Bringing an F100 Back from the Dead

Just curious, was there surface rust on the shaft where the oilite bushings were making contact with the shaft (or maybe a light coat of corrosion on the inside of the bushings)?
I can see where a lot of unexpected water could wash the oil out of the bushings, making them essentially dry after the water evaporated. A "crust" could develop inside of the bushing, making them tighter against the shaft. I believe I would have tried s****ping the bushings clean, then polish the shaft clean where the bushings and shaft meet, then add a zerk fitting to the cross shaft and pump grease (the same grease you use for tie rod ends) into the ***embled unit until the grease came out between the bushings and the shaft (grease under pressure can't be replaced by water easily).

Is this pivot piece at the floor, behind the wheel, or is it near the transmission? Maybe it needs to be protected from water spray with a covering? The water spray, not the engineering, could have been the reason the first set up failed as well.

 

Looks good, Mike, that oughta work good.

 

[QUOTE="gene-koning, post: 15750793] Is this pivot piece at the floor, behind the wheel, or is it near the transmission? Maybe it needs to be protected from water spray with a covering? The water spray, not the engineering, could have been the reason the first set up failed as well.[/QUOTE]

The pivot is attached to the side of the frame rail to the rear of the steering box. It uses the original frame mount for the original Z-bar. So, pretty much fully exposed to water spray. The bushing surfaces were clean and smooth. And, although it worked smoothly at first, once it got wet, it got sticky. Cleaning and relubing did little. Kinda weird.
At any rate, fully sealed, double bearings, and it feels nice. It'll be inspected a month or two before the NextBigRoadTrip to make sure it's functioning properly.
On to the next thing I reckon!

 

After a month of use, the refurb'd clutch pivot is working great. Nice and smooth, no binding, no stickiness.
Of course, something else pops up. Very minor, but still annoying. I was getting a bit of front disc brake chatter on light pedal pressure first thing when everything is cold. Front wheel bearings had a bit of play. So, I cleaned and repacked those. Seemed to have fixed that chatter.
Then, I noticed the fuel mileage in town is not what it used to be, dropping to about 12.5mpg. All short in town trips. So, I plug the Holley handheld to see what is going on. It displays a bunch of EFI related stuff including coolant temp. The sensor is just before the T-stat. And she's not getting up to the 180° temp that the t-stat is rated for. So basically, when it's cold, the EFI has some enrichment going on. I drove to the train station downtown to pick up wifey after her trip to San Francisco. It's about 14 miles. Temp never got above 162. In town it was getting to about 150°.
What the heck is up with replacement t-stats of late? I'll be replacing this one, a supposedly premium quality piece, for the fourth time. This one has about 8 or 9 months on it. I reckon sticking open is preferable to sticking closed.
And I've got a bit of weepage at the bottom of the radiator. Maybe a tables**** amount of drippage after running.
I'm gonna put some K-Seal in it for now.
I reckon I deserve that. A $200 Shanghai special from amazon. Three years old.
With another big road trip planned for the spring, I want to take care of all the little stuff that could become big stuff out on the road. But the fuel situation in California is looking pretty grim. Two more refineries shutting down in the coming months. This could affect Arizona too. Higher prices and shortages predicted. All thanks to the California Air Resources Board. An unelected bunch of bureaucrats that by their own admission, don't care what happens at the consumer level.
Higher prices I can handle to a point. Lack of availability just might put the brakes on our next big road trip.

 

When the outside temps drop below about 45 degrees around here, the gas mileage on my truck drops an easy 2-3 mpg, giving me 13ish around town, and around 15ish on the highway. If I have to put it into the 4x4 mode, 10 mpg is pretty normal, in town or highway!

Its also pretty normal for the motor operating temp to lag 10 to 15 degrees below what ever thermostat is rated at when the winter cold arrives. The coolant in the radiator is still being cooled, but the coolant in the motor takes longer to reach the stat rating before it opens. Then the much cooler coolant in the radiator replaces the now hot coolant that used to be in the block. Then, if you have a heater with a fan running, it also is lowering the coolant temp. I run a 195 stat in my truck year around. The only time the coolant reaches 200 is if I sitting at a very long traffic light, then as soon as the truck is moving, the coolant temp drops. The temp gauge in my truck, during the winter, always reads 190 to 195 if the truck is rolling down the road, but it takes a mile or more before it reaches that 190.
Right now we are seeing outside temps near zero, or slightly below. The heater fan is blowing at the 3rd setting (out of 4). There are more cold air drafts in an old truck then most expect, but its sure warmer inside of the cab then it is standing outside of the cab.

I have come to expect a few seeps and drips from my old truck when the weather turns cold, things seal up better after they warm up. I don't let that stop me from enjoying it. It seems to me the old truck doesn't like the cold much more then I do, but here we are, going out in the cold again. When we get home, I go into the warm house, the truck goes into the warm garage. We will tolerate the cold together again the next time we go out into it.

 

I just went down to the Napa store and got a 195 t-stat Gene. I'll pop that in tomorrow and pour in some k-seal.
Seems to be seeping at a weld joint on the bottom tank. Hopefully the stop leak will hold until I get the gumption to yank the rad and attempt to weld it.
Small annoyances. The price we pay for keeping the old stuff going!

 

When I installed my new gauges a few months ago, I installed an electric temp sensor that came with the gauges. I replaced the original temp sensor with the new one, but the new one had a larger outer diameter, and the area it was in was pretty tight. Originally I thought that raising the sender up a bit would make the installation easier, but it didn't, so I had to remove everything I had used to raise it up. In that process I may have damaged the threads on the sending unit.

The outside temps at that time were in the 50s &60s, so there was not an issue. When we had a few days when the temps dropped into the 20s, the base of the sending unit started seeping. It only seeps a bit as the motor temp transitions from cold to normal, or from normal to cold, for about 2 minutes in each direction. It doesn't leak when its warmed up, nor does it leak when its cold. It leaves a spot about 2" in diameter, and once every 3-4 weeks I add about a 1/2 quart of antifreeze.
As soon as I figured out what was leaking, I ordered a new sending unit, it took a couple weeks for it to get here. That sender is buried in a hole, it will take an hour or more to change. I also decided I wanted to change a few other minor things while the cooling system was drained. Of course that required ordering and waiting for more parts.

Just after the extra parts came in, my wife's PT Cruiser had a water pump start leaking (its in the same area the timing belt is in, and everything there gets changed at the same time). My hands don't fit into that area, so I didn't do that. The PT was out of commission for a couple of weeks, making the truck is our only transportation, that minor seeping can wait.

Then my son's daughters car needed something, so he used my heated garage. Then my son in law needed brakes on his truck, my grandson did that in my heated garage. Now the PT needs a new turbo (waiting for parts, so its down again).

The 49 is still waiting its turn, maybe next week... Its always something.

 

@gene-koning , your Guage manufacturer should have a compatible sender with the correct OE thread.
The trouble with adapters, aside of the additional place for a leak, is they pull the sensor tip away from the coolant flow, often resulting in an incorrect reading.
Just a suggestion.

 

@gene-koning , it seems both you and I rely on our old trucks as semi-daily drivers....such as it is at this age. I don't drive it every day, but I don't like to have it down for too long either. I guess it keeps me from doing unnecessary operation on 'er! Sometimes we just gotta let small issues be until an opportunity comes. I totally get it.
I put the 195° T-stat in today. Once I got the "old" one out, (9 months old) I checked it in heated water. It's a 180° unit, but started opening at about 162, and it was full open by 168.
On Ol' Furd, there are two temp sensors. One is in the stock location at the rear of the block a couple inches below the deck. That is connected to the das gauge. The other is the GM type sensor for the EFI. It is in the water neck after the t-stat. The dash gauge reads considerably cooler than the EFI readout.
After the change, the EFI display read anywhere from 185 to 199. It was fluctuating some. Maybe still air bubbles in the system. While that was reading 199, the dash gauge was not quite at 160°. I have a piece of masonite covering the bottom third of the radiator too while it's cold. Even with that, the other day I drove to downtown Fresno train station to pick wifey up. Even with airflow to the rad partially blocked, the EFI display never got much above 160. That's what prompted the switch.
We've been covered by what they call an inversion layer here in the San Joaquin Valley of central california. Cold, wet but not raining, with daytime highs in the mid 40s. Haven't seen the sun in more than three weeks. A bit depressing actually. Like being wrapped in a cold wet blanket.
Is that a factor? Probably to some degree.
I put in 8 ounces of the K-Seal too. Time will tell how that works.
I'd like to be using my Harley more for short errands. It gets 3X better fuel mileage than Ol' Furd in town. But wouldn't ya know it...the battery is done. I don't know why it is that batteries only last a couple years on that thing.
Pic of Ol' Furd at the train station just because!

 

The temp gauge sensor has an 1/8" pipe thread that required the use of a 1/2" wrench, the 1/8" pipe thread matches the thread in the intake. The OEM sender was very skinny, probable barely exceeded the thread outer diameter, uses a 7/16" wrench. The minor larger difference in the outer dimensions between the gauge sender outer and the OEM sender are the issue. On this intake, there is a pipe ****** that threads into the intake for the heater hose connection that sits right beside the temp sender. The two threaded holes on the intake are very close together. The OEM sender can be installed with a socket along side of the heater hose ****** (with the hose removed), but to install the gauge sender, the pipe ****** has to be removed, and the "flats" for the wrench have to be indexed so the pipe ****** can be threaded back in. The pipe ****** is long enough the hose fits on the ****** above the larger part of the sending unit.
My original thought was to install the gauge sending unit into a 45 degree br*** pipe elbow, then add a short br*** pipe ******. I screwed the gauge sender into the br*** and installed it into the intake with the heater hose ****** removed. Then when I went to install the heater hose ******, the br*** 45 didn't provide enough clearance to install the heater ******. I ended up taking the gauge sender out of the br*** and installing it directly into the intake. I believe I may have damaged the threads on the gauge sender through the process, or possible while I was indexing the flats to clear the heater pipe ******. Antifreeze pools on the intake in the area of the two fittings. The torque on the gauge sender is only 7 ft lbs, I may have exceeded that. I ordered a new sender just in case that is the problem, but it could be either the sender or the heater pipe ******, or the hose connection seeping. The entire area is pretty well hidden under the alt.
This is during the original truck ***embly, but pretty clearly shows the heater hose pipe ****** (on the right side of the pic) and the oem temp sending unit just to the left of it on the intake. The alt sits in the aluminum bracket in front of the hose, that hole in the bracket (near the oil dipstick) is where the bottom of the alt mounts, the top mounting hole for the alt is just off the right side of the picture. The belt adjustment is done with a belt tentioner visible in front of the oil dipstick.
This picture is also during the truck's original build, it shows the alt in its mounted position. The only visible place you can see the current coolant seep is under the alt, in front of the valve cover.

 

@gene-koning , one way to deal with your seeping issue that I have had very good success with is using a bit of JB Weld on boogered threads.
Yes, it does make things more difficult if you have to remove it later. But that is "if" and "later"!
Just a suggestion.

 

That thought has crossed my mind, to tell the truth. I'm just not sure if the sender will ground through the J B Weld. I've even considered applying a bit of the old hardening Perimatex when I install the new sender. The old stuff would provide a ground, I don't know if the currently available stuff does. The temp sensor needs to ground to be accurate.

 

I'm gonna have to check my Tstat. My 300 runs cool also, I think. I have original 56 gauges which uses the weird 56 only set up. The original temp sensor is big and about 2 1/2" deep. It won't fit thru the small 300 temp sensor hole in the head. So I cobbled up a pipe fitting adapter to fit the sensor- You know, just temporary, (temporarily permanent??). Anyway the temp gauge sorta works, but I'll bet my 180 degree tstat is running cooler than th180. When it is cooler out, the choke/high idle stays on a lot. I enjoy your thread Mike!

 

Back in the mid 80s when I worked at the Chrysler dealership, towards the beginning of the EFI era, the established life span of most of the thermostats available at that time was only 2-3 years max. After wire connections and electrical grounds, the next first thing (before any other diagnostic procedure) to check for on a vehicle experiencing a running issue was the age of the thermostat. Chrysler recommended replacing every thermostat ever 2 years because the failure rate was so high. If the motor is not operating at the designed temp (at that time was 190-195), the EFI did not work efficiently. The quality of the aftermarket thermostats have not improved.

 

I would say the quality has declined...significantly. Much like a bunch of other components. This is my fourth t-stat in three years. Granted, the first two were a result of where the temp sensor was located giving a false reading. But this last one was a failure of the t-stat itself with only 9 months of use. And that one was a "top quality" piece with a premium price attached to it. On the order of 25 bucks. Most times, I don't mind spending more for quality, I just get a bit pissy (OK, VERY pissy!) when I spend quality money and don't GET quality.
Back in the day (Our day @gene-koning ) when we replaced a part, it lasted. These days, if it even fits and works right off the bat, it's a win. But for those of us who road trip, sometimes far from home, we bring replacement stuff, "just in case" because the failure rate of newer parts is so high.
40 years ago, we woulda just packed our bags and hit the road with nothing more than basic tools and maybe a fan belt in our "trouble kit." But now, even if you can find parts while out on the road, we can't be certain that if we can even find what we need, is it gonna fit and work, and will it get us home.
Appreciate all the input fellers!

 

@gene-koning , I was looking closely at your coolant temp sensor and it's proximity to the heater hose fitting. Maybe an extension ****** on the heater hose outlet would get 'er done.
Maybe an inch or inch and a half to get the hex part of that existing fitting up and out of the way of the sensor?