|
I got the diesel done just in time for everyone to be quarantined for COVID-19. Schools & daycares are closed here, along with "non-life-sustaining businesses", altho neither my job nor my wife's fall under that umbrella. So now i hang out with the little guy after work while she is working. Thankfully no one is sick, but for obvious reasons, free time, and my truck budget, are severely limited. No roll cage this year, my new goal is simply to get it back together and running, and we'll go from there. So when we left off, my next move was to put the wiring harness and dashboard back in. The donor body had a blue dash, my original dash is gray, and im going with the charcoal! So ive got 3 dashboards laying next to each other in the garage. Im reusing my original '88 harness, so now my harness has been swapped over to the charcoal dash:  Normally this would be a simple swap, and id have the dash in by now. But, why make it easy, when you can over-complicate it? So im moving the ECM. I need the space in the kick panel, so i went on a quest for a new place to put it. Staring at the blue dash, i got to thinking about this:  Thats the ABS computer, the internal amp for the Premium Sound radio option, and the door chime. I dont use any of them, which leaves some free space in the center of the dash:  So the gray dash is stripped and in rough shape, so lets go look at that one.  It would seem if you bend up one tab, the ECM will fit in the space!   So, this section of the dash frame is held in place with 4 spot welds. So, lets remove em!  So i set my homebrew sheetmetal brake up, and came up with this:    It fits in there pretty snug, but just in case, i made a tab to make sure it cant move:   That gets us caught up to speed. Im gonna bring it into work to blast and then paint, and then i can cut the old bracket off the charcoal dash, and put this one on. Im also going to add some adhesive foam in a couple places to protect the ECM case a bit. Time is limited these days, but im hoping i can still get it done this week, i guess we'll see. Upgrading to the Superduty UVCH + valve cover gaskets:  Removed the engine harness:  ..and rewiring it for the SD valve cover gaskets:  ...and all done!  With that done, all that was left was to install the harness, batteries, fender liner, and throw some fluids in it! So i got all that done today, purged the fuel lines, and got her running! ...Then i went thru the yard, and filled the bed of the truck with downed branches from the winter  So i figure ive got a good weeks worth of work of cleanup to do, but i expect to be working on the big bronco again before the end of the month! Made some progress this morning, before the weather turned sour. Exhaust manifold in, along with up-pipe, which you totally cant see, but its in there!  check these rocker arms!   Valve train installed. Down-pipe is reinstalled too.  All new orings and washers on the injectors:  I got all the injectors reinstalled, but by then it was raining pretty heavily. Hopefully tomorrow its a bit dryer out!  Head!  ...and all the torks!  Supposed to be nice and warm tomorrow too, so hopefully that rain holds out and i can get a bit more done! Went OEM on the head gasket, and the head bolts. Considered studs but theyre major $$$, i dont really need them, and they cut all my OT at work, so..... |