1936 Ford Pickup Refresh

[DRIVEN]

Chapter 8, Shakedown.
I was working at my buddy's shop all last week and my brother was slaving on the Nova. We had to put in a few late nights to tie up some loose ends. Got it done Wednesday night so he could drive it to work Thursday (the last forecast dry day of the summer). Here's how it looked after it's first real trip. Note the high-end Burnett's gin bottle overflow and lack of air filter. We're still trying to agree on acceptable solutions for those two details.

The official report is that it ran really strong and stayed cool. It still needs a permanent PCM that's flashed specifically for his combination but at least it's mobile for now. Even as it is "traction is an issue". He stopped by my house to borrow my lawn mower. This thing actually does get used as a truck hauling wood, gravel and dirt bikes on a regular basis along with occasionally pulling trailers. We were standing around talking about how much more ridiculously fun it is to drive now when he asked when I wanted to start in on my sedan. Maybe a hint of things to come? Get in line.

 

[Oldsmoletick]

I see as modern hemi there, neat alternative.

 

[DRIVEN]

Lots of people think it's a Hemi. It's actually a 4.6 dohc from a Lincoln Mark VIII. The Avon box is covering up the the wad-o-snakes intake. Here's a better view:

I started this project about 4 years ago and may never actually finish it. Maybe if I start a thread on it I might get motivated to get back to it.

It's a combination of leftover parts from these:

 

[81cutlass]

Nice truck!

Seems like you are constantly doing projects, how many do you do in a year?

 

[DRIVEN]

Thanks.
Hard to put a number on it. Some have been in process for years. Some have been done more than once. At any given time there are probably 20-25 cars/trucks/bikes/boats between my brother, my dad, and me. We're all trying to get our collections thinned down though. Goes without saying that there's always something that needs to be done. That's kind of the reason for the Compound thread. I just kind of dump everything there.

 

[DRIVEN]

Picked up a crusty PCM yesterday. I'll plug it in to make sure it works before cleaning it up and sending it out for a custom reflash.

 

[DRIVEN]

I hooked it up to my dad's El Camino yesterday while he was here working on the bus. Fired right up and ran fine so it's off to the tuner for a custom flash. It'll be calibrated for the rearend ratio, firm up the shifts, tweak the fuel and timing along with deleting some of the emissions and other accessories that are no longer present. Probably won't get it back for about a month but it's rainy season anyway. No big rush for the next 6 months.

 

[DRIVEN]

Wow, I totally neglected to update this thread.

The new computer is in and it runs great. We had a short stretch of dry weather so my brother drove it around for a few days. He LOVES the new power. Burnouts for days! There's still some loose ends like mounting the horn and coming up with a speedo cable and hooking up the tach.

I cut up some firewood for him this afternoon. Just to prove she can still do some work:

Seems like old times. I can't even count how many loads of wood that thing hauled when I was a kid. We got really good at stacking but probably grumbled the whole time.

 

[DRIVEN]

Traded cars last week with my brother so I could work on his pickup during my down time at work.
-Adjusted the super sloppy steering box.
-Bled the brakes.
-Added a check engine light.
-Made a couple custom length plug wires to get away from the hot exhaust.
The last thing I did was figure out which wire at the coil to tap in to for a tach. I didn't have any black wire to make the run so I just told my brother which one and he said he'd do it if he got bored at work the next day. He drove it through the rest of the sunny week until yesterday and it would die as soon as he took it out of park. Then it would start in neutral but die when it went into any other gear. While trying to restart it would backfire. Come to find out the tach wire insulation was chafed inside the gauge housing (which is mounted on the column) and would intermittently short to ground when the shifter was moved. That solves the mystery about why the old 327 was so finicky sometimes and eventually wouldn't start. We had attributed it to a combination of bad wiring, old gas, weak compression and a failing head gasket. All of those things were problems -- but not the problem.

 

[Oldsmoletick]

Still watching...