1973 F-250 - Turbo BBF - It's off to a new home!

[BBR]

Fired it up to turn it around in the shop and it was acting like it was missing on a cylinder. I checked head temps at each cylinder and No.1 does not seem to be firing. I hooked the timing light to the No.1 wire and nothing, no blinky. It's paired cylinder, No. 6 (wasted spark) is firing fine so maybe it's just a plug wire problem. I have had these particular wires since the original BBRanger project. haha. I pulled the No.1 plug and it looks fine, so I am guessing bad wire or bad coil. Hope it's the wire.

Also I noticed fuel dripping from the rear and traced it to a random spot on the return line. Seems strange that it would be leaking....

[BBR]

Wheel cylinder fixed. Made a giant mess because evidently you have to tighten the brake line fitting before bleeding. Haha. Daaangit.

[BBR]

I started thinking about fuel pump placement and fuel delivery problems today. I decided my fuel pump was too high (inlet about halfway up the height of the fuel cell) so I made some brackets and lowered it to where the inlet is at the same height as the sump. I don't know if this will cure the problem, but it dang sure can't hurt.

While I was under there I noticed the pass wheel cylinder has started leaking. Must be jealous of the new one's I just put in the Galaxie. Haha.

[BBR]

I moved the 83GT to my house and brought the truck back to the shop so I can play with it after work easier and make a few changes to the truck. First change was to swap the 12# spring into the wastegate in place of the 5#. I tried to change it with the wastegate still mounted in the truck, but that was next to impossible. I took it off and that made changing the spring easy. 12# of boost has been the target for this project, so it will be interesting to see if this turbo can support that much air flow. 12psi should make this thing borderline scary. Haha.

Other changes planned:

• Swap 2.75 gears to my 3.25's.
• C-notch the frame for a better ride. It's not bad until you hit a dip in the neighborhood and the rear axle slams into the frame.

[BBR]

I need to drive this more! Haha. Drove it back to my house on Saturday. Ran ok, but I don't have complete confidence in it just yet.. It needs some tuning in the 1500 rpm cruise range. It runs GREAT 2000-5000 though. I think a lower rear gear might be a nice. The 2.75's are ok, but you really only use 1 & 2 in town.

One thing that I will need to address is fuel slosh. I had 5-ish gallons in it (1/4 tank) and it sloshed bad enough it would sputter and act weird. Filled it up and it worked fine. i may have to put foam in it.

[BBR]

Flashback Friday

Way back when we put the efi 460 in this truck, we just put it in, wired it up, and went on our way. Truck ran so we figured it was all fine. As I was reading about TFI modules for the 83GT, I discovered there are two kinds. A black one and a gray one. They use the same mount, and connector, but they are not interchangeable. If you use a black one where a gray one is supposed to be, the ECU will not be able to advance the timing. So you are stuck with whatever your base timing is set at. Like 12° BTDC.

Back then, we checked it with the SPOUT connector out (Like you are supposed to) and set the base timing to 12°. I never checked it with the SPOUT in because I just figured the computer was taking care of it. So all that time we were running around with 12 degrees of advance instead of something like 34. It ran ok, but never seemed to make the power I thought it should. I guess i now know why.

[BBR]

Whoo hoo. Radiator is in, transmission cooler relocated (it runs through the radiator and the external cooler now), thermostat housing installed.... twice. The t-stat housing is under the fuel rail/line and the coil pack is right there so it is easy to bump it out of position when bolting the housing down. The last two times I have done this, I have screwed it up.

Drove it around, let it idle, etc, temp stayed stable so I am calling it a win. Looks pretty good too.

[BBR]

I relocated the trans cooler and set it up to use the radiator's trans cooler as well. I was just using the external one before. This evening I will pop the fan back in, put on a few hose clamps and fill it up with water and see how it works.

[BBR]

Radiator is bolted in. I added small spacers so it would clear the intercooler. It was super hard to get the spacers in between the core support and the radiator. It took some creative use of a magnet and painter's tape but it is done. The trans cooler lines will need to be relocated a bit, but that should not be a big deal.

[BBR]

Haha we may have to rename it from "the parts chair" to "Vanna"!

I looked again this morning and figured it out. There are holes to mount it, it just mounts to the front of the core support and not to the wings in the sides like the bigger one does. I just need to get some 1" spacers to move it back a skosh to clear the intercooler.

Plotter, that is our big color Canon that we use here at work. Nice machine. A far far far cry from the old HP pen plotters we used when I got into this biz. Nothing like waiting an hour for a map to plot. ZZzzzzzzzzzz........

[Beagle]

48 years old, different mounting. Ahem. Not saying it, but reminds me of a very old joke about Trigger getting stuffed and mounted, as told by Gayle.


So, Vanna the office chair did a really good job of showing off the shiny! Is that an E-size plotter from the school district? and I'll shut up now.

[BBR]

Aaaaannnddd of course the core supports are different so it mounts a bit differently. Not a big deal, but I really wanted it to drop in and bolt in.

[BBR]

Radiator showed up today. Looks like a nice piece and the HHR fan fits it pretty good. I ordered s 3 row, but they sent a 4 row. Why a 3 row? I was concerned I was not going to have enough fore-aft room in there for the intercooler, trans cooler and radiator. Looks like it will all fir back in there. I hope.

[BBR]

Just parking this info here for future reference because I was changing the oil in the Jeep and noticed that the fan wasn't super thick and possibly very close to the right size for this radiator.

2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee electric fan. Overall dimensions 26" x 21" x 4" thick.

[BBR]

I really considered doing just that, but I figured it would probably leak worse after. Haha. Then I would have to find and try to solder up the leaks!