Home Forums Gear Hunting Trucks and Four-Wheel Drives po-boy's highboy.

Maybe you guys should have warned this newbie about the cost of reliving our old glory days, this is gonna cut into the gun money, I can see now.

P.S. that means I been shopping parts on your recommended sites.

My carb/intake set up is Edelbrock aluminum 4bbl. I'd be surprised if the cam isn't stock. Supposedly it was rebuilt 12 years ago, and it could be, it runs like a top now that the ignitions issue was sorted out. (distributer)

"some assembly required"



And I'm waiting for summit to send me a replacement for one of those turbo muffler that has a floppy slappy baffle in it.

Which I will have to cur out since I welded everything tight.

My oldest boy got his drivers training permit today. I picked him up from the farm he's working on this summer and this is a picture of him driving home in the highboy.

Mirrors what I did to my 'M', clear back in 1984 when my truck was only 6 years young. Weiand and Holly (replaced with an Edelbrock when they entered the carb market). Isky ground my cam to my specs- I've always had luck with Ed's stuff on my marine engines, and installed straight up makes all the difference. My heads were done locally by an old salt that ran a speed shop for 50 years doing mostly top fuel stuff, but he was heavily into Cleveland motors and did wonders on my M heads.

I too went Hooker, including the Comp headers. My second system has now run its course, and if I'm going to keep the truck I'll spend the money on fender-well exit headers and pipes that run outside the frame straight to the rear end. The problem with the Hooker setup, at least on an F150 4x4 dentside, is the pipes converge right under the trans pan, greatly elevating the fluid temp. My systems were header to tailpipe and no mods were necessary, the fit was flawless and bolt in, but I never liked the routing. There is a noticeable difference in power with their system, or any headers for that matter.

I really like that truck Dave. I have no doubt it will be a beauty when you're done. The wheels/tires have already made a huge difference! Great picture with the young man at the wheel!
If my back ever gets better from these spine surgeries I went through last month, I hope to get mine back to nice condition again. If not, I may have to pay someone to do it, and finding someone to do that kind of work correctly is a real crap shoot. Right now, that 34 year old truck sits next to the 43 year old GTO in the corner of the new shop, under cover, just waiting for some TLC.
Keep up the pics and descriptions of your work. I really enjoy your threads.
Jim

Thanks Jim, your old M sounds like a good power maker.

Lookin' good, Dave. That's a pretty sharp looking rig.

One question, you you guys know of a website where I might be able to find older trucks for sale? I have a hankerin' for a mid-to-late '70 Ford Crew Cab for a project like Higbeans...

Check this out.

http://www.oldfordcrewcabs.com/market/

Cool, just what I was looking for.

Jim as we've discussed, I like your set up a lot.

I have a few unplanned maintenance issuse to clean up on the truck now, so I'm scratching the headers I was going to get. The exhaust will be true duals into, probably turbos.

I have to drain all the fluids in the diff's,and might as well do the transfer case and tranny as well. Also going to change the wheel bearings, and since I'm going down that far I'm going to replace the factory hubs with an aftermarket set. I'm not sure on which set but have always liked the Warn manual locking hubs.

Why did you have to go and do that?

These pick-up are a disease I tell ya.

I really wish I had the scratch to go through my engine again- it has been about 25 years after all. It probably doesn't have 5000 miles on it total, but even though it was pickled, 12 years of inactivity certainly wasn't all that kind to it.

You guys are lucky enough to have the country's best 'M' guy right in your own state. I'm sure he's not cheap, and he couldn't get any farther from Dave if he tried, but if I had the funds, I sure would love to just send him my engine, let him go nuts, and see what happens after the bolt-in.

http://www.tmeyerinc.com/

The other option if I keep this thing is to look at converting to a later-model fuel injected pickup combo that would get better than 7 mpg I'm getting now. I would need to convert the trans and transfer case as well, as my present New Process case and C6 trans takes (I've been told anyway) at least 45-50 horsepower just to spin it. Maybe I should just find a 4-speed stick out of an old dentside and convert it; I'm the only one driving it (and should be) anyway. The wife with any manual trans is about as safe as handing a locked and loaded Thompson to an orangutan.

Man, I think the factory hubs are the ones to have. Yeah, the expensive Warns look cool, but the Spicer stuff can take just as much abuse and are cheap (and plentiful)at the pick and pull yards. I went to the junkyard and grabbed a set of slugs for a back up. I keep them with my back up U joints.

The guy I purchased the truck from mentioned there might be something wrong in the front axle "something with the 4 wheel drive"

Anyways, yeah, I pulled the front cover and the spider gears were busted.

I had a set laying around the shop that where really good so we tackled that chore this morning, pulling the wheels, brakes, lockouts, hubs, spindles, pulling axles out, yanking the front diff case out... pull the ring gear, drive the pin out, replace gears, stick it all back together in reverse order.

It all went well enough, I discovered I will need new brake pads very soon and my lockouts flat out rock, them sumbishes is heavy duty. Superwinch brand I think.

I was impressed anyways.

Now we're heading out to the cabin where we will probably find some mud so we might need that 4 wheel drive.

See if you can make it through the swamp.

Well, with my new dual exhaust on, the truck ran a little better, but it still didn't smooth out like it should have, and the RH tailpipe... sounds like chit.

So I tested compression, dry and wet.

Warmed the engine a bit then ran dry cylinder tests, then wet the pistons a bit with a little squirt of oil in each cylinder and ran "wet" compression test.

here's what I got.

Cylinder / Dry psi / Wet psi


one / 137 / 146

two / 137 / 145

three / 117 / 120

four / 147 / 152



five / 142 / 149

six / 148 / 149

seven / 150 / 150

eight / 140 / 140




1 through 4 is my right bank, 5 through 8 is my left bank.

Right side is definately my weak side and cylinder 3 looks like it has a valve issue.

I have a spare set of 351M heads on a "spare engine" from a 79 bronco.

I figured I'd go through one of those heads and strap it down on the RH side of my 77F250 engine.

So, last night's project:

cleaned and lapped valves/seats, measured my springs, cleaned all my gasket surfaces.

Look at this nasty intake valve! The stem seal was shot, drinking oil down the guide. Ick.



unlapped seats.



Lapped seats



Nasty valve on the left, cleaned/lapped on the right



Lapping tool on an intake valve.



They all look like this now, ready to rock.



I measured my free height on my springs, my exhaust springs look to be .037", .030", .024" and .045" short.

I'd shim them if new springs from rock auto weren't so damn cheap. $1.78 each

So, I'll order some gaskets, some springs and stem seals and I think I'm going to go through my other spare head and swap them both out as long as I'm doing this.

Looks good Dave, Just did that to my 72 blazer with a 67 high nickle block runs good now.. Hope that brings her up to snuff and don't have to get into the rings..

Compression wasn't too bad dry, and my psi increase with oiled rings averaged to 4psi in an actual range from zero to 9psi...

I had that one limp hole and i'm sure it is an exhaust valve...

With any luck I'll see that 117 psi hole come up into the mid 140's with the fresh heads on.

I think for what I'm gonna use the truck for I'll buy at least a year's worth of driving/play time before i feel I need/want to freshen the whole thing up.

(hoping anyways)

I don't really want to pull the slugs out of this thing until I can afford an aftermarket set of pistons that will help me get closer to 9:1.

baby steps...

I need traction devices (lim slip in front, locker in the back)

So if I can make it run nice and clean with a few pennies and some elbow grease i'm fine with stock horse power for now.

Lincoln locker

I hear you I am going to but the bronco together with the motor as is right now and freshen it up next spring. I am hoping to get some lockers before hunting season too.