TurnerX19 said:It is great that Danica Catrick enjoys travel.
Not much phases her. She is pretty well traveled at this point.
TurnerX19 said:It is great that Danica Catrick enjoys travel.
Not much phases her. She is pretty well traveled at this point.
TRoglodyte said:How do you get a baby panther in your van are you not scared of being eaten?
We lured her in with the promise of fresh Alabama possum.
This is so good!! Congrats!
The trip looked fantastic! Have you been home long enough to come up with future plans for the van?
logdog said:TRoglodyte said:How do you get a baby panther in your van are you not scared of being eaten?
We lured her in with the promise of fresh Alabama possum.
The best kind of possum.
This just makes me think of Strange Brew.
dclafleur said:The trip looked fantastic! Have you been home long enough to come up with future plans for the van?
Immediate plans are to get some new weatherstripping and run channels installed. This thing is drafty and leaky. I want to fix those issues so I can finish up the interior this summer. I also need to start tracking down some of the shifter parts that are worn. The R-1 shift gate got noticeably worse by the end of the trip.
We made a cameo in the Regular Car Reviews video about 39 minutes 20 seconds in.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fenNzM4Md_E
I was watching through that this morning I think I saw the van in the background in a few other shots too.
In reply to dclafleur :
We got a few photo bombs in!
Lemons sent out this link to the pics they posted.
https://24hoursoflemons.smugmug.com/Race/Retreat-From-Moscow-Lemons-Rally-January-2019/
They also finally posted the results. We're number 8! We're number 8!
In the wilds of west Michigan.
Reading your whole thread, the soundtrack in my head was by the Minutemen.
Mike Watt, their bass player, only jams Econo when he travels. “The man in the van with a bass in his hand.”
We got a shout-out from Lemons! Woot!
A little catch up on the behind the scenes action-
One of the issues we developed towards the end of the rally was difficulty in shifting, particularly in the R-1 part of the gate. 3 on the trees are known for having shift collar failures so I figured that might be the issue. The only way to know for sure is to start pulling it all apart. Luckily I found lots of small parts I can leave out to make it a lighter and faster Fordiban.
As you can see it is indeed broken. there is a nice groove cut in the edge where it was sitting crooked. I know the center piece often breaks and it is easy to see if you kept driving on it that could happen. It got us home and now it needs fixered up.
The problem is this shift collar is made of unobtainium of the rarest variety. It isnt reproduced and the NOS stock is basically gone. I called many NOS suppliers and each told me they get lots of calls looking for this part. It appears to fit all Ford column shift manuals from 80 to end of production. The collar for auto trans shift collar is easy to find and many listings I saw showed that part with the manual number. They do not interchange. Im not sure if it is unscrupulous sellers trying to command a premium or just an honest error, but it helps to keep a critical eye when shopping. A coworker found one in Florida that was allegedly the correct part but it was 350 bucks plus shipping. That's a bit more of a gamble than I wanted to make unless I had no other options. My desire is to keep the column shift since its part of what makes this van special so floor shift conversions were thought of as a last resort.
There are lots of threads out there of people looking for this part. There are a few instances where people have said you can make another part work with a little modification but there were not any pictures. One of the NOS places in Texas I talked to said they heard the same thing but didn't have specific information. So I went down that rabbit hole for awhile.
Im going to put the part numbers here in case other people stumble across this page when searching for a collar.
The Ford number for the correct part is E0TZ-7228-D. I believe this fits 1980-up trucks/vans
The Ford number for the part that can be modified is D9TZ-7228-C. This is easy to find. There are lots of aftermarket reproductions around 25 bucks and I have seen NOS available for under 60 bucks. This fits 79 and older but Im not sure how far back. I ordered one of the aftermarket ones to see exactly what it looked like and how it would need to be modified.
Dimensions are pretty close. The top needs about 10mm cut off and the bottom doesn't have the same taper. This will mostly affect the column trim. The most important thing to me is to get it working vs 100% correct in appearance.
I had a Kobalt impact socket that fit the inside of the collar perfectly. So I set up a little machine shop action to cut the excess material off.
Mrs Logdog spun the collar slowly while I ran the Dremel.
I need to clean it up a bit with a file, but it looks like it will work. The center pieces are all the same dimensions between the parts. I have a bathroom to finish painting before I can put the column together but I hope to reassemble it this weekend. I also ordered a couple column bearings to replace. I want to take it the rest of the way apart and clean and grease the shift tubes.
I know it's yet to be put together but that's looking like grand success to me! Now you've gone and posted pics of the thing you said you couldn't find pics of. Hopefully some other interested parties will be able to use your info. 
In reply to Vigo :
I spent a ton of time looking for pictures of the two pieces side by side. I assume there is one out there somewhere but I never found the danged thing!
Several forums had posts that just said "I cut some off and modified it" without much detail. It wasnt hard, but I would have ordered the D9tz part, and may have even sprung the few extra bucks for a NOS one, if I had known just how easy it would be (Assuming everything works like I expect it to when I get it back together).
During the final meetup at Barber during the Lemons Rally, another team left us a gift on the front seat. I thought it should be officially documented in this build thread.
Well, it turns out, cats are popular on the internet. We got a mention in the Everyone Racers podcast!
Lemons talk starts around 34 minutes in and chat about the Candy Van starts around 47:40 in.
http://shoutengine.com/EveryoneRacers/e1r-e73-lemons-rally-with-eric-rood-retreat-fro-73891
I spent WAAAAY too much time working with the steering column over the weekend. On the bright side I am really good at R&Ring it. Its really a pain to fish it through by yourself. Snaking the shift forks and column through the pedals, throttle rod, and firewall requires precise twists and hokey pokeying. Plus I took it apart and put it back together a bunch of times. I may not be a 3 on the Tree column master, but I do think Im a journeyman now!
Here are the guts of the column. I thought there would be a worn bushing in here based off how much wiggle there was in the forks, but it turns out, that's just the design. A big spring compresses when you move the shifter between the 1/R and 2/3 gates. I took it all apart, cleaned and greased it up.
One of the problems I had was getting it to go through gear positions on the bench. After several disassembly/reassembly motions I noticed some holes in the forks. Using a bit to line them up as a starting point made everything work. Im sure if I had a factory manual I would have known that.
The bigger problem I ran into was the new shift collar. It wasn't sitting right on the top of the column and it took awhile to figure out what the problem was.
As you can see, there is a plastic bushing the inner part of the collar fits in. It helps center the shift rod and collar together. Its hard to see in the picture but there are witness marks on the bushing because the new collar doesn't fit inside.
The lip on the replacement part measures around 3mm. The original is around 1mm. The original with the bushing was around 5mm. That explains why the new part in the old bushing was fitting together like me in an airplane seat. I tried all sorts of things to make a bushing including various plastic pieces and even some thin leather. The plan is to get a NOS Ford piece and see if its the same as the aftermarket. I will also continue to try and figure out the bushing situation. For the time being, I have some extra thick heavy tape and I put a small strip of that on the collar. I know it wont last long but it fits and will work for the short term.
The shift rod bushings were easy to find. They are the same as an automatic, you just need 2.
The steering wheel is still off but the shifter feels really good. You can actually feel a gate, not a butter knife in pudding. Im kinda torn about pulling it back apart now and taking the tape off to see how it shifts. I will see how froggy I feel this evening.
I hope whoever at Ford (or whatever supplier they used) that designed these stupid t-bolts to hold the outer column housing gets a leaky roof on their cabin "up north*".
*Apparently it is state law that all auto industry employees from the 60s-90s in Michigan have a cabin. At least it seemed that way when I was there.
I've watched videos on people melting down plastic grocery bags and making different pads or bearings out of the solidified substance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_XUJwINdLw
Something like the above link. There's many others. Some put oil into the mix for a lubed surface.
*Also we have a cabin up north too. I didn't realize that 'up north' was used elsewhere.
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