Finally Building The 67 F100

I was talking about a Ford Trac Lok. I assumed that was what he was referring to when he stated.

I'm sure I misread his meaning.........

 

I seem to recall an odd ford clutchless design of I recall that I think he may be referring to, that has a particularly bad reputation compared to the trak-lok. You’re correct, I’ma very big fan of the Eaton/Detroit so I’ll likely be ordering another one but I’m 28 spline of course.

 

By other I was toying with trying the Yukon unit. They’re nearly half the price of the Eaton. Still leaning Eaton though.

 

Well, yes, for most purposes the correct answer to "Should I buy a Detroit TrueTrac?" is yes.

 

Well in an odd turn one of the work mechanics offered up his freshly rebuilt 28 spline trac loked 3.50 chunk for $300. It’s an older rebuild but he said it only ran for a few thousand miles then the entire axle was shelved. The long term plan is still true trac 31 spline. But that’s going to require some time and collecting, particularly the shafts. This is an easy inexpensive plug it in now option. Just need to swap yolks and the pinion seal while I’m in it.

 

success smells like burnt fuel in the shop!

late to the party but watching closely.

 

Well progress on the f100 has been nearly halted. My shoulder, which I dislocated twice almost a decade ago is back to haunt. Leveraging that dumb Subaru transmission around hurt it. Then work of course seems to prolong the injury. I finally rested it just enough to get it feeling pretty good so now time for doing a few things done to the truck. On top of that gas has become stupid expensive and now I have to pay the Piper and rebuild about 1,300 sq/ft off deck on the house and also focus mechanical efforts on Anna’s end my jeep for rubicon in July. But I can’t stand 1 wheel drive. I also have all the bits to install the line lock. But that’ll be another day.

The ARP header bolts I’d ordered were just barely long enough. I’d retorqued the passenger side but never the drivers side for reasons I don’t understand myself. Anyway the other day I heard slight ticking on initial startup. Fearing the worse but checking the simplest, two of my header bolts were goners. And a few others were loose. It should be mentioned these header gaskets are really incredible. I ordered 1” ARP bolts and changed them all out. All’s right there again.

The shoulder finally feels good enough to tackle the center section change. I had this great plan to use the jack for removal on install. And I did for removal. What a pain. For install I found wiggling under the truck with the new center section and bending it into place much easier and strangle gratifying. All the rest went very smoothly so far. As I write this I’m waiting for the Permatex to go off so I can torque it down and put axles back together, and swap the now bald tire to the front while I figure out what to do there. I want to order another but these wheels have the wrong hub centric and the 30/9.50 tires are not for this world on this truck. Eh maybe I’ll make the rest match it

Alright enough jibber jabber. Here’s some not great pictures.

 

I use Split-Lock Header bolts for this exact reason. They don't back out once you set the locks.

https://www.summitracing.com/search/product-line/summit-racing-split-lock-bolt-kits

Well worth the money.

 

I’ll be darned, I never saw such a thing. Those are pretty neat!

 

Well she’s officially a 2wd.

Not enough warm up but here’s a quick rip to 6k rpms.

And yes, kids love Burnouts.

https://youtube.com/shorts/QTIONB6H96A?feature=share

 

That’s awesome!

 

Well almost 5 months later and not much changed. I’ve been working on other projects back to back to back. In the mean time I’ve really just been driving the f100 and trying to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up. I’ve been looking at current trends in the fast growing f100 builders world but have zero inclination to Coyote swap anything, ever. To be honest I’d do an ls swap any day before that.

There’sa fella in North Carolina I believe that hand builds 4.5” drop beams from the factory beams and although slow, they’re highly reviewed so I sent him a deposit today and should have them around Christmas They’re later and narrow to enable deeper dish wheels and factory later model disc brakes. I really wanted modern suspension like crown Vic but hate the idea of modern zero offset wheels. Maybe air bags later? Who knows. I’ll probably try and drop beams up front and rear sway bars as well along with an axle flip and c notch in the rear. I’m also leaning heavily towards the new tkx or possibly an older tko 5 speed. We have big plans for 2024 and this girls got some miles to cover so a dependable overdrive is a must. And frankly I’m finding a stall converter on my hill or coupled with an overdrive to probably not be the best idea in terms of generating heat.

Anyway, I really haven’t done much besides just drive it. A few little tweaks, raised bottom k&n style summit air cleaner to loose the stack of spacers and enable more efficient air flow, a few timing tweaks, and finally today pulled the front coils and cut 2” off to drop the front and correct the positive camber it had. Oh and a bunch of burnouts of course. She’s actually proven to be very reliable, unless you’re stuck idling without engine speed or air flow like long lines at the dump. But that’s not surprising. I put a massive steel fan on that sounded like an airplane in my old 74 cj5, that pulls tons of air but no shroud and it’s probably 3” from the radiator. Pulling my steep windy climb home in 100 degree heats not a problem though. 180 degrees is it.

Last I scored a pair of slicks from a work buddy awhile ago, then a pair of vintage slot mags at the old school drag event last weekend. Need to figure out the valve stem situation but this could be a killer look

 

Well I’m back to working on the old girl. Most of the summer has been working mostly on other projects, until that is, the 67 died coming up my hill a few weeks ago. It appears the summit brand ready to run billet distributor ignition module died. Although in a very strange way. There’s still spark but very weak, Orange. It’ll sort of fire on starting fluid. The blaster 2 coil tested good but I swapped it to the VW anyway and swapped that blaster on. Buggy still runs, not the 67. I jumped 12v from the battery. Ohm tested the ground connection for the distributor. I found some install instructions online while searching for a trouble shooting guide and found the issue. This distributor requires a ballast resistor. This is a first for me, a performance oriented distributor that doesn’t require a good 12v source. Ok drastic measures.

A few years ago I rebuilt the old msd pro billet distributor that was originally on the Cleveland while still in Anna’s Falcon. So I’m swapping that in along with the 6al box just to get it running for the rest of the week. Long term I’m thinking either an MSD ready to run (mostly for redundancy, it’s the same the wife’s 460 runs) or a dui hei. That DUI on the jeep’s 258 has been flawless for over a decade. I hate the look of an HEI on a ford engine but if it works and is simple why not.

 

She’s a runner!

Not how I thought though. The new/ old msd distributor went in fine. Much easier in fact finding tdc, marking the canister and #1 position before removing the old distributor. The msd dropped right into position and engaged the oil pump shaft, easy peasy. The 6al went smooth, although I hate the extra wires and drilling holes in my core support. Especially for a very temporary setup. Eh who knows. I may decide I like this setup and make the wiring more permanent. Regardless the spark looks great. But it still wouldn’t run.

I was still getting strong accelerator pump streams so I never even looked further than that at fuel, or the high volume Chinese fuel pump since no name brands produce one for the Cleveland. Yup. More messing around, found nothing coming from the fuel inlet tube to the carb. Luckily I still had the stock style pump. Swapped that on, fixed a leak, set the timing and I’m headed out for a quick flog right now. Wish me luck.

 

Quick update on the f100. My John’s Rods drop beams arrived a few weeks ago. Of course I procrastinated tracking down the disc brake setup until now. I drove 6 hours today but met a super nice dude and bought the disc setup along with the correct brake hose mounts and disc/ drum combination valve. The new moog blazer coil springs should arrive tomorrow. So probably in the next few weeks when my main working barn bay is free I’ll pull it in and start the suspension and brake work.

To explain she sort of got pushed aside when winter arrived. I had compression checked it to ensure the engines health and that went poorly. It wasn’t good nor consistent for a fairly fresh 9.5:1 engine. My best hole was 160. The worst was 90 psi dry, bumped to 120 wet. It still boogies and does great burnouts but the engine isn’t right. Talking to Anna I’m not sure the rings ever seated. It was built and installed a year or two before I came around but it’s smoked sporadically under heavy throttle since I can remember and always struggled with crankcase pressure. At that point I just forgot about the truck for a bit.

I’ll post pictures once I get the truck apart anyway.

 

Oops, repost.

 

Man, I love that truck.. Thanks for the video, sounds great!

 

Finally got about a dozen projects through the docket. I don’t know why I get these mental blocks but I bought fixed and sold a few subies and quads while procrastinating digging into this. I also had a quad crash a few weeks ago where I got a gnarly (should have got stitches) gash under my eye brow and a sprained wrist. The wrist is still not right but I’m learning (sort of) to work around it.

Anyway here’s some pictures.

 

I also ordered spring perches, u bolts, shock mounts and a rear weld on disc setup. So the plan is to do a spring flip and possibly a leaf removal in the rear as well as a c notch I’d already purchased from John with the beams. Lastly, I’m undecided on this last step- I know, shocker. Order the same master order master and combination valve for a disc disc setup that I know will work properly. But that’s expensive. Option B is install the stock disc drum master for a later truck, the used disc drum combination valve I already have, and an external adjustable proportioning valve.

Regardless I have the later model front soft to Hard brake line mounts and a fresh roll of 3/16” brake line. Even bought the tube straightening tool. So all the brake lines will get redone from end to end. The final step will be after assembling plumbing and bleeding the entire system, have the wife hold brake pressure while I weld the brackets on to hopefully keep the caliper centered and square while welding.

 

I'm still waiting for the Performer RPM heads for my 390 I ordered almost a year ago... My short block is probably going to be solid rust before they get here.