68 F250 "special" Camper Special Project

[cash667]

yes, I keep moving along:

had my carb Holley 750 cleaned and rebuild:





I also removed old paint front the last engine Parts and painted them new:





And another topic this weekend was cleaning and inspecting the radiator. Did a pressure test and found 2 little holes. After soldering everything was sealed and holds up to 20PSI pressure with no leaking:




Tomorrow I´ll get my new Hedman headers and hopefully my new clutch disc to move along with engine and transmission.

Cheers
Chris

[hfdco4]

Looks good

[cash667]

got my hedman 89140 headers yesterday and did a test fit. I´m impressed they fit with no issues on my 460 in a 68 frame.



Just around the starter it´s a bit tight but will work.


just to make it sure: you´ll need to have the saginaw power steering gearbox - the bendix style gearbox won´t fit.


Since I´m planing to build my own slide in camper for that truck - here are the visualisations:




I thougt of the battery charging system for the camper battery. You can use a (expensive) highpower alternator to charge both batteries, but therefore you need heavy rectifier diodes to prevent the camper battery discharging your starter battery.
OR - I´ll try to have 2 independent charging system, more or less 2 independent 12V power systems. So the trucks charging system stays as it is and I add a second alternator to the engine. to disable the second alternator when no camper is there I plan to have a switch in the field circuit. With this switch in off position the alternator won´t produce any voltage and don´t put much load on the engine...it´s just force to turn the pulley in it´s bearings.


Lucky me has a 460 alternator bracket with the smog pump mounting hole. I put the second alternator in place where the smog pump should be.


This forces the second alternator a bit forward and it perfectly alignes with the second belt groove. This groove is normally used for the power steering pump and therefore I moved the power steering pump bracket about 1" forward to align it with the most forward groove.


I used a standard ford 65A alternator which was laying around. The biggest challenge on that is: the smog pump has a 3/8" mounting hole and so the bracket and the head aswell, but the alternator needs a 7/16" mounting bolt. I made a bushing with ID 3/8 and OD 12mm and drilles the hole in the alternator to 12mm to get the bushing in. Now it sits tight on the 3/8 bolt.
I also need something to tighten the belt and therfore I used an adjustment rod laying around (it´s something to thighten steel ropes in this picture - will be replaced by a serious adjustment rod). Works pretty good!


I´m pretty happy with this at the moment. We will see how it all end´s up in real life...

Cheers
Chris

[yellercat]

Very good work Chris, you do keep chugging along! Appreciate all of the problems solved and the documentation, well done!

[cash667]

I worked on the clutch linkage and got it aligned properly. Had to built a new mount on the transmission side. For the equalizer bar I used ball bearings:





got my new brakelines installed. Did all the bending by myself:





I`ll also do complete new wiring by myself- the first harness is installed and waiting to get plugs crimped on:


I assembeled the heads and put them on the block. Did a oil pressure test with a drill:


After oil pressure was good I mounted the intake, flywheel and bellhousing with starter. Did another test fit with the hedmans and everything keeps fitting well. I used the starter to turn the engine several times to do a compression test on all 8 cylinders.



Got readings from 152-160PSI which is actually good I think.
When the engine had run the first 100 Miles I´ll do that again and I think I will have even higher readings then.

Cheers
Chris

[390FE1972]

Making great progress!!

[cash667]

https://vimeo.com/466693436
It´s alive

started with no issues and all parameters looking good

Cheers
Chris

[lennyp]

Awesome sounds great.

[sargentrs]

Congratulations!

[cash667]

Thanks guys, I´m really happy with the engine for the moment.

But the last days I spend some tome on other topics:
I rebuild my F600 instrument panel and changed the ammeter with 2 Alt idiot lights for my dual alternator setup.



For the first time I´ll put some cheap 52mm gauges in the existing holes left, Volts and Tach. When more money is available I´ll convert these gauges to a custom set of speedhut 3-3/8 gauges:


I also relocated the emergency flasher unit into the instrument Panel:


On Thursday I got my cab and some other parts back from sandblasting and priming. The paint surface covering worked well and just the surfaces I want where blasted. Very happy with this work!



With the cab back I started to build my underdash wiring harness. Therefore I started with kind of a "map" drawn on a plate of wood. To fix the bendings and junctions I used some nails:


That done I run the wires, each at a time. Double and triple checked with the schematics, leave the ends longer at this time:



When I had all wires in I fixed the harness with some cable ties just for testing. Put it in the cab for proper fitment and marked all splices to cut them on their needed length:


And I´ll use a complete new Fusepanel with 12 standard car fuses:


After everything was marked the harness has to come back out to cut the splices and apply the connectors. Each connector is marked in reference to the wiring diagram:



Put it back in for a final check with the important devices (switches, Instrument Panel,...).





Since I need to paint my cab the harness needs to come out one more time.
Hopefully I can paint it this week, need the cab sealed first and I´ll apply some coating on the underside. The seam sealer and the coating will be overpainted.

Cheers
Chris

[hfdco4]

Wow, great progress. Props for making your own harness as well!

[cash667]

Cab is sealed, got protection coating underneeth and is painted. I mixed 2 RAL colours to hit more or less the original pebble beige outside paint tone.
It´s of course not a perfect match but since there are no direct transitions to the outside paint it´ll be ok.






I did the inner front fenders and the inner hood as well. Now waiting for the box back from sandblasting.

Cheers
Chris

[JWW]

Looking good!

[sargentrs]

Great work! Looking good and excellent work on the wiring.

[cash667]

Thanks guys!
I finished my clutch and transmission topic yesterday:


today I installed a new selfmade firewall insulation;



and with it in place I was able to final install my new wiring harness and hook it up to the fusepanel:


also installed all switches and made new labels for the add on switches to look more or less like factory:



I´m curently wainting for exhaust parts to make my own new 2.5" exhaust system...

Cheers
Chris