the neices drivabeater

Who you calling responsible?

You must be talking about my brother and dad. Im the one wanting to lower, inject, and boost this thing. ...

Annnd it's back from the dead! Gota huge update to, but we test drove it. DefiDefinitely needs tires and front end work.

Por favor, ahora mismo porque no tengo paciencia!

I only know a little spanish. It reads please something something because i don't have patience.

I think the something something translates roughly into get off yourass.

so, loooooong overdue update. with spotty pictures, because im apparently horrible at remembering to document the little things.

we have been chipping away at this on random Sundays after church/family lunch. first up, we installed the one piece rear glass. we used the rope trick, and it went in like a charm. I had never done one, but y'all made it sound easy. thank you. and thanks again for the hookup on the rear glass.

we then did a thorough once over on the whole truck. checked, cleaned, and adjusted all the brakes,. discovered that someone had recently done all the flex lines, shoes, pads, hardware, and calipers. still had the shiny on them. so we flushed the system of untold years worth of crap. truck stops pretty good now, and bree learned all about how brakes work and what maintenance needs to be done. learned enough that she did the pad change on my brother Hyundai almost completely by herself.

after that, we greased all the suspension points, u-joints, latches, cables, slides, and hinges. amazing difference right there.

then, we went on a test drive to put some gas in it. gas gauge works, and the truck ran, shifted, and drove pretty good. tires started making the telltale signs of separating, so we only did about 4 miles total. but you'd have thought she was sitting on top of the world. sooo proud of her truck.

also, from that test drive, I became convinced it was going to need a front end rebuild. thought it was completely worn out.

it wasn't. the tires were just that bad. after we scored a brand new set of Goodyear wranglers (235/75/15), truck drives completely differently. still think there's a little too much play in the steering, but dad thinks its fine. its been years and years since I've driven a manual steering vehicle for any appreciable distance.

anyway, this brings us up to this past weekend: teaching my niece to weld.

never thought id type that....

so we loaded up at my house with her new tires on her old wheels, my harbor freight $89 flux core, welding helmet, saws all, grinder, etc and headed over to dads place. we had also grabbed a couple of pieces of 22 gauge steel at tractor supply, and a pint of rustoleum. I had hoped to at least teach her enough to get the rust cut out and the new patches formed. me went a whole lot further than that.

first, she pulled the bench seat out, and learned how to test for solid metal.

then, learned how to create an easy to patch shape, and cut it out of the Swiss cheese that was her passengers side floor pan. used a cut off wheel and saws all for the first time. she did fine with the saws all, but scared of the cut off wheel.

at that point we were ready to weld. I showed her how to prep and clean the patch and existing metal, showed her the basics of tack welding, set up the machine, and handed her my spare auto darkening helmet.

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then I set her to it. had to give some hands on guidance on the first little bit till she got the basics of the motion of manipulating the weld pool, then set her loose. her welding got better and better once she described it as "coloring in a thin part of a picture with a crayon".

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since that went shockingly well, and we had plenty of working time left, we moved on to the drivers side.

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and, well, hell, we still got time left. so she cleaned up the rest of the surface rust, prepped the floor, and started painting the patches and rusty spots with rustoleum. would have used POR15, but my brother aint spending 50 bucks a quart on paint. and I don't have that much to spare....

we found out that a pint of rustoleum goes a lot farther than we thought. wound up painting the whole floor of the cab. didn't get finished pictures, though, apparently.

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now we were starting to run out of time. had about 45 minutes till family dinner, and we still had to get cleaned up. but we were on a roll.

for Christmas, I gave bree a factory rubber floor mat I picked up when we got her rear glass. she was surprised. so we pulled it out of the box, and sat it in the sun while we put away all the tools we wouldn't need to reinstall the seats.

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got it installed, and the seat back in. then threw in all the rest of the pieces.

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looks really good. need to do some seam sealing and exhaust next time, and find the following: sill plates, weather stripping, carpet padding, and spray paint that matched pretty good. ford red from tractor supply isn't it. I'm thinking international harvester red.

I am impressed with how she took to the MIG welder. And not surprised at the fear of the cut-off wheel; shows intelligence.

It probably shows my lack of inteligenegence that my cut off don't even have a guard. And I have the scars to prove it.

i badly want another one of these. finding a clean one ( by clean i mean not rusting apart)for less then 4k around here is nearly impoosible. really cool that your neice is actually helping with her own truck, she might actually respect her first vehicle!

Just came across this thread, awesome work!

On the steering, check for any rag joints, if there are any, they are probably junk at this point. Those boxes are typically adjustable too. How much play does it have?

Has play from about 10-2oclick.

Il check the rag joints, and steering preload. Hadn't thought of that. Thanks Kenny!

In reply to NOHOME:

Yeah, the beads themselves Re a little wierd looking, but the weld has good.penetration. the patch isn't going anywhere. Pretty much she's welding almost as good as me after her first day, and ive got alot mmore experience than her.

Yeah, I'd call 10-2 play a safety issue. Though my limited experience with Fords of that era tells me most of the front end and steering linkage is probably still tight if maintaining 55-60mph wasn't a white knuckle experience.

the ford trucks/bronco's of that year range all suffer from bad steering. If the steering is stock there is no rag joint, just a ujoint and no replacements as the parts are NLA and a new non ujoint column is $200ish. It could be the hydro assist control valve, if equipped, also around $350 for a reman unit.