36 Ford truck on Ranger

[MercuryMac]

Old Iron, I just learned what you already knew, taking one leaf out of a three leaf spring pack is weakening the suspension too much.
The arch in my springs is too much for the turning upside-down and re-arching you mentioned, I think, but I did give quite a bit of thought to just re-arching the leaves to the original factory curve.
It seemed easier to do nothing but whine about our disgusting highways, with their frost heaves and sunken culverts. The government saves money on making highways, [where good productivity toward society happens], so they can spend more on welfare schemes [where society rarely benefits much].

 

[MercuryMac]

One of my swap-meet finds was five really nice small diameter Ranger hubcaps. They were for a newer truck than my chassis was so I couldn't fit them on. They had three sets of spring clips in each hubcap, that snapped over three wheel nuts. Not my wheel nuts, of course! Today I went to town on a fact finding mission and finally at the Ford dealership, the partsman knew what I was talking about and got a handful of the right [mid nineties] nuts to try. They worked like a charm. Here is the back hubcap on.

 

[Old Iron]

Those caps really clean up the wheels.

 

[Dirtyrat]

Definitely looks clean!

 

[MercuryMac]

I went to A&W on Thursday night and took some pictures for you. A little shower hit soon after I arrived so some of the guys left early but I caught some pulling out.

 

[MercuryMac]

You know those little niggly things that you find wrong on the test drives, well, some of them are embarrassingly self inflicted. I addressed them today.
I tightened up the gearshift as it was starting to turn away from me and get loosy-goosy.
The two gauges have been reading too high so I went and questioned an electrical friend. After the static I took for always dealing with 12 volts instead of 120 or 240v, he finally settled down and told me that I had too much current going to the senders. I had installed some Runtz reducers on each gauge but maybe that wasn't enough reduction. So now I have power coming off of the ignition ballast resistor. I now await the test drive results.
The suspension changes that I made are working nicely. It rides very cool now.
Also my radiator homemade filler neck was leaking and is now fixed.

 

[Old Iron]

How many ohms resistance is the ballast resister?
I may have to use this setup on mine.

 

[MercuryMac]

Old Iron, Ohms resistance checking to me is like my first walk on the moon without a suit on, it won't look professional. Anyhow, my meter, set on 200?, said 3.7 across the spades sticking up on the ballast resistor. I hope that means more to you than it does to me. The Runtz reducers are hooked in series with the ballast resistor now.
I checked another ballast resistor for fun and it read 1.5 somethings.
There's still the testdrive to come.

 

[Old Iron]

What you posted is correct. Some have more resistance than others.
If for some reason the gauges read too low, you can use the 1.5 resister instead of the 3.7

 

[MercuryMac]

That makes sense Old Iron.
I just thought the Ohms would be much higher.
It was a little rainy here today so I didn't take the '36 out.
Tonight I had supper with some old friends that I don't get to see much, and they were trying to clean up a yard and really pushing me to take a 1946 Dodge five window coupe away. It might be a D20 which is smaller than most Dodges more like a Plymouth with different badges. Anyhow it has very nice lines and is in very good shape.

 

[MercuryMac]

After a 9 day nightmare getting the wheels aligned in town, [usually a 2-3 hour job], I brought the truck back and healed up for a few days. It turns out that I'm not equipped to handle that much stupid grief.
My pinion angle was not parallel to my transmission angle so at highway speed there was a high frequency fine vibration. Here's a shot of the 4 degree wedges I installed to clock the rear axle up in front.
Old Iron, my 3.7 Ohms resistor was not enough but I think 5 or 6 would probably work.

 

[Old Iron]

Sounds like you're narrowing it down.
What the heck took them 9 days? Never mind now need to rehash, stupid explained it just fine.

 

[Torchie]

Sounds like you're narrowing it down.
What the heck took them 9 days? Never mind now need to rehash, stupid explained it just fine.

Yeah really.
Craig Breedlove did the alignment on the original Spirit of America land speeed record car in his dad's garage using a plum line and a piece of chalk.
Ah, the good old days.....
Keep at it Mac.
Torchie.

 

[MercuryMac]

Old Iron, I test drove the gauges again this time with the 1.5 in series with the 3.7 ohms resistor and it's still not quite enough. I've just put another 3.7 in there in place of the 1.5 so the meter reads 7.15 ohms now, but is not tested.
Nine Day alignment: The mechanic went through the truck with a fine tooth comb and was very fussy so he wouldn't do a wheel alignment because of the many problems he found that had to be fixed first. Some of the problems were legitimate, [lower balljoint,] but some were trumped up, [radius arm bushing with possible movement]. I know how I change radius arm bushings, it takes a while and it's not pretty. It turns out that a store bought mechanic takes quite a bit longer and it's not pretty either. He ground off the factory rivets on the bellhousing crossmember and punched out the rest of the rivets, took off the crosssmember, replaced the bushings and rebolted the crossmember. He wouldn't start on the wheel alignment until the parts had been ordered in and this was all done. There are little eccentrics under the upper ball joints on a Ranger to adjust the caster and camber. Well, after he finally got at the alignment he felt he couldn't adjust the camber enough with the original eccentrics, he wanted more eccentric eccentrics, which had to be ordered in, of course. Meanwhile, somehow he broke my gearshift off, right at the floor level where I had made a male/ female threaded part with a jam nut so I could adjust or remove the handle easily. He took this and the bottom part of the gearshift out of the transmission and took it to a welder shop and they welded it solid and lathed it down [ at great cost to me, of course].
Anyhow, when I awoke from the shock of seeing the bill I became verbal and gave them a piece of my mind.

 

[jfg455]

sounds like you have a bit of good and a bit more of bad with your "mechanic". When I was working at the dealership I wouldn't do alignments if there were any worn or loose parts. Just impossible to get an acurate alignment when stuff moves. That's good. Taking it upon yourself to replace, weld and turn parts on a customer's vehicle without asking first and confiming the cost is very bad.

The truck looks awesome. You do fine work. [P

 

[MercuryMac]

Thank you jfg.
I don't begrudge the balljoint fix because it had to be done and it was partly responsible for the camber problem. The radius bushings were not moving yet but one was darkening near the metal contact, which means that it was just starting to soften up and in ten years it would be worn out. It was not affecting the caster like he said, but in ten years it would put the caster out one degree.
I am listening to his advice on some things, though. He had found a loose nut on the rear hanger spring pin and he said I was asking too much of a steering column rag-joint when I have a fairly good angle in it, so I'm putting a U-joint in there.
I think my psychological problem with this whole thing is letting a total stranger take away my pride and joy, judge it harshly, change what he wants to change, [at great cost to me], break some of my unique inventions, and almost scam me with the safety at all costs mentality. But, a couple of more weeks of healing up and I'll be O.K.

 

[Old Iron]

Wow
I can feel your frustration.

 

[zzrodder]

Experiences like yours can shake ones faith in the competence of 'mechanics'. Racking up the labour hours in the name of 'safety' with little regard for the owners wallet. May your road be smoother now on.....

 

[MercuryMac]

Thank you for your concern Old Iron and ZZ. I have always got grumpy when someone who works in a quiet, safe environment, dictates to me what safety measures he thinks I should take. I believe a person is responsible for his own safety, and overkill safety is wasteful. Anyhow, I think this mechanic was reasonably competent, but not an engineer, and not very helpful to his shop in the long run [bad publicity].
I took his advice, though and changed out the Ranger double rag joint section in my steering column, to a U-joint, slipjoint and rag-joint. The first picture is the two rag-joints. They were in good shape but one was bending too much. The second pic is the newly installed, [after shortening 2 1/2"] column segment. As we speak the new improved segment is painted and hanging up drying.

 

[MercuryMac]

I have broken one of my rules of fixing.
I fixed two things in the same system without test driving them separately.
Diagnosis is one of the skills of fixing, and you can't learn much about diagnosing if you do shotgun fixing [fixing everything related to the problem]. You probably have fixed the problem but you don't know what the actual problem was, so you still can't fix it next time it happens. I have some diagnostic skills, but want to gain more in my memory library.
Anyhow, I was disappointed in my power steering all along so I changed the rag joint out to a U-joint, and, I changed the high pressure hose to the steering box, as it looked like it had been crushed and I thought maybe the inner lining was blocking the oil flow a bit. If I've fixed the problem I won't know which fix worked.