Project! Introducing Smokey Pete, the 1989 F250.

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!

 

Oh come on now. That's no challenge at all for you Montana guys!

 

Ha! It better not be a problem! That's our weather half the year!

 

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?

 

Well now you're just showing off

 

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.

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.

 

I felt really dumb using it to do my u-joints, but i was too lazy to use a hammer.

 

That doesn't sound like too bad of a price to me.

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.

 

They do make u-joint presses.

https://shop.snapon.com/product/Universal-Joint-Tools/Universal-Joint-Press-Set/UJP1

Almost like a good ball joint press, you'll find yourself using nothing else but it to do the job.

We have a 20 ton h-frame press at the shop. I prefer the u-joint and ball joint presses over using the h-frame.