I don't know if most of you guys have as many miles on your OBS trucks like I do with mime, but Ford in their infinite wisdom decided to make the door latch mechanism a wear item on this generation truck. I've been doing this retrofit for some time on towtrucks (they see the most amount of door use in a year) and just had to tackle this on my CC with 270k on the odo. What wears out is the cable that connects the pull handle to the latch. I've found that ford won't sell you the cable itself, you have to buy the whole assy for $140. Nope. Not me.
What do you need to do for this conversion? Find a 80-91 f-series door and gut the actuator handle, the latch and the all the linkage rods attaching to the latch. Not a difficult job, watch for the razor sharp sheetmetal openings and the three screws holding the latch to the door shell is usually loctited in. Do keep track of the linkage rods and their orientation in the latch. I did re-use the keylock linkage rod off the OBS door due to the difference in retainers on the lock itself.
the OBS door stuff did come out quite easily and the replacement stuff did require a little coaxing to go in. This is prolly why Ford redesigned the assy. It's not the easiest to assemble when there are linkage rods with a mind of their own.
well....here are some pics. Next time I get a member dropping by with a real camera, I'll take some better pictures, but in the meantime...this will do.
The latch assy on the left of both pics is the 80-91 style and the right is the 92-97(OBS) style.
What do you need to do for this conversion? Find a 80-91 f-series door and gut the actuator handle, the latch and the all the linkage rods attaching to the latch. Not a difficult job, watch for the razor sharp sheetmetal openings and the three screws holding the latch to the door shell is usually loctited in. Do keep track of the linkage rods and their orientation in the latch. I did re-use the keylock linkage rod off the OBS door due to the difference in retainers on the lock itself.
the OBS door stuff did come out quite easily and the replacement stuff did require a little coaxing to go in. This is prolly why Ford redesigned the assy. It's not the easiest to assemble when there are linkage rods with a mind of their own.
well....here are some pics. Next time I get a member dropping by with a real camera, I'll take some better pictures, but in the meantime...this will do.
The latch assy on the left of both pics is the 80-91 style and the right is the 92-97(OBS) style.
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