No Real News to Report

[anupaum]

Last week, while I was driving back from Langley, my air cleaner came loose and slid up against the serpentine belt just below the blower pulley. It didn't fail completely, but I had to replace another belt . . . (I think I should invest in Lordco stock!)

Rather than just replacing the belt, I decided it was about time that I finally put a heater fan in the truck. Last winter was very mild around here (and it doesn't look like we're having much of a summer right now), but it's a bit of a drag to not have a working defroster. Because the intake manifold for the M90 is so big, I hadn't been able to find a fan that I could install behind it without making contact and shorting out my electrical system. The best option was a Mazda unit from a late '80s B2300. It's quite a bit smaller than the Ford unit, but I figured that something was better than nothing.

Even after installing the Mazda fan, the back of the blower STILL contacts the fan motor under engine torque. (It's pretty amazing how much the engine moves under acceleration.) I wound up cutting strips off the shredded serpentine belt and zip-tying them to the blower intake manifold, then sticking a couple of washers underneath the supercharger to raise it enough to permit reinstallation.

The heater fan works now. I also managed to fix an elusive vacuum leak, so my idle is more stable, too. Perhaps this isn't a big deal to some of you who are in the throes of an "abnormal aspiration" project, but to me, the process of fixing all of the annoying issues has given me deep respect for the Ford engineers who design our machines to begin with.

It's not easy to:

1) Make everything fit

2) Make everything work reliably

3) Have the system operate well under a wide variety of conditions

4) Last for the life of the vehicle

The fact that most of us drive with little worry about any of this is a testament to the work the engineers have done. My hat tips to them!

robert luis rabello

 

[martin]

Before they started this emission control crap you used to be able to sit on the inner fenders and work on the motor. Ah! the good old days, when a 350 was a small v8.

 

[red85]

So true, Martin. I worked on a 1952 Army Jeep the other day and there was a tonne of room under that hood.

 

[anupaum]

So true, Martin. I worked on a 1952 Army Jeep the other day and there was a tonne of room under that hood.

Well, I can remember mid-70's cars that had air pumps and a snake's nest of vacuum hoses that were bewildering to decipher. I think emissions equipment is easier to work with now.

Having written this, you two are writing to someone who grew up in Los Angeles and breathed really nasty air for my entire childhood. I don't think emissions controls are "crap." They're a necessity. The fact that I can throw a supercharger on my Ranger and STILL burn clean enough to pass an emissions test (after well over 200 000 on the odometer) is a testament to how far we've come in being responsible about performance.

My truck started out with an awful lot of room under the hood. But I've got an M90 on there that is bigger than the Ranger's cylinder head, plus all of the mounting bracketry, a Mustang throttle body, a V6 radiator, an intercooler and all the assorted tubing that went along with the project, and I can STILL shut the hood. That's pretty cool, as far as I'm concerned!