An old friend: Build Thread.

[Sycostang67]

I plan to be busting my but over the next few weeks to try and get this truck up and running before the snow flies as my friend has trouble getting out of his sloped icy driveway in 2wd. We will be taking my old 1985 F-250 gasser and giving it the guts from my old 1986 F-250 diesel. The main reasons for the swap is the 85 has an extended cab and the axles are rebuilt and the 86 has been falling apart. When I had the 85 I did a C6 to 5spd swap, added PW/PL, and did an OBS body swap. Here is how it looked when I was rolling in it. I really miss the bumper I had on it.

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Here it is after I got it back from the first friend I sold it to. He eventually pulled the 460/5spd for another project and sold the rest to my other friend.

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Here is the 1986 shortly after I got it.

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As of right now, we have removed the drive train from the diesel along with all the wiring from the cab and engine compartment.

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In this pic you will notice my economical fix for the busted blend door that commonly happens to these trucks. The 85 already has this mod done as well. You may not get to keep the vents functioning, but at least the defrost and floor settings still work.

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I knew the gasser core support wouldn't work and we didn't want to swap back to the 80-86 body so I managed to score an F-Super duty diesel front clip at an auction for $25.

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Some other things we are doing is converting the old tan interior to grey from a 91 F-250 and we also got a set of OBS super cab windows to put in as well. We just got the interior window surround panels at the salvage yard yesterday. We will be putting in the 4spd for now, but have a 5spd swap lined up for next year. I am excited to see this thing become a diesel, it's something I wanted to do when I had it but got lazy and bought one. I will try and keep this updated weekly. I am heading over today so we can pull the gasser front clip, old interior and wiring.

 

[Danielle]

Looks like your friends left it in Camden over night. It looks stripped :0

 

[Sycostang67]

Looks like your friends left it in Camden over night. It looks stripped :0

I pretty much stripped it when I got my 93. I had put a new 460 in the truck and found no oil pressure when I fired it up and decided I was done with gas engines. I sold the motor, stripped the truck and put it in a field. My friend wanted it so we put in a 460 from another truck I was parting and he gave me the 86 F-250 in exchange.

We made a little progress this week, got the front clip off the gas truck and pulled the wiring. We got most of the interior out but since my friend didn't have the tool to remove the seat belts we stopped there.

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[Sycostang67]

Not much to report this week, we got the rest of interior removed from the 85 and pressure washed the front half of the frame as well as the fuel tanks and transmission. We also got the dash and kick panels painted to match the rest of the new interior. Next week we plan to get the add-a-leafs installed as well as removing the sway bar and cross member and swapping the motor mount towers. I would like to get the wiring installed as well.

 

[Sycostang67]

Weekly progress report.

Here is the dash we painted last week, charcoal gray to match the interior from the 91 I am parting out. The 85 had a dashmat which was tan as well. I am having my mother dye it and embroider it for my friend as a surprise. He should be pretty stoked about that when he sees it.

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We got the old 460 mount towers off as well as the front cross member and anti sway bar. We got the new diesel towers cleaned up and mounted as well.

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We also got the extra springs installed in the front. These are what I think are factory add-a-leaf springs as they fit quite well and don't fight the negative arch of the OEM springs like aftermarket ones do. They came off the 86 which was a one owner truck and I know the previous owner only fixed what was broke.

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Hopefully next week we can get the gas fuel tanks and lines removed and swap in the diesel counter parts.

 

[Sycostang67]

Due to weather and my lazy friend ignoring my warning to put the truck in his garage before it snowed, we lost some work time. We finally got a little bit done yesterday, we got the OBS super cab windows installed. It was a lot easier than I expected it, with only two small cuts needing to be made. The bolt holes for the old vs. new windows don't line up at all, in fact all but one bolt on the new window fits inside the opening of the cab. We made one notch for the bottom bolt on each side which allowed the top bolt to slide in. The bolts were close enough to the edge that putting the nuts on clamped it on to the cab. We will most likely make some flanges to put under the bolts to hold the window a bit more securely but it does feel pretty firm in there as-is.

Here is the notch we had to make.

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Here is how the bolts fit inside and clamped to the cab.

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Here is the finished result.

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[laserjock]

Looks good. Thanks so much for the pics. That's the job I'm about to do. I was guessing that what you said about the bolt pattern would be the case based on my quick shoving of the window in the hole. Now I can not sweat this.

 

[GOOSE]

Nice work!

 

[Sycostang67]

Thanks, we were kind of dreading it and were blown away with how easy it turned out to be. Now we can begin putting in the back half of the interior. We have some welding to do on the floor before the front half can go in. Soon I will show you the terrible side effects of a bench to bucket seat conversion without properly re-enforcing the floor.

 

[79jasper]

If you use that black polyurethane stuff line on the windshield to hold them in, doubt you'll need the nuts. Lol

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[Sycostang67]

If you use that black polyurethane stuff line on the windshield to hold them in, doubt you'll need the nuts. Lol

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No kidding, I had to hold the cab and push the windows out with my feet. I strained my shoulder pretty good as well.

 

[79jasper]

Stuff is ridiculous. Lol
The side stuff the factory uses on the side windows is more like tar. Doesn't seem like it dries.
Any plan on the interior plastics? Or is that on down the road?

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[Sycostang67]

We are switching to charcoal grey using the interior from the 91 F-250 I am parting out and we got the correct interior window surround panels from another truck in the salvage yard. Aside from the dash, you will have a hard time telling this isn't an OBS truck.

 

[79jasper]

Ah, okay.
Now I've heard the door panel to dash contour doesn't match if you mix different body style pieces.

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[Sycostang67]

It actually matches pretty good on one side, but not the other. It's not a horribly noticeable mismatch either, I had that truck with the brick nose door panels in it for over a month before I even noticed it.