1993 F-150 Flare Side

[DerekTheGreat]

That's how this truck was, no blow-by in his driveway. Then we get it home, I start sorting this thing out, put it back together annnd blow-by. -But it runs better! ..My one buddy had a 318 in Ramcharger he used as a plow truck for his property. He had two breathers on it routed straight to the exhaust. I'd never seen that before, but he said the blow-by was so bad that it was sick, said it was the only way. I believe the tail pipe tips were oily even. Ran silky smooth though... Strange.

Right, going to pay attention to how it runs and check on things if/when it starts misfiring. Surprised it's gone almost 1,000 miles without drinking an entire quart, yet has this much blow-by. Given my Town Car and Firebird practically guzzle half a quart per tank of gas with no blow-by, I'm perplexed. Although the Town Car tends to abstain from it's drinking problem right after an oil change for about 1,500 miles or 3 months, whatever comes first. This truck touched no oil for about the first two tanks of gas after the oil change. Could be that shitty Restore I dumped in along with the oil change. NFC, but I probably won't bother adding that stuff again.

How often did you need to check on the plugs in that 302?

[DerekTheGreat]

Yesterday I finally adjusted the speedometer. Was reading about 6mph too fast with these short tires @ 70mph. Didn't do anything until now because I figured we'd have a set of original wheels cleaned up & tires mounted. Well, the fat short tires and wheels have grown on me.

I researched how and used these websites to come up with something:

92-96 speedometer calibration the easy way | Bronco Forum - Full Size Ford Bronco Forum (fullsizebronco.com)

Programing for tire size - Ford Truck Enthusiasts Forums (ford-trucks.com)

Reseting Recalibrating your PSOM for the Correct Speed (archive.org)

web.archive.org/web/20070324124950/http://www.arkansasmud.com/psomcalc.html

The last two links were the most helpful for me. I measured the tires from the top to bottom to account for actual rolling diameter and got ~26". I then stabbed that into calculator found on web.archive (last link) and got 10.81 as my conversion constant. Wanting a second opinion, I then used this calculation sourced from Mcleod's post (#13) on Ford-Trucks.com, "32x3.14=100.48/12=8.37 5280/8.37=631x.0135=8.52" That netted me with a conversion constant of 10.48. My cluster speedo fired up with 9.72 as it's conversion constant with 6 "tries" remaining. Cool, means no one has messed with it before. I tried 10.81, which ultimately ended up making the speedo read about 2mph slower than actual. Ok, on to 10.48. That made the speedo read about 2 mph faster than actual. Split the difference! (10.65). Stabbed 10.65 in and now the speedo reads about 0.5-1.0mph faster than you're actually going at 70mph. I can live with that. It is now actually the most accurate speedometer in our fleet behind my Town Car. Pic because I took one:

[gadget73]

I think they can only be re-calibrated a limited number of times. Fairly cool that it allows it without any special tools though.

I remember fixing one of those for someone. Cap blew up, puked its guts out and rotted some traces on the board. Had to bridge the rotten parts with wire to make it all go again.

[DerekTheGreat]

Yeah, super cool and easy to do. If no one has touched the thing before, you get six tries. I burned up three of them... Really wish you could test before you commit or that there was an unlimited amount of times you could reset the speedometer. Not sure why there's a limited amount of resets anyway, as the range is 5.00 - 11.00, so odometer fraud would be really tedious.

A side question that cropped up as a result is: Can you reset the amount of allowable tries? If we ever change wheel & tire size again, I'll probably end up locking this one out. "Get another from a junkyard!" Sure, but how would I reset the odometer to match the original?

[VicCrownVic]

If it gets locked out you could always get something like the Ford Speed Dial. I have one in my garage that I pulled from The Ice Car. Trans that I swapped into that car has the wrong number of teeth on the output shaft drive gear. Since there is no driven gear that exists to make the speedo correct for 2.73 and that drive gear I had to install the Ford Speed Dial to make it right. Fairly certain it would work for this truck too

[DerekTheGreat]

Oh, that's neat, thanks Vic. Installation instructions here:
Microsoft Word - FordInstShtM-4209ADPT-A.doc (fordracingparts.com)

Side note is that the EEC-IV computer for these trucks must link fueling with speed. After making the calibration change, there was a very slight hesitation when taking off at low throttle, that's gone now. Shift points are definitely linked to vehicle speed as well as the TPS signal, as it still shifts into OD roughly at 45 mph, although the truck is actually doing 45 now and not 40.

[gadget73]

I've never liked the solution of "just go get another out of production item from decades ago". Eventually that well goes dry.

[GM_Guy]

Theres probably only 6 memory addresses allocated for the calibration, of course ford assumes you will stick with stock sized tires and use some table to enter the correct correction factor the first time.
If you are one of those super genious microprocessor programming types you can pull the chip and write zeros to the appropriate address--maybe. Depends on the chip, some are write once end of story. If its in the processor, theres a good chance that may be the case. If its an external memory chip, might be able to get away with a new chip and dump any other date minus the correction locations into the new chip.
Something those $2000+ programmers do that also let you adjust odometer.

[DerekTheGreat]

I've never liked the solution of "just go get another out of production item from decades ago". Eventually that well goes dry.

Haha.. Yeah, you're right. I don't have a solution for that. I have thought that the cars will dry up too. Not sure what I'd do when that happens. I like driving old stuff, I have zero interest in just about everything made the last fifteen or twenty years.

Theres probably only 6 memory addresses allocated for the calibration, of course ford assumes you will stick with stock sized tires and use some table to enter the correct correction factor the first time.
If you are one of those super genious microprocessor programming types you can pull the chip and write zeros to the appropriate address--maybe. Depends on the chip, some are write once end of story. If its in the processor, theres a good chance that may be the case. If its an external memory chip, might be able to get away with a new chip and dump any other date minus the correction locations into the new chip.
Something those $2000+ programmers do that also let you adjust odometer.

Bingo, six tries exactly, provided no one else has touched it before. I killed three attempts already as I am no genius, probably closer to one or two steps ahead of a neanderthal. Didn't get it right the first two times, still didn't get it right the third, but it's close enough to live with. Really? What kind of programmer would that be and it all just plugs into the speedometer or EEC-IV test port?

[GM_Guy]

For new stuff, most is through the obd port, old stuff is usually desolder the appropriate IC, stick it in an eeprom programmer and run the included software. Basically, you are paying big bucks for the software that allows you to change things you are "not supposed to" and usually involve software you download from suspicious chinese websites.

One example of an odbII tool. This is not an endorsement for any product as I don't own any;

https://www.amazon.ca/Odometer-Adjus.../dp/B07KFM8F3Q ($1699)
cut 'n paste;
[code]https://www.obdprog.com/product/Maintenance/2704.html[/quote]

And an eeprom programmer; around $2000.
[code] https://www.x-tool.org/ [/quote]

[DerekTheGreat]

Ooh, certainly cost prohibitive in our case. $1,700 is more than we paid for the truck

[DerekTheGreat]

Updates:

Thanks to car-part.com, I was able to find a F2TF-12A650-CC, A2Z2 ECM for cheeep. Swapped it in two days ago. Differences between that ECM (5.8/E4OD) and the Z2D1 (5.0/E4OD) are subtle. I think the biggest differences are ignition timing and shift points:

-It seems to run better overall, especially part throttle cruise between 40 & 50mph, where it always seemed my foot was into the pedal more than it should be and that the engine was lugging a bit. Now it maintains speeds within that window with ease and less noise coming from the exhaust manifold leaks.

-It doesn't seem to "go" with the authority it once did, so I suspect timing is more on the conservative side given the lack of a knock sensor. Doesn't hesitate or bog, it just seems like it's down a few ponies. I could try bumping the timing up a few degrees to see what that does.

-Idles a smidge lower in gear and a smidge higher in park or neutral. The park/neutral thing needs to be investigated, I think the position switch on the trans is going bad. I have a replacement, it just means updating to a newer style and soldering wires.

-Shift points.. It now shifts a bit earlier, especially when going into OD. Shift points are now better aligned with the 5.8's torque curve. Ford was aware the 5.0 needed to "stretch" more before the next gear.

-Converter "behavior." The converter seems looser with this new ECM, which was my biggest gripe with the Z2D1 unit. If you didn't ease off the throttle in 3rd or 4th, you'd feel the converter unlock, much like the slight jerk feel you get with a stickshift if you depress the clutch just after you let off the throttle. It also fought you pretty good when stopped at a redlight. As my wife put it, "She just wants to go!" Now it's much more behaved.

-Engine braking. It was noticeable before and almost like a stickshift. Exhaust note had a burble to it as well. Now it coasts much like my other automatics do when you let off the gas, no more tuned Mustang sounds out of the exhaust either. I kind of liked that burble.

-Engine shake between 1,000 & 1,900 RPM: No change.

In conclusion, yes, you can run a 5.8 truck engine with a 5.0 truck computer. However, the 5.0 computer is best saved for the 1/4 mile or as a back-up.

Also in the works, an engine swap. Nobody wants to touch the broken studs in the exhaust manifold & water pump or the shake deal. Car-Part.com shows engines available ('94 & up!) for less than $500, so this will probably be comparable with what we'd have paid to have those issues ironed out only to still have an engine with excessive blow-by. Here's hoping the experience goes much like it did when I had the engine swapped in my '89 K1500...

[gadget73]

sounds more like the converter is unlocking now and it wasn't previously. If the converter stays locked it will decel like a manual trans, most drop out when you let off the throttle to keep it from lugging and chugging so much.

[DerekTheGreat]

Engine swap complete!

Short story: I called a myriad of local places from Car-Part, ended up going with an engine from Trenton Auto Parts for $350 and had them install it. Engine runs great, has considerably more power, no exhaust leaks or broken bolts and ZERO blow-by out of the oil filler neck.

Long story: Shops I'm familiar with didn't want to touch it. One said they didn't do engine swaps and the other (which swapped the engine in my K1500) said they just lost their lead tech- to actual death. So we began the search for another competent shop while searching for a suitable engine. Found the engine, found a "shop" but later decided to have TAP do the swap when they offered a better price and a 30 day guarantee. Yep, it'll take me no more than 30 days to blow it up if that's what it's going to do. Worth noting and funny to note (at least to me) that other shops didn't want to touch it after learning the current engine was a swap and that I didn't buy an engine from the same year as the truck. "There could be subtle differences between the years.. " OK, tell me you don't want the job without directly saying you don't want the job.

Well, TAP didn't care and didn't mind my list. Which was to reseal the "new" used engine going in and reuse the parts I already replaced. So the new used engine has a new rear main seal (maybe front too, hopefully anyway), rocker cover gaskets, oil pan gasket and upper intake gasket. Engine supposedly has 140k on it and was from a '94 F-150, so it might even be a roller. Install job looks nice, nothing looks out of place and all the covers and stuff that we spent time & money pulling from junkyards to put on our truck were retained, put back correctly with no breakage. I half expected to have to sort that stuff out again with the new engine. While walking up to the joint, I noticed the old engine stuffed in an S10:







They reused my upper intake and the rocker covers and left 'em loose on the old engine. Surprisingly, it wasn't a total sludge factory under there.

There are issues though. Before we dropped it off, the turn signals would only work if the steering wheel wasn't tilted all the way and the emergency flasher would only work if the wheel was tilted all the way up. Now we've got nothing, no brake lights either. Torque converter isn't locking either, but I suspect that's tied with the brake light being inop. From the research I did, there's a harness inside the steering column and the pins like to pull out from the harness over time. I'll be looking into that today. Is there anything else I should check? ABS light pops on too. I only saw that twice, so not sure what the deal is there or how that could be related to the engine swap.

[gadget73]

don't know these specifically but it does sound like something to or around the turn signal switch. usually the center one will still work since it bypasses the turn signal switch but the back ones will not.