Hey guys...I haven't had a project in a while, but I just bought a '66 f100. it's been sitting a good long while (since '96, from what I can tell) and was sludged up pretty well. I replaced fuel pump (broken linkage), alternator(bearing), distributor/coil (vac advance/coil shot), rebuilt carb, cleaned the rust out of the water pump (will replace once I clean the block out). I de-rusted all the brackets in vinegar and painted them. My wife is out of town for the 3-day weekend, so I put everything back together today with the intent of getting it running. I had to coax he starter to work by putting a piece of foam between the drive solenoid and the case. I think a turn or two of the field coil around it are shorted because it just wouldn't pull it in, but if you take the slack out of the starter drive fork with your finger, it'd run fine. 2 hours of ****ing around and the foam fixed it (for now). as soon as I got the starter bolted back up it decided to downpour. we got about an inch in 30 minutes in the northern end of the front that dropped 9+ inches on san antonio. after that stopped and it dried up a bit, I started on the temporary ignition wiring. I'm planning on doing a full harness for the truck, but I want to finalize everything so I don't have to move anything after the harness is laced. I was going to use the original ignition w/ a pertronix, but the vac advance was shot and it was cheaper to go with a duraspark from a later truck. I did a bunch of looking and settled on the 77-79 cali-only red grommet module (std motor products replacement) so I don't have to run a resistor wire on the coil. I got a cardone dizzy for $50 off rock auto out of a 77 f100/300" (had to pick a year...) I slapped it together today to see if I could get the truck moving around... and I've got no spark. I've got the ignition module ziptied to the fenderwell temporarily and jumpers connecting my distributor gnd (black) and pickup(blk/purple and blk/orange) to black, purple, and orange on the module's 4-pin connector. green wire is run to coil (-). the red wire is currently on a toggle switch run off battery power in the engine compartment. white wire (crank retard) is currently disconnected. I've got an inline spark checker between the coil and cap which is registering nothing. the only time it fires is a very weak pulse when you turn the power on to the ignition module. I have power to the coil from the module, I'm just not getting any trigger (I think). the resistance between the distributor ground and engine ground was ~700 ohms, which seemed high, so I ran a jumper from the vac advance canister bolt to engine ground. no change. the resistance of the pickup winding is 660ohms, which is in spec. I haven't done the output test yet(checking AC voltage between purple and orange wires on distributor), will try tomorrow. I also haven't bench tested the distributor and module together, I'll do that tomorrow as well. is there any chance the purple and orange wires being swapped could cause this? I know ford used a bunch of different colors over the years... I can verify that the black is distributor ground and the purp/orange wires are the coil. I don't know what to test for on the ignition module. I'm hoping there's something simple I'm missing here... I did have to take the new distributor apart and oil the shaft. I could hardly turn it when it came in, it had been sitting long enough that all the oil had worked out. is it possible I killed the reluctor pulling the breaker plate out? it is on there about 2 degrees out of line, possibly it was beaten on at the factory... I've heard they can be a bit delicate. I'm kinda bummed this isn't going smoother... I wanted to get started on metalwork this weekend while my wife is out of town lots o farm dents to take out. no rust, save for the tailgate and bed floor, which are swiss cheese. cattle feed wasn't kind to them.
Can't help with the wiring, but it sounds like your distributor may be suspect. I'm not a fan of anything Cardone sells. See if you can find a junkyard dizzy and swap in. Also may want to take a look at ford-trucks.com (FTE). They have a pretty good inline six forum...
Turns out it was the brand new ignition module. I bought an overpriced blue grommet at advance and that fixed the problem. Dizzy seems to be fine, I'm getting 1.7-2.2vac from the pickup spinning it by hand. I've almost got it running now, just gotta get everyone happy...
Well, she purrs like a kitten now. bumps off on the first revolution w/o choke. I set the initial advance at 6 degrees, at least until I get everything else worked out. I started figuring out the brakes, looks like the master cylinder is toast, but it could be clogged lines. I'm not getting any fluid coming out of an open line. I'll pull that apart tomorrow. I put new shoes and a wheel cylinder on the LF... the old shoes hadn't even worn in yet. drums need to be turned pretty bad, so I'm going to hold off on the other side until I get that done. wheel bearings have a bit of axial play, but not too bad. I was driving around the parking lot for a good 15 minutes in first... I'd love to have some brakes so I can find second the radiator has a few bad tubes that I've patched to a slow leak, so I'll need to replace that, but while the old water pump and radiator are on it I'm going to run some oxalic acid through the coolant system to clean out some of the rust. I'm also looking for a solid tailgate, if anyone has a spare. I can salvage this one but the bottom is pretty well rotted out and there are some goodly dents in the top edge. the letter panel is near perfect, though, and the latching is better than most new trucks. also, for reference, the module that was DOA was a standard motor products unit.
A good running engine is a great motivator.....keep chipping away at it. You'll be cruisin in no time! Thanks for the update.
I ran the engine for half an hour today w/ cup or so of oxalic acid crystals in the coolant (just water right now). I'm going to leave it in for a a few days to loosen up the crud. Sounds like the main bearing between #3 and 4 might be toast, it's starting to howl a bit. #2 exhaust rocker is ticking, I suspect that lifter may be clogged. the guy I bought the truck from rattle canned the outside flat black to keep the surface rust at bay. I sprayed some gloss over the known dents so I can start pulling them out. I'm going to straighten out the hubcaps tonight. 2 are pretty good, 2 are decent. none of the script is crushed, so it's all salvageable. I'll take some pictures tomorrow. They say they're worth 1000 words, yeah?
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