1987 Ford F-250

Well, all good things must come to an end and so with that in mind I announce that my Ford pickup and I have parted company.

I gave it up as I got it. No money changed hands. It was a bit more rusty and had some issues, but the guy who wanted it fixed them all before driving out of its parking spot.

I just couldn't justify keeping as I think I used it twice all last year. It was too big for what I need a truck for, it was a manual and my better half doesn't like driving a stick and it was just too much of a pain to get it running every time I needed it.

It makes me happy that its getting another go at being a work truck. So with that, I say a grateful goodbye to my big blue truck.

Thanks, Paul. You rock.

People now stop me in the street and say, "Wow, that's one damn big pickummup truck, yup."

Yes, it is one damn big truck.

My BIIIIG truck.

I got it for the usual price from my friend Paul because he needed to get rid of it. Apart from some small lack of tread on the tires, there's really not much wrong with it. This is a good thing.

Naturally, there are the usual wants and needs. I want to clean it up some. I want to put the old Mazda's stereo in it. I need to get a couple of tires for it and get it a front-end alignment. Really that's about it.

I really enjoy having a straight six around again. Back in the mid 1980s, when everyone had a Maverick or a Duster or a Comet or a Volare, we didn't realize just how smooth these motors were. I, for one, was much more concerned with V8 power and I couldn't have cared less about the smoothness of an inline six. I must say that I have had quite a few vehicles, and I can tell you that a smooth running six can't be felt from the driver's seat. This truck is big and massive, but I can't tell if the motor's running at idle if I'm not looking at the shifter. Smooth.

I guess I really didn't notice how harsh fours were until I had a chance to test drive a Toyota Cressida about a year ago. It was an older car, but it had leather everything and quite a bit of pop. I found out that the motor this Cressida had in it was the very same as the one in the Supra, minus a couple of turbo units. Impressive punch that Cressida had. But what really struck me about this vehicle was how quiet and smoothly it ran. Straight six.

So now here I am, pushing a another six through the streets of Minneapolis. Sure, the 300cid, or 5L six in the truck is twice the size of the one in the Cressida, but it's only marginally bigger than the ones in the various Comets, Falcons and Mavericks I owned in the past.

9/7/01

So I'm driving home after a long day at work. I had taken time off during lunch for running errands and I was truly happy to be driving up my street. I crest the hill about 100' from the house and the truck dies. It just flat-out quits. I'm rather taken aback as this truck just hasn't had any problems, but I'm about due for something to happen, I guess.

I coast to a parking spot along the curb in front of the house and shut it off. I try restarting, and it seems to want to catch, but nothing seems to keep it running. Nuts.

I pop the hood while trying to remember when the last time I gassed up was. It was a loooong time ago. The gas gauges aren't exactly accurate, and both tanks read "something" so I didn't expect I was out of gas, but you never know. I opened the hood and looked around. Nothing obvious, but that's always the case, isn't it? I decided to eliminate out of gas as a possibility, so I went and got my gas cans and ventured off to the gas station to fill'em up.

Upon my return, I stuck the better part of both cans into the front tank (the one with the least accurate gauge), switched the feed switch to "front," and then tried to start it. No luck, Chuck.

Fuel pump, then? Well, it's easy enough to check. I unscrewed the clamps on the injector air-intake tubes, removed them and splashed a big helping of gas into the injector block. The truck cranked up and started just like that. Gunning the engine just starved it and it ceased running just about instantly. Being that the truck started and ran perfectly for about 5 seconds, this proved to me that it was starving for gas. It was a fuel pump problem, sure as hell. Nuts.

As I was getting ready to close the hood, I noticed a switch plug behind the airbox. I also noticed a wire hanging out if it that looked like it should have been in the block. I brushed the loose wire against the truck's body and it threw sparks everywhere. That was fun as the whole engine bay was covered in gas from my injector test. Yikes!

Well, nothing happened, but it looked to me that a hot wire loose from a block seemed to be too much of a coincidence to be ignored. Light was failing due to the onset of night, so it would have to wait until tomorrow.

The next morning, it was just a matter of fitting a new spade connector to the wire and sticking it into the block. The truck started right up. How nice.

1/14/00

I went out to start the truck the other morning and it was a no-go. I was an idiot and flooded it out really well. Sometimes I just can't let well enough alone and let fuel injection do what it's supposed to do. I put the pedal to the floor when it first caught and flooded it right out. Then, just to be stubborn, it just didn't start. No amount of cranking did anything. Hmm...

I left it to this weekend to take care of it. This was easy as my wife was out of town--I just used her car. I had some time Saturday and popped the hood. Then I went back into the house to get a step stool so I could work on the driver's side of the truck. It was a bit high, you see, and I couldn't reach the distributor. This was the problem. It's been very warm here lately and all the snow is melting, our skin is unchapping and ice is forming all over everything. I've noticed that Fords generally don't like moist conditions much, so when it didn't start on a wet morning, I assumed that it was the distributor.

Bingo!

It seems that someone else had the same problem with this truck as I had with my old Tempo. An aftermarket distributor cap with screws made out of cheese had been installed. A couple of years later when it came time to replace the cap, somebody broke one of the screws off in the distributor housing because the cheesy screws had anodized themselves to the housing.

SNAP!

I had done both screws like this in the Tempo and someone had already done one in the truck. I just so happened to do the other one in the truck so I had to break out the drill and the bits and drill the bastard-cheese screws out. I then bought another cap and rotor (the old ones looked pretty bad), installed it, and fastened the cap to the distributor housing with two machine screws and their corresponding nuts.

Problem solved. The truck pretty much started right up.