After getting the fuel pump installed, I still had to finish up things with the transmission crossmember. Where I had left off, I had put one of the bolts in on one side since I was able to turn the crossmember at an angle to reach one of the factory bolts. After really looking at everything, I decided to just drill new holes for both sides. Again, this transmission is not the version that was supplied for these trucks from the factory. I'll have to look for casting numbers or something to see if this isn't the M5R2 or one that was supplied in the next generation F150s from 97 up. I don't know, since it was supposed to be pulled from a 351 truck, maybe a 96 I believe. If that is indeed the case, maybe Ford changed things up in that last year before transitioning to the newer style F150s that had the Triton V8's and 4.2L V6's. Either way, the tranny is in, it's not coming out and we have to work with it. I'm satisfied, I'm lucky to have even found one (even though we did find one just recently at the local junkyard). So back to the crossmember and its mounting holes. I ended up positioning the crossmember where it was straight across then pulled out the small bit, drilled a pilot hole then used the step bit to widen the hole for the bolts. Now one of the problems that I had with the placement of the crossmember is the idea that I couldn't position it where the mounting studs were more centrally mounted. I ended up moving the crossmember as far forward as it can go before bottoming out on the studs. Reason for this is the way the frame rails are angled. At just this point where the crossmember sits, the width between the frame rails widens slightly as the crossmember goes back. What this means is the amount of frame lip available to drill for a large hole gets less since the position moves closer and closer to the edge of the lip the farther back I go. I had to position the crossmember as far forward as it can go so the holes on the frame lips will be as far from the edge as possible. The last thing I need is to crack the lip of the frame where those bolts sit because of their position near the edge. With the crossmember in and the mount secured, the next order of business for this truck is pulling the wrong oil pan from the engine. There are a few things involved with this, first being the removal of the bolts from the pan. I'll have to hook the crane back to the engine and lift it up high enough to allow me to pull the pan down and free of the block. Once that's done I can get under there to clean the bottom of the block of old gasket material in order to get it ready for the one-piece gasket that I picked up for this setup. I used one of the one piece oil pan gasket sets, which are standard with the middle 90's Ford V8's, on the 351 we used to have in the Rustang a long time ago. It was one of the best components I've ever had the experience of using since gone were the days of lining up four separate pieces of gasket material. This is essentially another reason for my enthusiasm with putting a V8 back into the Rustang in leiu of the I-6 since there are so many options or different parts and modifications on the SBF V8 that are not present on the I-6. Now we had another curveball thrown our way. The ole lady, while riding the Scion doing her normal travels, found herself behind a dump truck on an on-ramp to a highway she frequently travels to her area of operations. Unable to go around, she was in the prime position to catch whatever may come from one of these infernal machines. In this case, it was an errant rock. And the errant rock didn't just hit the windshield. No, it had to hit the sunroof. And the sunroof is made of tempered glass so when it suffers an impact, the whole damned thing shatters. Well, that's what happened here. Because of this, something had to be done to at least cover up the hole in the roof. The ole lady switches cars with me then continues on her way. In the meantime I took a trash bag and did a bootleg job of covering up the broken window so I can at least keep out any sprinkle from the skies plus be able to drive home without freezing my balls off. Of course this was the least of our problems. I had to try and figure out what I can do to temporarily remedy this problem while waiting to see if there's any chance of reimbursement from the insurance company covering the dump truck (since it was from the county). There's a couple of options, based on cost of course. One is to get a large piece of plexiglass and cut it to fit and glue it down on the frame that holds the sunroof glass. The other option would be to put a large piece of sheet metal over the frame in the same manner. For all intents if I could find a replacement sunroof glass from the junkyard I'd just replace the fucking thing and be done with it. Problem is, if we go through our insurance, the deductible would have us still coming out of pocket since the cost of replacing the glass won't come close to the deductible, and it'll end up just being a non-starter as far as being covered in any way. Second, depending on how long it takes for anyone to get back with us (if at all) we will end up just fixing the thing since we will end up finding the part we need and getting it for somewhat cheap and end up being able to just fix the shit in one hour and moving on. Otherwise we're talking about riding around with a bootleg roof for who knows how long.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
May 2023
|