The ACS Type 1s look killer on a 240. I can't wait to see more about that project too!
The ACS Type 1s look killer on a 240. I can't wait to see more about that project too!
I'll start a thread!
The wheels are Type 2 actually, which I wouldn't have known without some research. The barrel lips are mounted behind the bolt flange on the centers on Type 2. Apparently Type 1 has the outer barrel in front of the center. Either way, I agree - they should look extra rad on this car. It's a staggered setup from my old E34 M5. Rears are 17x9.5 and have 255s mounted. It will be a fun challenge to get that to fit in the rear wheel arch of a 245.
This is absolutely brilliant! Could a 32V Mach 1 or perhaps a S/C Termi swap be on the horizon? Coyote even! They are damn near bolt-on for the panthers! 
PS: several pictures over the past couple pages are DOA and I am trying not to cry at work over it 
Strange, all the photos seem to show up fine regardless of which computer or device I'm using. Have you tried loading the thread at home?
We don't have any plans for an engine swap, but I would never rule out a Coyote or something similar in the future.
I can tell you that we DO have plans for boost, of the exhaust driven variety, and some other fun shenanigans under the hood.
I can confirm a number of missing images in recent posts. True from iPhone and from Firefox on a PC.
TurnerX19 said:In reply to Duder :
Volvo threads are always good.
+1 , especially Turbo V8 wagon threads.
Quick update on ye olde Viccup. Have been trading it off between 4 of us so far.
I parked next to this BMW to gently demonstrate to the owner that he is a douche.
Karl, Alex, and I took it to a local cruise night at In-N-Out here in Torrance. My daughter rode in her booster on the bench seat. Lucky Costa was there (Hot Rod Garage co-host) and checked out the truck for a while. Good feedback from him; he seemed impressed!
A few days later we took it to the Pelican Parts cars & coffee in Palos Verdes. Talked with a friend of a friend who works at ICON, who brought one of their monster 4x4 '70s Ford crew cab projects. Super nice interior, of course. Here's the Viccup next to our "Opile" Lemons car, a 1967 Opel Kadett Kiemencoupe. IOE winner!
Lastly, I got the speedometer working. Turns out the cable from Speedhut GPS box simply wasn't plugged into the speedo correctly. Now we have vehicle speed and a working odometer. The fuel and temp gauges need more work to be useful, but they are working, just very difficult to calibrate.
Wow, it's been almost three years since any action on the Viccup thread. Thankfully that isn't the case with the car-truck itself! I'll try to get us back up to speed here.
After the initial push to get the thing on the road & drivable, we definitely lost a bit of steam and didn't proactively schedule any big work days for a long time. That was a mistake, because although we all love this thing, it isn't anyone's highest priority project, let alone activity in general. It did get driven occasionally but without a fully functional bed it's not much of a truck. I would forget that it even existed until I'd go to the shop and see it there and think, "oh yeah! That thing is awesome. We should work on it." Karl ordered the sound deadening mat and carpet kit for the interior, but we never installed it. Alex rebuilt the passenger's side door with new lock and new window hardware, but we still need to do the driver's door. Sometime around a year ago the truck developed a really awful loud creaking noise from the driver's side rear - a noise which could've only been the wheel bearing. We parked it and said "no big deal - we'll get to that soon."
So because of our laissez-faire approach to getting things done, needless to say the rear wheel bearing service did not happen "soon." But it did finally happen about two weeks ago which is why I'm here now. So let's dive in.
The idea of "yeah just replace the wheel bearings" quickly turned into "we're gonna do a full rear axle rebuild on this bad boy while we're in there." It made sense because we also had a voluminously leaky pinion seal and a pinion bearing that had always been noisy off-throttle since the days when the P71 was bought by Dave Coleman and his wife Sarah. They generally beat the crap out of the car (which is great) and the mild overrun noise never got worse, but was always there. So, if we're going to replace wheel bearings, pinion seal, and pinion bearings, then we're also doing carrier bearings and setting lash & preload on the carrier & pinion. It would be rude not to. I recently did all of this same stuff on the full-floater Ford 9.75" axle in my 2016 Transit and that thing is so much beefier than this Panther 8.8"... so I wasn't fazed by the prospect.
With the Viccup up on one of our lifts we had the axle stripped pretty quickly one brisk Sunday morning in January. What we discovered was a smorgasbord of sketchiness. There was essentially zero side-to-side preload on the carrier (it was super easy to pull out after removing the bearing caps) and the ring & pinion lash was waaay too loose, at something like 0.022" (spec is 0.008" to 0.012"). The right rear wheel bearing outer race looks like it had spun in the axle housing; the left side wheel bearing was somehow visually better even though it was the noisy one that made us tear this thing down in the first place. The pinion required basically zero torque to turn, so the crush sleeve hadn't been crushed enough when it was installed. All of the pinion & carrier bearings looked less than ideal although none were terrible. There was some light scoring and heavy frosting on the raceways along with some embedded crap, but no spalling. The left side parking brake mechanism has been rubbing inside the drum area at center of the rear rotor, so we need to rebuild the parking brakes probably with all new bits on both sides. Not a big deal.
It looks like whoever installed the diff into this axle just slapped it in there without doing any of the setup stuff they were supposed to do. Allegedly this is a Marauder axle. We do know it has a Traction-Lok clutch type LSD and for sure the axle worked fine for a long time this way, but we definitely made it happier going by the book. Thankfully the R&P gears showed no damage despite the cavalier attitude of whoever set this up originally. Our gear engagement pattern looked pretty well centered on both sides so we called that good after setting up the R&P and torquing everything down. The traction-lok diff itself seems to be working well so we didn't touch it, with regards to the preload spring, clutches, etc.
According to Dave, "Actually, as I recall, I replaced the axles/bearings with chinesium, and slapped in a crappy LSD spring thingy. Never looked at carrier bearings and such. I always thought the gear noise was just how those things sounded." So I don't blame him for the excessive R&P lash and zero pinion preload, but I'm more than happy to name him as the culprit for the wheel bearing failures. 
And his crappy LSD spring thingy is still springy. All credit where credit is due.
That day we also discovered that it IS possible to get the rear wheels off of this thing (without removing the bed) after pulling the lower shock bolts and dropping the axle as far as it will go. If we roll the rear fender lips then it should be easier, but probably still necessary to remove the lower shock bolts to change a wheel. We should make a tool kit to keep in the cab in case of a flat. Although that means we probably should carry the spare somewhere too.
Alex and I took a test drive after the axle work - all was proclaimed good except for some intermittent clicking noise that turned out to be related to the parking brake mechanism. Celebratory beers were consumed. The plan was for me to start driving the truck again and to take it to Griffith Park cars & coffee the following Sunday 1/30 at 7:00am. Be there or be square!
I did stop to take a few photos that day...
Here's my summary of 8.8" axle work completed, for posterity:
My other activities before cars & coffee last Sunday involved the interior. I had this half-assed plan to use a Mexican blanket I bought in Ensenada as a seat cover, so it was time to make that loosely defined dream into a vague reality. Removing the seat from the cab for the first time was not too bad. A few bolts were missing, and I found a good thick coating of scum on the floor of course but no nasty surprises. I proceeded to thoroughly degrease and vacuum the floor to get rid of all the loose dust that would fly around inside the cab when driving, so mission accomplished there. It even smells better.
The blanket needed to become two half blankets in order to let the seat back retain its forward flipping abilities. I started by covering the seat back with the blanket and ziptie-ing it to the hog rings, and then sliced the blanket lengthwise. Unfortunately the remainder piece wasn't quite wide enough to cover the seat base… by about 12 inches or so. I'll either get another blanket or add some material to this one but it's all pretty secure for now and really spruces up the feel of the interior. $10 upgrade! The sound deadener mat kit and carpet kit are still waiting to go in, but we have some surface rust cleanup and painting to do on the floor and firewall before that can happen.
I put about 100 miles on the truck last weekend and the axle rebuild is holding up great. Our not-quite-finished parking brake situation needs a few clicks of preload on the interior handle to remove the slack in the cables, such that the mechanism inside the brake rotor doesn't rub. That will get rectified soon and we'll figure out a solution to the mechanical advantage issue mentioned in a long-ago post.
On Saturday night I figured out a good way to secure my new (to me) 10-year-old carbon 29er in the bed, and washed the Viccup for the first time in years.
The Griffith Park "Los Angeles Cars & Coffee" is pretty nuts, but in a good way. I drove the Viccup out early on Sunday morning and met our buddy Vendler (former owner of the Opile) there as he rolled up on his Aermacchi 350 cafe racer. Somehow there was NO COFFEE TRUCK this time but we did see a bunch of cool E36 M3. Including a '63 (I think) unibody rolling on bags, heavily slammed and LS swapped, and the owner was a cool dude who wanted to check out the Viccup and appreciated what we'd done. I saw a mid-60s Mercury pickup too! From there we met up with more buddies to go ride MTBs in the Brown Mountain area, the hills just behind JPL in Altadena. 'Twas a good day and the Viccup was a great gatherin' truck at both events.
This little guy next to the truck is a German Ford Taunus:
My daughter and our Corgi Wally both got to ride in the Viccup recently too, and they both seemed to genuinely enjoy it. Kids love trucks; dogs love trucks. More to come in the near future.
Heeeey, I know that truck....I'm the friend of a friend that used to work at icon. That seems like a lifetime ago ;). Glad to see the beast still being beat on and improvements happening slowly but surely
In reply to autocomman :
Hey man, good to hear from you! Yeah I guess that was pre-pandemic - it does seem like ages ago. Thanks for chiming in. I'll keep posting up our activity on this bastardized Ford!
I still love this build. If you ever think if selling it keep me in mind.
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