Cynicallous

A light, airy, effervescent, blog of grave consequence. (NOT!) Dedicated to those of us who must respond to negative stimuli by Chernobyling (entombing in concrete) our innermost thoughts.

Name:
Location: Slaughter, Louisiana, United States

A semi-gruntled corporate reliability engineer trying to make ends meet while keeping my wife happy, and myself out of the asylum.

Friday, January 07, 2011

Tinkering with the new toy

I've insured the new '97 F150 and am driving to work now to see what it needs. So far, it's pretty good.

I fixed the 4x4 by replacing a seized front axle engage solenoid and tweaked the rear drum brake adjusters with a hammer to get them to hold so the pedal wouldn't have to go to the floor to stop the truck.

Now I'm digging a little deeper.

The truck is equipped with a Ford 9.75" rear end and an E4OD transmission. I don't have any experience with the 9.75, but it looks almost as beefy as a Dana 60 so I'm pretty happy about it. It also has a factory limited slip that still works very well.

I was a little concerned about the automatic transmission but the digging I've done has led me to believe that the E4OD is basically a C6 with an added overdrive gear and a lockup torque convertor.

This weekend, I think I'm going to pick up a new set of rear drum adjuster parts as the old pieces are pretty grooved from nearly 200k miles of use. That should take care of that.

I think I will also attempt to resew the seam on the driver's seat that has torn. The leather is still in great shape, but it has lost the left front seam from years of in and out.

If I get REALLY rambunctious, I may try to change the spark plugs. Being a typically engineered Ford product, that procedure is neither easy nor straightforward and I expect that they have never been changed, or maybe only changed once.

4 Comments:

Blogger Perry Rose said...

A curved baseball needle or equiv. should do the trick. One plug per cylinder I hope.

2:57 PM  
Blogger 2Evil4U said...

Yep. I ended up using a fine curved upholstery needle. Once I got used to working with it, it went pretty smoothly.

And yes, only 8 plugs, but the coils are directly under the fuel rails on each side. Supposedly they can be changed without removing the fuel rails, but we'll see.

6:39 PM  
Anonymous John Dobson said...

I have a 98 F-150 Ext cab that I use as a daily driver, averaging about 100 miles per day. Only two wheel drive/V6, but get 18-19 mpg. With a little weight in the back, goes great in the snow. just turned 180,000 miles, and no major repairs. Best truck I've ever owned (out of 3 i've had). Good luck with yours.

7:19 PM  
Blogger 2Evil4U said...

Hi John. That's good to hear. I get hives when I think about working on this thing. There is so much stuff in the way of normal routine maintenance items on the modular motors. Luckily for me, it is a one owner truck that was owned by the most anal retentive and meticulous person ever to exist on earth. Hopefully, I've only to change the fluids, tweak a few things like the seat and the plugs and I'll get many more miles out of it.

Good to hear from you! If you're ever in Louisiana, look us up.

8:04 PM  

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