It has the 2.8 liter carburated v6. It looks like an oil explosion happened under the hood. Everything is caked in a concrete like mixture of oil and red dirt.
The battery in it was very small, and not the right type for the truck. First thing I did was buy a proper battery and built new cables out of some nice 2 gauge wire. Old wires on the left, new and improved wires on the right in the pic.
I took it to have emission testing done and it failed miserably. All levels were way too high. The catalyctic converter was completely blown out. I bought a new one from Eastern off Rock Auto and replaced it. I took the fact that there was a stick holding parts of the carb together as a sign it needed to be rebuilt as well.
It was in really bad shape. Took me 3 days of free time to clean it up and rebuild it.
I really had no idea how to set anything on the feedback carb other than the idle air screws and I still don't yet. It ran well though when it was all together. I took it in for emissions testing again. It passed everything this time except hydrocarbons. First test showed 2000ppm, after the new cat and carb rebuild it was 900ppm, better but not good enough.
I bought a code reader and found that it had a long list of trouble codes. While sorting through those issues I found things that had been badly rigged up, bare wires exposed all over the wire harness, and broken/plugged vacuum lines. At this point I didn't feel comfortable just getting it to pass emissions. I had already started to take some things apart, so might as well do a full overhaul.
I picked up some supplies and began cleaning and rebuilding the engine wiring harness and vacuum harness. There were tons of exposed wires and broken vacuum lines. Everything was covered in thick oil sludge. I spent several days bringing these parts back to like new condition. I opted to replace all of the wire loom because cleaning it would have been ridiculous. In the condition it was all in, it's surprising the truck ran at all.
A definite source of vacuum leak was the old brake booster. I could hear it hissing inside the cabin while driving before I started the overhaul.
I got a Cardone reman off of RockAuto for a good price. It was pretty easy to install with no need to bleed the brakes. It did start rusting through the silver paint quick
Cleaning has been by far the most time cosuming job.
When it's all done, and the whole engine bay shines like new, it will all be worth it.
Engine tear down begins. I bought a full gasket kit with new valve seals and everything. Once I get it down to just the block, it's coming out and going on the stand.
I'm not sure of the full paint scheme yet, but I knew I wanted the valve covers Ford Blue. Also my daughter who we found out was coming just one month after my dad passed. He never even got to know he was a grandpa.
Wire wheeled the heck out of the vacuum resiviour to get all of the rust off and painted. Like new.
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(mine still had minty fresh black paint after I washed the crud off)
