Project! Introducing Smokey Pete, the 1989 F250.

nitroguy

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Well, alignment shop called, and said the wheel bearings and balljoints are toast. Bummer. Back under the knife he goes. Might get a RedHead steering gear box too while I'm in there. I checked out the column and the D coupler looks tight. With the engine off, twisting the shaft back and forth, the shaft seemed tight all the way into the steering box, where it had quite a bit of play.

Gah! So close to being my daily driver. And because it has the lift, I don't want to chew up my brand new tires until I get it aligned. Booger.

But, I will say on the positive: he started awesome this morning! Forgot to plug in the block heater last night, and started it up at 20 deg F. 11 seconds on the plugs and two seconds of cranking, and he fired up right away! Boom!

Also I played with my timing a bit yesterday and I think that chuffing is going away. I think I had some stuck lifters, wonky injectors, and goopy oil. It's all getting worked through with a myriad of chemicals and coming back to life. Got HotShots in the tank and SeaFoam in the oil, and it seems to be working its magic.
 

Laine D

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Well, alignment shop called, and said the wheel bearings and balljoints are toast. Bummer. Back under the knife he goes. Might get a RedHead steering gear box too while I'm in there. I checked out the column and the D coupler looks tight. With the engine off, twisting the shaft back and forth, the shaft seemed tight all the way into the steering box, where it had quite a bit of play.

Gah! So close to being my daily driver. And because it has the lift, I don't want to chew up my brand new tires until I get it aligned. Booger.

But, I will say on the positive: he started awesome this morning! Forgot to plug in the block heater last night, and started it up at 20 deg F. 11 seconds on the plugs and two seconds of cranking, and he fired up right away! Boom!

Also I played with my timing a bit yesterday and I think that chuffing is going away. I think I had some stuck lifters, wonky injectors, and goopy oil. It's all getting worked through with a myriad of chemicals and coming back to life. Got HotShots in the tank and SeaFoam in the oil, and it seems to be working its magic.
That’s great to hear!
 

The_Josh_Bear

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I also have a red-head steering gear. Really good stuff once you have tightened everything else up. My rig was sloppy everywhere... when the box when in I was underwhelmed. But once I fixed the DD joint and tie rods(all of them), it was night and day different!

Bad bearings and ball joints won't help that steering either. At least the bearings can be inspected and tightened up if they are still ok.
Ball joints are a pain. Rent a press kit with the 4x4 add-on if you don't have one already. Unless of course you have a 10 ton shop press or something.
 

Laine D

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I also have a red-head steering gear. Really good stuff once you have tightened everything else up. My rig was sloppy everywhere... when the box when in I was underwhelmed. But once I fixed the DD joint and tie rods(all of them), it was night and day different!

Bad bearings and ball joints won't help that steering either. At least the bearings can be inspected and tightened up if they are still ok.
Ball joints are a pain. Rent a press kit with the 4x4 add-on if you don't have one already. Unless of course you have a 10 ton shop press or something.
Does a 200 ton work?
 

nitroguy

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I also have a red-head steering gear. Really good stuff once you have tightened everything else up. My rig was sloppy everywhere... when the box when in I was underwhelmed. But once I fixed the DD joint and tie rods(all of them), it was night and day different!

Bad bearings and ball joints won't help that steering either. At least the bearings can be inspected and tightened up if they are still ok.
Ball joints are a pain. Rent a press kit with the 4x4 add-on if you don't have one already. Unless of course you have a 10 ton shop press or something.

Great to know!

I did Ball Joints on Red Fred, and it went pretty well, albeit longer than I expected. But I've since learned pretty much just everything goes longer than I expect, so now I expect it.

I also decided to send it back to the alignment shop to get it done. Ball Joints and wheel bearings for $270 in labor plus parts, saves me a day to be with the family. Tough call, but I figure it's worth it. I think they also might need to be shimmed for alignment, so it'll be nice to have it all done there to make sure it's done right. Not too bad a deal I didn't think.


Well now you're just showing off LOL

I mean....not to show off even more, but ..... I did the job with a 5lb sledge. Does that mean my arm is capable of 399,995lb of force? Pretty sure that's what that means.
 

IDIBRONCO

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I also decided to send it back to the alignment shop to get it done. Ball Joints and wheel bearings for $270 in labor plus parts,
That doesn't sound like too bad of a price to me.

I felt really dumb using it to do my u-joints, but i was too lazy to use a hammer.
You do want to be careful about using a press to replace u-joints. Especially if they're in the front axle shafts. I know a guy who bent the axle shaft so bad that it had to be replaced. He thought that using a press would be easier. Maybe after you break loose the years and years of rust it would be ok to use a press. I prefer the hammer method since it gives a shock that helps break the u-joints loose. Think of it like using an impact wrench. The closest that I've come to doing this is using a bench vise and some sockets for spacers to install the new u-joints. And no, I've never replaced u-joints on anything bigger than a pickup. The medium and heavy duty trucks are a totally different animal.
 

nitroguy

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Been way too long since I updated this. I'll see if I can go back in time and bring it up to speed.

Let's see, I went on a buying spree and bought a few more trucks. I had 4 in total at one point, maybe 5 (it's hard to keep track). Fixed them by replacing an E4OD in one, bought another from Seattle and flipped it here, made a bit of cash on them, and got them moved on. The wife wasn't too happy about my used car lot I was developing.

Some of the rigs:
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Got them moved to some happy new owners:
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Just in time for Smokey Pete to die. A painful, cylinder-coolant filled death. Not sure what happened yet, but during a compression check on cylinder 2, I got a face full of coolant from Cylinder 3.

So, out with the old. Found a junkyard engine out of a 94 with a blown tranny that I picked up for $600. No idea the mileage, but "it drove in here"
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everything within me said I needed to not make the same mistake as last time, and pull the pan off, check the bottom end, and give it a once over.

But I didn't. I figured, heck, these are "reliable" what are the chances of TWO bad engines in a row? We'll see if it bites me because that's some pretty flawed logic, but (look into the future) so far it's holding together. I did, however, degrease it and paint it, so at least it LOOKED good and new.

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nitroguy

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While I had the front end off, I decided to get some Chassis Black paint and paint up the frame and axle. THAT was fun!

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Got the engine dressed and installed. I raised up the body this time, and it went in WAAAAY easier. Definitely recommend that as the way to do it.

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Also made sure to find time to burn up some Juniper bushes (I hate those things)
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And take the kids for a drive down the road. This is the stuff dreams are made of right here.
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nitroguy

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I then decided that if it was going to run good, I needed to make it look good. I picked up a buffer from Harbor freight and some compound, and went to work. Started like this, oxidized and scratched.
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After about an hour of work, he SHINES!
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nitroguy

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Which brings us to last night. My son and I spent time installing a new 110cc pump from Classicdieseldesigns.com (thanks @Thewespaul!) and stage 1 injectors. It's a little hot for my 1st gen banks until I get it upgraded, but that's $$ that will have to come later. In the meantime, I'll just watch the pyro and drive by mirror/pyro.

Spent last night getting it all installed. Went in easily, with only two copper washers stuck (thanks 12ga shotgun brush!) and one almost cross threaded injector that got saved at the last minute. Phew!

Drove it in to work this morning. WOAH! Time will tell, but seat of the pants says HOLY COW! I saw 10psi on a straight, unloaded acceleration, that's WAY more than I was getting before.

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