The truck did not have a rear bumper, but PO included an aftermarket tail pan that fills the space where the rear bumper would go. I decided to put it on to see what it looks like. I’m still not crazy about having the fuel tank there without protection, but I like the look. I think the solution is going to be installing a different fuel tank that fits better in this chassis.
My parts order arrived, so I was able to install the fuel regulator. I installed it on the right hand inner fender, which is competing for space with the MSD box. I am going to try to move the MSD to the left inner fender, the wires look like they will be long enough. For now, it works well enough to try.
After hooking everything up, and adjusting the pressure down to about 6 PSI, the engine started right up and ran well. Unfortunately, the fittings were weeping fuel from the regulator. I had tried teflon tape on them, but it wasn’t sealing well enough. After a few retries with the tape, I decided to use Gasoila, a thread sealer that is specifically made for use on pipe threads for gasoline and propane. This has to cure though, so it’s sitting on the workbench now.
The truck came with a bunch of parts in the bed, including two electric fan setups. Both of these appear to have come from junkyards.
One is a dual-fan setup with straight blades. This one has a fair amount of damage to the plastic shroud. It will work, but it’s a little beat-up.
The other one is a single large fan that has a shroud that is 24″ x 26″, with a fan diameter of 21″. Looking up the numbers on the fan, this is a 2020-2024 Ford Explorer piece. The connector has 3 wires on it, two very big ones, and one smaller one. After some research, this 3rd wire is a PWM signal wire. The fan was originally controlled by the engine computer, and the width of the pulses on the signal line control how fast the fan runs.
I found a controller that I bought that is supposed to allow me to connect a temperature input to it, and the signal wire
The fan is fairly large, and is actually taller than the opening in the radiator support, but the frame is below the support, and that gives some extra room to work with.
The alternator is mounted on the right side of the engine using a bracket made by ICT. When I wired the battery, I did some research on the alternator to see what I needed to wire up to get it working. This alternator had the big heavy cable from the battery, and also two smaller connections provided in a plug at the top. These are labeled “F” and “L” on the case. After doing some research, I found Dirty Dingo’s excellent writeup on alternators.
The good news is that the writeup explains everything you would want to know about alternators commonly found on LS engines. The bad news is that this two-wire interface depends on a computer managing it to set the output voltage. It defaults to 13.8 volts (limp-home mode) which will sorta work, but that’s lower than you want. It’s not an easy retrofit to a non-computer setup. I am going to try to get one of the other alternator models that are easier to retrofit. I’ll hook this up in the meantime, but eventually it will need to get replaced.
After putting some fresh gas in the tank, I hit the key and it fired up after some cranking. It ran great:
…for about 15 seconds, and then it started running rough. On restart it was running even worse. I took a quick look at the engine and noticed that fuel was running out of the sides of the carb. The fuel bowls were overflowing.
My first thought was that the needle valves connected to the bowl floats were leaking. After a little more investigation I figured out that they were being overwhelmed by the fuel pump.
I took a closer look at the fuel pump setup, and discovered that there was no regulator. The Edelbrock carb is expecting something around 6psi coming in, and this pump was putting out 15+ psi.
I ordered a regulator and some other parts from Summit, but based on the UPS tracking, the package disappeared after it arrived at one of the UPS hub sites. After a few days of no updates, I contacted Summit. They offered to refund or re-order the missing parts. I asked for a re-order, which they did immediately, and shipped it out via FedEx expedited shipping.
The grille and radiator support was removed to get room to install the new engine. All of the parts came with the truck, they just needed to be reassembled. I had put the grille and radiator support on temporarily, but this time I put all the bolts back in, and made sure everything was aligned properly. The final touch was installing the hood latch. The bumper still needs to be installed.
I found some original used stock-height springs for the front and back of the truck. They are much taller than what is currently installed. Now I have to figure out how to jack the truck up high enough to be able to install them.
The previous owner disconnected the stock tank behind the seat, and installed a fuel cell at the rear of the frame, where the spare tire was originally. This is a generic tank, probably 15 gallons, with tabs on the lower corners to mount it. There is all-thread holding the tank up to the frame crossmembers. This was done before the PO purchased a bed for the truck, so everything was added and plumbed before the bed was put on the truck. This created a problem because there was no access to the fill cap with the bed installed on the truck.
I cut a hole in the bed (which is horribly rusty, so it was no big deal to have a hole there) to find that the crossmember for the bed was blocking access to the fill cap. Luckily (?) the bed is resting on the nuts holding the fill assembly on the tank, which gave it just barely enough room for the cap to be removed. This has to be fixed at some point, but I can work with it this way for now.
I drained the old fuel in the tank, which had a bunch of jelly and water in it. I also flushed out the fuel line from the tank to the carburetor
The plugs that were installed originally were NGK BR7EF. Shopping online showed it was cheaper for me to get a set of 10 (for a Jaguar?) than a set of 8. I re-gapped the plugs to .040 and installed them.
Before I tried to start the engine, there are a few things I wanted to check. I pulled all the spark plugs out, they looked dark and a little oily, but not terrible.
While the plugs were out, I turned the crank pulley by hand to verify that everything turned freely. The oil on the dipstick looked good enough, with no signs of water. Then I finished the heavy wiring to the starter, and cranked the engine over to make sure everything sounded OK. That went well.
I also hooked an ohmmeter up to the oil pressure sender to make sure there was decent pressure.
