"Spuds" the 1950 Ford pick-up

At least that is what I am calling it since it came from Idaho all the way to Southern Ontario. 

Spuds is a Garage Guest who needs to get done by the time the snow melts in 2021. Project creep and do-overs could conspire against that, well see.

For now I will just do a picture dump and update as work starts

This should be good, I'll be following along as usual.

I'm in ...how bad is the 'dog house' ?

The truck is rock solid rust free and has been painted (partially painted) by the previous shop as a ten footer. Spent late into the evening going over what has been done so far and trying to pick a way forward that will work for the owner .

The two immediate things that need to be sorted are the EFI and the rear axle. The engine is a flathead and according to the owner and the shop who got it this far, it "runs real good" with this TBI from Affordable Fuel Injection. I personally have not seen it run. It has not moved under its own power and there is the rub: They also installed an AOD gearbox. AOD gearboxes MUST have a TV cable in order to function.Failure to establish the correct cable actuation ratio between the intake and the AOD will kill the AOD.

The linkage on the TBI is not only in front of the TB but it rotated in the wrong direction. Going to require a Rube Goldberk gizmo to resolve this. Or a $300 carb.

The other observation came about when one of the peoples in attendance asked "Am I the only one who sees something weird with the rear wheels? They look cambered." So I grabbed a square and had a look. Floor is pretty much level. Both sides are like this. Last I checked solid axles were not supposed to have camber. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There must have been a contest for how much wiring you can put in a 1950 ford truck. It arrived with a freshly installed Painless 21 circuit harness.  But for reasons that elude me  rather than install the harness as designed, the installer chose to cut every circuit and install a relay and a circuit breaker.  There are 6 extra circuit breakers shown in the picture  in line with 6 fused circuits. You can just see the edge of the relay field in this picture.

Here is a better shot of the field of relays. They went to far as to put a relay in the Dakota Digital shift lever indicator circuit. What does that circuit carry a fraction of an amp? While it is nice that each function is marked with painters tape and legible writing, NONE of these relays are needed.

AC is installed, just needs hoses and charging.

It would have been in this picture, but when I gave it a tug to see where a wire bundle disappeared to, it fell off the little ledge that was supporting the one corner. Not bolted to anything and held in by the wires.

Then there is this audio  amplifier. Not needed for anything, just there.

All this plus a circuit breaker and relay in circuit, just to know what gear you are in.

If you note there is a back of a gauge to the right. Seems it was important to have oil pressure and voltage gauges face the inside of the engine bay. Of course none of the gauges are fastened in the pods.

The original plan of attack was to start doing brake and fuel plumbing, but now I need to drop the rear axle and check to see what is bent. Someone welded axle extensions from a different axle on to this one, and I suspect that is going to play a part.

That amp looks pretty permanent......cuz it was 'layin around' ?   Rear diff ....all I can envision are tubes 'eyeballed' ......good enough. Hey where's that equalizer I had on the bench yesterday?  wink

My vote on the rear axle is that they severely overloaded the truck, and bent the axle. Then somebody else flipped it over and turned it around so that it would naturally Bend back the other way

In reply to 759NRNG (Forum Partidario) :

When you weld on an axle that is the result. It's not that hard to weld it straight. But requires something more accurate than a framing square. 
The cheap approach is string strung past the front and rear axle and a plumb bob to get everything vertical.  
I've used that on 160mph vintage racer successfully  and in fact using that alignment method Roger Rager qualified  for the Indy 500. 

I will post up some pics later, but the axle is supposedly out of a crown vic and has had extensions welded on to the ends to increase the track, but it also has 2" thick wheel adapters . Not sure if the adapters are to change the bolt pattern or to just fill out the wheel-wells.

This should be a simple truck, I am going to try and simplificate the E36 M3 out of it so it is back on the road. The amp is going away. If I have any say the EFI is going away because a linkage solution is going to cost more to confabulate than the cost of a carb.

Here is another one that someone might know something about: The guy working on this before me has a vacuum pump running off the engine. To work with this he has a mount for a big vacuum reservoir under the dash  ( like there is not enough E36 M3 there already) He assures me that all flat head engines need a vacuum pump to operate power brakes. Seems wrong to me.

Yanked the axle.  You can see where for reasons unknown yet the ends were cut off and the tube of a different axle was shoved in and welded. Then they decided that did not fill the fenders enough, so they shoved the 2" hub adapters ( or spacers, not sure yet) to make it even Wider. 

I have a feeling that this whole dog and pony show might have been to accommodate the fit of the wheels that got declared the fixed variable early on in the game. 

If the axle is bent, my inclination would be to find one that is the same width as this one with the spacers at 65"  But if the wheels must be kept, I have a feeling that is going to complicate things. 

Crazy E36 M3 with those axles. Could The Driveshaft Shop fab up custom units? Wouldn't be cheap.....or in the spirit of GRM I guess. What rearend?

In reply to MX_Brad :

Supposedly crown vic, but no idea what the point of the welded axle  extension might be. Finding that a lot of stuff that does not make sense was done for a reason, usually to cover for some lack of foresight and planning. My job is to keep that in mind and not walk into any traps where I end up picking up the bill for stuff that does not work out because I did not know "The rest of the story!"

Negative camber live axles are a thing in the circle track world. They wear out the splines on the shafts pretty quickly too!

Which front end is on it? 

I'm going to guess the axle was shortened so they could run spacers to fit wheels over the brakes without drift spec poke.

I did a couple early Impala lowriders ages ago that needed huge spacers to fit ultra expensive 13" wire wheels, and the combo of 6" wheels gave a fairly flush look.

I'm fairly certain 8.8 rears are 64-65" between flanges.

In reply to Crackers :

64" between the flanges would be about perfect width wise. The current axle is 65" and I am told tight to the fenders. I have a sneaking suspicion that the rear axle was kludged in order to keep a set of wheels that were a poor choice to start with. And I have a feeling the wheels are so important is because they accept a certain V8 hubcap

Not sure who made the front suspension. Heidts was mentioned, but it does not look like their upper a-arm mounting/shimming technology.

I need to do a bolt pattern inventory. I will not be surprised if the front and rear are different somehow. The wheels seem to have more than one bolt pattern to choose from.

I wouldn't dick around with that axle, especially if it's an open diff. You will likely spend more time trying to fix this than starting over.

Get an 8.8 lsd and shorten that if needed.

I meant front trim/grill.

In reply to Crackers :

The guy that was working on the car before did take the time to mention that it had a posi . He seemed pretty pleased with the work on the rear axle.  No idea what gears or axles are in there.

Hauling the guts out and tossing in a different axle is not a problem.

The battle plan was to start with the brakes and show some actual progress because the owner has been waiting patiently for 8 years or so to drive his truck before he finally retrieved it from the last shop. As things progress it will be easier to focus the rest of the project one system at a time to meet expectations.

Seems like a smart move just to swap in a new rear axle.

That existing one seems low on "special" and high on "crappy".

Was the car at Dunning-Kreuger Motorsport?

Crackers said:

Was the car at Dunning-Kreuger Motorsport?

Or has it just arrived there? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

and I must ask..."Why are you even walking around with that term in your head?"

Pete

NOHOME said:

Crackers said:

Was the car at Dunning-Kreuger Motorsport?

Or has it just arrived there? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

and I must ask..."Why are you even walking around with that term in your head?"

 

Pete

Uh .....I wanna know too .......what do that mean persactly?????

In reply to NOHOME :

It's always there, like PTSD. I've only recently learned not to engage it though. LOL

Al on The Skid Factory has a friend he refers to as a member. 

Things got more interesting last night when investigating the rear axle. While prodding the ends for play, Mustang Pete noticed that there was no play at all when the axles were pulled in/out. Being C clip retained  axles, that was suspicious and worth pulling the cover off the back. That revealed lots of neat stuff.

The axles are butted right tight up to the spider gear shaft.No idea how they got the C clips in there.

The spider gears are not meshing properly and there is zero play between them. You can see the burr that is building on the side gears and the wear on the spiders.

Clutches and shims are apparently not in correctly or missing and this thing would not have been long for this world.

It is a 4.10 rear gear, might be OK with the AOD and 31" tall tires. Seems like a weird combo for a flathead.

Test to see if axle housing is bent was inconclusive, so will revisit.

Up front, things went a bit better. Short of pads and a few bolts, the parts for the brakes are there. The previous shop planned to run both a vacuum pump and a vacuum reservoir, but I thing that the reservoir will do the job. It's there and a mounting spot has already been fabricated.

This is the bracket that makes me shake my head. It holds the Vacuum pump, the power steering pump ( unregulated!) and the AC pump

Someone noodled this for a while and did a nice job of painting it

Thing is, I dont believe that a single V belt is going to want to drive these three devices.

Pulled this beauty out of the dash where it was being smothered by wiring and other cooling air preventers. Last I checked they get hot if you use them. Not hooked up to anything, sonot sure why it is there.

Should be a nice truck once it is done. Just a lot of little E36 M3 to sort out.

That’s actually a pretty nice amp and I’d be happy to find that buried in the wiring of any new project!

I’m not familiar with the Clarion, but the nice thing about Class D amps like this is that they are much more efficient than traditional amps, so they’re usually pretty small and produce less heat.  Definitely ideal for a cramped install.

That’d make a nice lightweight system with the addition of a small subwoofer, a set of component speakers in the door, and maybe a Bluetooth adapter so you can run it “headless” and stream music from your smartphone. Nice find!