Ray's 83 Build Thread

[Terrys87]

Great to see you got it running. Always nice to hear a first start and see what you have.

 

[MaicoDoug]

I certainly miss my 2.8L 1983. Even more now thank you Ray! WTG. Looking sweet.

Ford quick disco fuel lines; I watched Tony Angelo ("Stay Tuned" Utube channel), he loosened up a stock regulator where it was mounted using the mounting bolts, to better align the connection ports until everything was connected, then re-tightened the mounting bolts after the fuel lines were in place. It all went quick & had no problems at all. Now I know that trick!.

 

[RayInStl]

GUYS. I've been searching for an 83-87 hydraulic clutch line ever since I installed the engine. NOBODY sells them. But I found a solution. After searching through hundreds of hydraulic clutch line images on google, I found one that looked like it might work. It's for a 2012 Dodge Ram 2500. You can't buy the line by itself (because of course you can't), but I found a prefilled master/slave/line set on amazon for $56 shipped to my door. It arrived this morning and I just swapped the line over to my master and slave cylinders. It fits perfect! I haven't installed it on the truck yet, but I feel really good about it! And it's a braided stainless line, to boot! I'm this close to driving this truck!

 

[RayInStl]

I installed the clutch line and it works great! It's a bit long, so I had to do a loop and zip tie it out of the way, but IT WORKS!

 

[RayInStl]

Pulled the engine back out. While I was installing the clutch, I noticed that the pan is almost touching the cross member. I'm talking maybe a millimeter of clearance. I have another 83 engine I picked up for cheap that I'm going to swap the pan from. I'll also double check if the oil pick up is different and swap it if it is. I'm also going to swap the exhaust manifold over instead of using the newer "header" style. I forgot these early engines have holes below the exhaust ports that have something to do with emissions. The header style manifold doesn't cover these, so you have to tap them and install grub screws to seal them if you want to use it. I'm not that concerned about flow, so I'll just use the stock manifold.

 

[RayInStl]

A lot's happened since my last post. The cheap engine, like a lot of cheap engines, had issues. It did allow me to compare the cams from a stock Ranger engine to the engine from the generator. Happily they seem to have the same profile. Long story short, the engine went back in and after some time troubleshooting power steering and charging problems, I was able to take her for her first drive today. It was short, up to my parent's house and back, but she did good. I wish I'd taken a picture from my parent's place. It was a good feeling.