Rusty, the 1970 F-100

[Manny]

Wow that's dedication motor swap on the street!!!! looks really nice seems to be a good bargain on the motor. Nice intake nice swap. Hope the best for you with your progress. Also like the 65' step side.

[redstone65]

Thanks Manny. Unfortunately it’s not an aluminum intake. It has Ford casting numbers on it and light rust in spots. I haven’t looked up the numbers to see what year it’s from yet.

[hfdco4]

Well it is still a good motor. I hope the drip rail turns out OK too.

[redstone65]

Well it is still a good motor. I hope the drip rail turns out OK too.

Thanks!

Well, time has been hard to come by, but I've been sneaking some time here and there. I was able to stabilize the drip rails for the time being so I could move back to drive train issues. Here is the worst part (above passenger side):







Basically the entire rail was separated from the top roof metal. I "fixed" it with a combination of regular POR-15 and POR-15 epoxy putty.

[redstone65]

Firstly, I taped off the drip rail underneath and anywhere there was a rusted through spot. In hindsight, I would have done this much differently, but it mostly worked, so whatever.

Here is the taped off section and a shot of the drip rail after it was all wire wheeled out:








Doesn't get much worse than that. [sigh]

I took my time and went very slowly with the wire wheel so as not to remove too much material and not heat up the metal too much.

[redstone65]

For the actual filling step, I'm sorry I didn't take any pictures. Pouring in the POR-15 was tough to do. I had to chase leaks and clean it up quickly. Same with the putty. It was hot, so I didn't get much working time with it to take pics.

I'll try to describe what I did. I took masking tape and taped off the roof just above the drip rail level. Then I poured POR-15 slightly onto the masking tape and let it run down into the drip rail channel and fill the bottom. There was lots of chasing little streams as the masking tape didn't seal well at all. It was crazy annoying and stressful. The end result was fine for my needs since I was just needing a rust sealing base coat to apply the putty over, but I would definitely do this step differently next time.

The black you can see here peeking out of the top behind the putty is the POR-15. That hard-ish line is from the masking tape:



Here's more pics:




You can see that the POR-15 putty comes up very high in the channel. Too high. I went ahead and filled it all the way up so that I would have plenty of material to bind the roof to the drip rail. I squished it in the bottom of the channel, being sure it squeezed into the rotted parts to give it some grab. Once we get done with drivetrain and interior and move to the body work, I'll take a dremel and shape the channel out to look the way it's supposed to.

Of course all of this is very temporary and none of it is the "right" fix. But, it's the one I can do, so it'll have to suffice until such a day as I can afford to have someone fix it correctly. Until then it will get dremeled and painted. I don't have a garage so the truck sits outside. That means protection from the elements takes priority over being pretty.

For anyone else wanting to do something similar, I would make these suggestions:

• Use some clay instead of masking tape to seal underneath. It would stop leaks way better.
• Use POR-15 Patch instead of regular POR-15 for the sealing coat. It's thicker and much easier to work with.

I used POR-15 Patch for the drip rails on my '65 F-100 and it was a much better experience.

[redstone65]

We could move straight to the engine at this point, but the steering column really needs to be handled. The gear shift linkage arm is frozen solid and the rag joint is toast. It's going to be annoying to get it running and not be able to shift or steer.

Here she is:



And here is the rusted solid shift linkage arm:




And the rag joint. Man that's bad:



The top end looks pretty good:



And, of course, more dirt daubers:



Probably past time to change the name of this truck to dirt dauber.

[redstone65]

Time for an update. We've been working on it slowly but surely. Firstly, the steering column, which we actually finished back in November/December.

We got everything cleaned and de-rusted:



primed:



and painted (boxwood green):



greased and reassembled:



and installed:




Also, picked up a new rag joint for it:




The firewall was a mess:



so that still needs to be cleaned up and primed/painted before reinstalling the bracket and clamp.

[redstone65]

Since we really need some answers on the state of the engine and transmission it's time to move on to getting things running so we can evaluate where we're at. This was a running engine when we swapped it in, so I'm hoping it's not too bad.

First thing needed is coolant (I already did an oil change). So, I removed the water outlet:





It was nasty inside:





Thermostat was toast:



I already knew the water pump leaked, so we pulled that too and found it was pretty bad. We flushed out the block as good as we could with a lot of hose pressure until everything ran clear. Got the new pump, radiator and refurb'd water outlet installed with thermostat.





Let it sit for a few days and no leaks now.

[timachone]

Keep up the work - thanks for the pics


Tim

[redstone65]

We can't really fire up the engine on a city street with no exhaust. The neighbors wouldn't be very pleased. So getting something installed is gonna be necessary before moving on.

I ended up buying the stock exhaust setup from Summit Racing, consisting of a Y-pipe for the passenger side manifold, and a crossover pipe from the drivers side that mates to the Y-pipe right below the Y. Altogether it was about $60 shipped for the 2 pre-bent pipes.

First up, I had to remove the tranny crossmember in order to get the Y-pipe into position since there was no room to feed it in from the engine bay:







With that removed, the Y-pipe slid in to position fairly easily:



Yeesh, We'll obviously be needing some new floorpans.







Now for the driver's side pipe. I had blocked up the manifold outlets with wood to keep the critters out:



Here, we ran into the first problem. The flange on the driver's side was different than the one on the passenger side, and the center hole was too small to fit the 2.25" pipe.



I ran down to the auto parts store and tried to get a replacement but no dice. So, I just gave up and moved on to more pressing matters like cleaning and painting the transmission cross-member. That thing was really nasty:



After lots of elbow grease, a wire wheel and some cursing, it was finally clean:



And a few coats of converter, primer and topcoat later she was pretty:



I finally decided, on day two, to just modify one of the flanges from the old engine to work. They are pretty rusty but not beyond saving. I just cleaned it up and widened the holes to fit the studs on that side and got it installed:



And, everything was lining up well:



Then came the second hiccup:



The Y-pipe portion that accepts the crossover from the driver's side was not perfectly round. So, some creative crowbar and hammer work (and more cursing) was required. But, she finally mated up good:



And, clamped:



All done with that for now. I'll slap a muffler on it before firing it up (my optimisim) to quiet things down some more for the neighbors. For now, we're going to move on to wiring up the ignition. We'll be converting this to Duraspark since it's a '74 engine in a '70 truck. After that, the carburetor, and then lift off.

[redstone65]

Finally found the right adapter to attach a hard fuel line straight into the Autolite 2100 that has a 1/8 NPT thread fuel inlet. It's here if anyone needs it:

https://www.napaonline.com/en/p/WH_202X5 (Eaton/Weatherhead Part# 202X5)

My local NAPA had it in stock. It's a pain to find, so hopefully this will help someone. My fuel pump has a canister filter so I didn't want to put another inline filter at the carb inlet, which is what the 1/8 NPT inlet expects.

Next up is wiring the ignition, but I'm trying to go ahead and get all the carb/fuel parts together so we can move straight to that after wiring is done.

[redstone65]

Hiccup in the plan here. The truck got tagged by the city yesterday for being "stored on the street". So, I have 72 hours to get it moved or it'll be towed. I'm going to move it in to my backyard tonight temporarily until we get it driveable. It'll be easier to work on there anyway. Last night I got the rag joint secured to the steering box, and it turns pretty well so I think we can get it moved. I'll also get some "new" tires for it tonight since the ones on it now are so dry-rotted that it's actually scary. I'm afraid to pump them up. Not sure how they're even holding air.

[redstone65]

Went to the county this morning to get it registered and get a license plate, but they couldn't find any previous registration for the VIN in this state so someone will have to come out and do a VIN inspection before I can register it.



Oh, well.

[redstone65]

Got the VIN inspection done so should be good to go for getting her registered. Fingers crossed. It’s in my backyard temporarily until we get it registered and moving under it’s own power.

I put a couple of new tires on the front for safety last night and it turns well.

Brakes are working too. But all of that will need to be inspected before driving obviously. The lines look to be in good shape. But I’m sure the wheel cylinders are pretty rough.