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

[BBR]

Dixie horn?!

Yep. Kids..... lol.

[Russell]

That's a lotta horn!

Dixie horn?!

[TheSilverBuick]

That's a lotta horn!

[BBR]

No real progress on the truck this weekend. Boo.

So here's an engine pic. 600+ miles so far and everything is going good.

[BBR]

The supplied harness bar has curved ends to allow it to suck up tight to the back cab wall. Should not effect leg room much if any.

[Russell]

How about the sholder bar? Will the seat have to be slid up 6"? Sorry about your leg room

[BBR]

Valve body will be there Thursday. In the mean time, we started on the roll cage stuff. This is a Jegster kit and it seems to fit the cab very well. If I were to suggest one change to it, it would be to make the halo a little wider. Overall though, I am happy with the kit. This is my first weld up kit, so it has been quite the learning experience. We still have to do the harness bar, door bars, and rear down bars, but we made good progress this weekend.

Because it was raining, we pulled it into our newly expanded shop at my office.


Had to be careful so we could still turn the lights on and off. Sudden realization as I am typing this: Don't know what we will do if we ever have to take the light switch out.... oops.



Rear bars will tie to the vertical section of the main hoop through the rear window.

Door bars might get interesting. I looked at it a little yesterday but did not think to try to close the door. The arm rests might get in the way....


The front bars kinda look in the way in this pic, but they really are not. You can see the whole tach face when seated in the driver's seat.

[BBR]

Jake worked for my company all during Spring Break and used some of his $$$ to order a Punisher valve body for the E4OD. The guy's name is Paul that makes them and the Lightning guy's all swear by his VB's. This thing definitely needs to have the shift feel upgraded. He said the big block E4OD see's huge benefits with a switch to his VB. We ordered the Street version, but he said he offers adjustments at no charge as long as we own it. Can't wait to bolt it in and not worry about those lazy shifts anymore!

www.punishervalvebodies.com

[BBR]

There's not much choice as far as going thru the window goes. You'd have to trim out the inside cab sheet metal in order to get the main hoop high enough to allow the down bars to exit above the window. We'll put some padding in strategic places for some noggin' protection.

I have looked at 03-ish Dodge seats because they have the integrated seat belts and look to be the closest fit. But, we just decided to put a bar in it and attach the belts to it.

[Beagle]

A small price to pay for all 4 gears...I'm on the fence about the bar through the back window. I never could figure out how they keep them from leaking. Are you gonna put rolls of Charmin all the way around the loop on the inside? Those things hurt when you whack your head on them. Just a thought, but some of the newer truck seats have the shoulder belt built into the seat. You guys always come up with clever solutions, I'll be curious to see how that plays out.

[BBR]

Great success and a meh!!!

Popped the new speedo in, went through the reprogram sequence, (which meant I had to click the select button 520 times to go from 10.20 down to 5.00) and boom, the trans shifts by itself and all that good stuff!!!! It's not performance calibrated so the shifts are pretty soft and comfy, but it does them at the proper time and downshifts when needed. Yeeeeessss!!!?

Now for the meh. When reprogramming, the number the speedo displays is the number of reprograms REMAINING, not the number of times it has been reprogrammed. So I didn't need to buy another one after all..... Oopsie. Live and learn!!

[BlueCuda340]

How will it shift properly doing burnouts of your pulling it off of the front wheel sensor?

[BBR]

New (to us) speedo is here! Hopefully it still has a reprogram or 2 in it!

Probably could unscrew the board from the face and needle, but having them on certainly helps to verify operation!

Aa a recap, this little guy conditions the VR speed signal we are taking from a front wheel ABS sensor and turns it into a square wave signal that the EEC-IV is looking for. It sort of has a limited range of programmability, but thankfully will work for what we are doing.



Can't wait ti give it a whirl later!

[BBR]

Started eyeballing the roll bar stuff. Due to the shape of the cab inside, it looks like the down bars will have to go through the rear window.

[BBR]

The Aussie speedo corrector was a flop. On to plan B. I wired up the stock 1996 speedo and started the reprogram process. Fail. It has already been reprogrammed 6 times. Dangit!!

I decided to drive it anyway just to see if it would shift. Compared to the GPS speedo on my phone, it was right at 50% too slow. Despite that issue, it did shift by itself in D, but the shifts were soft and mushy because the ECM was only thinking I was driving half as fast as I really was.

We unplugged the trans (back to 2nd and 4th) and went for a drive to recalibrate the Autometer speedo. After the 2 mile calibration, it was right at 4000ppm.

I really expected the stock speedo to be a huge pain, but it turned out to be super easy. Now we just need to find a new stock speedo that still has a few reprograms left in it.