Latest one was a 2013 with about 150k miles. We have another...2012 that sounds like a rod is going to fly out of the bottom of it, only 120k on that one. I predict it will blow this summer when it starts getting used a lot again. Its the same as the GM GMT900 trucks with the cylinder deactivation...it will ruin the engine.

I do plan to keep MDS off.  The work around to keep it off without tuning is to switch it to manual mode which deactivates MDS.  You can set it to shift into any gear and it will still automatically shift if you don’t give it any inputs.  I set it to gear 8 and leave it.  Only downside is you have to reset it anytime you shift out of drive.  I’ve been doing this pretty consistently.  This truck came with a 10 year 100k mile warranty and I can’t do anything to void that.  I don’t know that I’ll have it that long given my history with buying vehicles, but I do admit that I have a car buying problem.  That’s the first step in trying to fix it.  lol  I hope all has been well your way!

 

Jeff

[Jeff 386]

I bought a ruby red ecoboost mustang Wednesday.  2019, 13k miles,  has 8” screen w/nav.  Not super remarkable, but a nice, like new car.  I had my 2020 Terrain SLT w13k miles (bought it with 9k miles on a year ago)that I didn’t use much and my good friend Larry needed to sell a car.  I told him I wanted another Challenger and he suggested I look at a Mustang.  They had this one, a grey one, and a GT.  I didn’t want to spend GT money so I chose the ruby red car.  I’ll have pictures up soonish.  The only one I have is from earlier in the week.  We had an ice storm that started Wednesay and my first drive in it was on ice/sleet.  Was not fun.  It’s been parked since.  I still have Truck Norris too…it does great in this.  This will be a weekend cruiser/trip car where I need good fuel mileage.

Jeff

Edited February 25, 2022 by Jeff
Added pic

[Kodachrome Wolf 478]

2 hours ago, Jeff said:

I bought a ruby red ecoboost mustang Wednesday.  2019, 13k miles,  has 8” screen w/nav.  Not super remarkable, but a nice, like new car.  I had my 2020 Terrain SLT w13k miles (bought it with 9k miles on a year ago)that I didn’t use much and my good friend Larry needed to sell a car.  I told him I wanted another Challenger and he suggested I look at a Mustang.  They had this one, a grey one, and a GT.  I didn’t want to spend GT money so I chose the ruby red car.  I’ll have pictures up soonish.  The only one I have is from earlier in the week.  We had an ice storm that started Wednesay and my first drive in it was on ice/sleet.  Was not fun.  It’s been parked since.  I still have Truck Norris too…it does great in this.  This will be a weekend cruiser/trip car where I need good fuel mileage.

Jeff

Where's Brian?

I'm sure he'd love to hear you got that.

[ShelbyRacer78 247]

Those 2.3 mustangs can move. Really surprised by them 

[Angrod 280]

Still rollin' in my Fiesta. 104,xxx on the odo now. Just had the thermostat assembly replaced as it was weeping coolant for the last few months. Prior to that I replaced the coolant bottle and the coolant hose from the turbo to the bottle. The flex pipe is broken for the second time.... ugh.

I really want a second vehicle, specifically a truck. I want to do some work around the house that will require hauling stuff so a pickup would really come in handy. But with the truck market the way it is right now there is no way I can afford something even half decent, even if it's 30 years old.

[Kodachrome Wolf 478]

Station wagon came home earlier this month. Also came back with the TorqueFlite for the Dodge.

I decided today would be a good day to get started working on various tasks the truck needs and just happened to run into several roadblocks, but nothing I can't mitigate.

So I need to drop the HVAC box out from the dash. It was damaged by crackheads working on the truck years ago since they tried cutting a hole in the floor and instead set the carpet and dash on fire over a select bit. Well, it seems the windshield gasket covers several screws that must be removed to properly get the HVAC box out. The donor truck already had the notches cut for access.

The other issue is most of the A/C lines are stuck. However, if I can't unbolt them, I'm cutting them. All of the existing system is garbage now. I quickly found out the original R-12 equipment is not reproduced in any manner, so all the line fittings on aftermarket stuff use block manifolds instead of the original threaded equipment, so ouch, I dropped the coin and ordered everything.

I woke up today and unexpectedly chose violence towards my wallet. 

 

Anyway... here's a photo of the '87 in a field next to the warehouse.

 

Back at it Sunday to see if I can actually extract this stupid thing, and then move onto other things I can be cross at.