36 Ford truck on Ranger

[MercuryMac]

Hi guys. More test results. I went about 15 miles to the nearest town to get gas and on the way back the truck quit on me. I naively thought I would make the run without incident so left my tools at home. Dumb,Dumb,Dumb. I popped open the distributer and the points looked white and fuzzy, not good. I had my jackknife so I scraped and scraped the points and it started up and drove home. When in town the next day I was surprized at finding two sets of points, so I bought them both, and then took the burnt points to a professional for his opinion. He said 'you are running twelve volts through these aren't you'. I came home, installed the new points and unplugged the wire that jumped across my resistor and plugged it in right, and 'voila' it started up and ran nicely, so I went to A&W and showed off.

 

[Dvapteam]

Nothing better then a cool old American steel and a cool Roootbeer float....I just read threw this thread...you have a new fan...great build you have.

 

[MercuryMac]

Thanks Dvap. It feels good to have a fan, possibly a professional in our profession. This is the first vehicle that I've done much body work on, so I'm becoming a more rounded builder. It does feels good.

 

[MercuryMac]

Hi guys. tonight I crawled underneath and did a hillbilly experiment, but did not test drive the change as it is muddy as heck here. Remember when I said my clutch seemed to not quite disengage properly, well I lumped that clue together with another one. This transmission has that old Ford truck whine to it whether I'm pulling or slacking off. I don't remember a whine in it when the transmission was in my daughter's Mustang. I began to think that my homemade transmission adapter was too thin and my measuring was faulty, so the input shaft is jammed up into the pilot hole in the flywheel so hard that the clutch shaft bearing has side thrust on it, causing a whine, and the flywheel is turning the input shaft just with friction. Anyhow, I shimmed the transmission back about 30 thousands of an inch. We'll see on the next test drive.

 

[I-R-POPS]

Sweet ride! It's the little things that will drive you nuts isn't it?
Enjoy your efforts and keep cruisin .

 

[Bamamav]

That truck has turned out great! One of my favorites here at RRR! [cl

 

[MercuryMac]

Thank You Pops and Bama, of course, you know that I'm already bustin' my buttons with pride on this dang truck and you guys are just feeding my ego even more.
I took her out for another test drive tonight and the clutch and whine are a wee bit better but not cured. I think I will have to live with an old Ford truck sounding like an old Ford truck.

 

[MercuryMac]

Hi guys. I took my truck to a local shop that I've dealt with a bit for many years, to get my 'out of province' mechanical inspection done. It passed. So while I was on a roll I went to the local registry office [different town than the first few weeks of license getting] and asked about getting plates. When the lady said 'Oh, it was last registered out of province', I immediately told her the truth. It was not registered anywhere for seventy years and I did not steal this truck out of a different province. She gave me the governmental look that said don't be lying to me. It finally clicked on me to shut-up and let them think whatever they wanted to think, just give me the plates. So I shut-up and smiled as sincere a smile as I could fake, -----and she gave me my plates. I learned a valuable lesson, late in life.

 

[MercuryMac]

I forgot the important picture in the last post.

 

[MercuryMac]

I was so proud of getting the license plates, finally, that I didn't even focus on them for the picture in the last post. Here's a better pic with the plate clearly shown.

 

[GJunktionMike]

Very cool [cl[cl

 

[I-R-POPS]

And it's legal too! Can't beat that. Congrats.
Ride on!

 

[MercuryMac]

Hi GJM and POPS. Thank you for the good wishes. I am pretty proud of this truck, even though there are a few little changes to be made.

 

[MercuryMac]

As promised, I screwed up a few things, but now I'm fixing and learning. My homemade idiot lights weren't working right so I started unwiring and trying to figure out the problem. My idiot lights are made from little glass cylinders about 1/4" OD and an inch and a quarter long. I glued an LED light in the bottom of each one and painted the back half pewter to match the gauge faces. These lights now mimic the stock '36 temperature gauge. They looked good and suited the dash; they just didn't work right. They flashed when I turned the key off. Well, it turns out that you have to wire an LED [light emitting Diode] one way. Diodes are one way electrical valves. I had wired the LED backwards thinking it would be just like a small light bulb. There's no way to tell which wire goes where in the plastic base of the LED, so I guessed; ---Wrong both times. Here they are lit up correctly. [pic 1]
Then I tackled the temperature gauge, which read backwards. I had given this problem quite a lot of thought and realized that my experiment with a 12 volt gauge and a 6 volt sender was the mistake. 12 volt systems are negative ground and 6 volts are positive. While I pulled out the old sender and replaced it, I had the shop vacuum running in the rad filler neck so I didn't loose any water at all. [pic 2]

 

[Dirtyrat]

Yup, the diode is a one way indeed! Those do look nice in the dash!

 

[I-R-POPS]

Good idea with the shop vac. I would have a mess to clean up.
Looks great!

 

[MercuryMac]

Thank you guys on the homemade glass tube idiot lights.
The 6 volt sender for the temperature gauge had worked pretty good except up-side-down, so I thought the answer would be to put a 12 volt sender out of a Ranger PU into the head. It didn't look right with its big plastic plugin and, it had two wires coming out of it. Try as I might I could not find the combination of wiring to make that new mated sender work with its gauge. I ended up putting an old sender out of a 390 into it. By then the water was cold in the block so I couldn't test the gauge. I went on to fix up some 'have to' stuff on the old Kenworth.
Keep on tinkering.

 

[MercuryMac]

I have now test driven the sender from the 390. It has a different ohms resistance than the gauge so it reads too high.
My test drive was to the A&W and its MS fund raiser car show. My nephew Bart helped me out by driving the '55 Merc in and I got to take the '36.
Pic 1 is me backing into place. Already there is interest in the truck you see.
Pic 2 We were the last to leave, I think I BS too much.
Pic 3 a shot of me in case I get famous. Whoa, wrong picture, and I don't know how to delete it.
Pic 4 I finally left. If you think that we northerners brag about our long days, well not so much way down in August. This is probably about 10 o'clock.

 

[MercuryMac]

Hi Guys. I went to town and complained about my two wire temp sender at Napa. This partsman looked up my history and found the sender that I had bought and said you got the one that sends information to the computer; here's one that sends to the gauge. Whoa, cool, I can blame someone else. It looks better than the big plastic one but I have not tested it as I have another problem now to overcome. My throw-out bearing seized up while I was out on a Sunday drive with the Mrs.

 

[Snake Farm]

Looking good Mac! Glad to see ya make it to a show with the truck.......get that throw out fixed soon though cause those Sunday drives with the Mrs. it where it's really at.