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So the pile of parts on the table is starting to get big:  The NP203/205 doubler is out:  ...and the C6 is as well:  Hopefully next week i can get the engine out, and we can find out just what went wrong! Ok so the very first thing i wanted to do after my junkyard trip, was to get my headliners installed, before i ended up wrecking them in the garage! My front headliner was pretty saggy. It was already starting to droop, and then driving around for a couple summers with the top off definitely made the situation worse:  Being an XL, this thing didnt come equipped from the factory with the liner in the hard top, nor did it have the cargo light (the light is suspended by the liner itself). All it has is this round black plug:  Luckily if you remove it, it exposes the plug for the cargo light so no wiring required to make it work, its all already there!  I dont really have any progress pics, but this is a pretty easy swap. In the rear the liner is actually held up in place by the rear window seals, so you can remove all the trim & even the top w/o the liner coming down. This also made the original removal in the junkyard a little difficult, but the install went quite easy. The finished product looks pretty good too!   I have not installed the rear cargo panels yet. If youll notice in the pic below, the arm pads from the little storage pockets are missing, so i still have to source a set of those.  I also havent swapped the glovebox door yet; i have the lock removed, but i need to drop it off at the locksmith to get rekeyed and havent done so yet. Hoping to get both of these done soon though! Went to the yard yesterday with a buddy looking for parts, and scored! Like 3/4 of the interior out of a 95ish bronco:   Both headliners, the locking glovebox door and the rear cargo panels are all going to go into my 96 bronco once i get them cleaned up (and find replacement armrests for the panels since theyre missing). Also found a 95 F-Superduty, which still had the hydroboost unit!  Got the master, hydroboost unit, one of the high pressure lines (the other was cut), the pedal assembly, the instrument cluster and the intake hoses (7.5L) for a whopping $58! So after 'finishing' the resto on my '88, (plus countless parts trucks & junkyard trips) i ended up with boxes of OEM hardware. Interior, body, frame, whatever. I cant help but save it! But it was super helpful when putting the 88 back together, so thats my excuse for keeping it! It was a bit of a mess though, so i started sorting it. This is just one of many boxes:  Bought some organizers from HF, this wasnt enough:  ...so i ended up building a frame to store them:  The finished product:  Built it so that it would just roll under the workbench for storage  So im pretty happy with how this came out. I figure next time im working on one of the trucks i can just roll this over if i need hardware. Before you ask: Yes, every bin in every organizer has hardware in it. Took me a week to sort it all! So naturally, the night after i finish building this i pop into the lab at work to find out that with the expansion theyre getting rid of all their old cabinets! Thankfully i had driven the truck in to work, because i scored big: cabinet 1:
cabinet 2, a Vidmar! Loaded with partitions & dividers:   cabinet 3:  cabinet 4:
random free sheetmetal, some of which ive already used to build a shelf for the inside of cabinet 4:
black resin countertops for cabinets 3 & 4:  Anti-fatigue mat:  the mother of all anti-fatigue mats, this one 4' x 24'!  So now the Vidmar is now under my workbench:  The other cabinets are still sitting in the center of the garage- im currently trying to figure out where im going to put them or if im using them to replace any existing cabinets, etc. Currently ive got boxes of stuff all over the place! Im kinda nuts for item & tool storage, so ive spent all week just looking at stuff & moving it back and forth from cabinet to cabinet, trying to figure out how i want to reorganize it all. Goal is to get all this sorted next week, and then its back to work on the '88! Somewhere under this mess is a t-stat  intake is now off:  reference pic for myself. Front of motor at bottom:  This one doesnt come across well in the pic, but the pushrods are pretty rusty  Exhaust manifolds are now off. This went well; there was already one broken bolt in each head, but the rest came right out  This is concerning though; on the right head, the forward bolt hole for each port is cracked  #2 plug broke off the second i touched it  ...so did the #3. And the #6. And the #7... Rolled over. The oil pickup is pretty gross  The cam is showing its age:  ...so i decided to pop the #2 main cap.  The bearings are pretty worn, and you can see some scoring  ...which corresponds to scoring in the crank journal  The flexplate is cracked all the way around too  The bores dont look too bad, but i cant truly examine them with the pistons in. The crank needs to be cleaned up and new bearings. Probably just change cam at that point. New lifters, pushrods & rockers. New flexplate. The cracks in the passenger head are concerning though, not sure about those. That kind of seals the deal for me, now thinking i would be better off just using this as a core for a reman. Not sure what im going to do now, but either way this isnt going to be a quick fix. |
