Slash's F150 Street Truck: V8 Swap Incoming

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Edelbrock exhaust gaskets, replacement intake gaskets for the set I ruined and headers/mufflers arrived. More to add to the parts bin!
 
Started doing body work on the new tailgate yesterday . Notice the stamped letters ;)

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Installed shorty fox body headers, spark plugs and the throttle body today. It's coming along. Cleaned up well. Im very anxious to get this beast in, so instead of doing the V belt conversion I want, I'm going to suck it up and stay serpentine, and have to look at all the extra ugly pulleys. But, at least it'll be in and running. I still have about $300 left to throw at it before it will be in, but most of that is fluids and other small things, like plug wires, injector o rings, etc. All in all including the cost of the engine I'm still in this for about 800 bucks.

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I really hate how big and bulky the factory serpentine brackets are on these things. But it's just so expensive to change them.

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Bolted up the engine mounts tonight, the hardware that I ordered from Bronco Graveyard fit beautifully as expected. I also made a pitstop at the junkyard today, slowly collecting things for the front clip conversion over to an 86 front end. Today I picked jp a cowl, some wiring and a piwce of grille trim; the inner fenders, core support and hood are ready to go when i can get back there. Most of the big things I need I'm going to have to go back for but I've been picking at things a little at a time.

The engine still needs a few things but for the most parts it's almost done.
 
Not much really to report on, need a new ball joint, one of the Moog ones I bought didnt hold up, but otherwise minus a few new squeaks and rattles and obvious wear on the transmission (it's starting to get soft with the shifts but still drives fine, just wear from use) all is well. So until i decide to put a trans in it, its getting a shift kit to firm it up. Here's a few pics of it and with my buddies 79.


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That 5th pic... how used to that view are you? :sly:

But seriously two trucks look so nice together. And I wish you better luck with your ball joint than I had with one on an S10 the other day. It wasn't fun.
 
Johnny1996
That 5th pic... how used to that view are you? :sly:

But seriously two trucks look so nice together. And I wish you better luck with your ball joint than I had with one on an S10 the other day. It wasn't fun.
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Pretty well used to it :lol: That truck originally had a 302/3 on the tree, but now it has a mild cammed/intake/header/carb 351M engine with a C6 trans and shift kit with a floor ratchet shifter and 3.89 gears in the rear end. Even with all that work, it's still a dog, and my straight 6 from a roll until 75-80 is neck and neck with it. Off the line my 4.10s destroy it. He was putting a 600hp 460 together for it, but he's trying to move to Florida so it's all for sale. Check back here in a few minutes, I'll have a couple short videos of it running for you.
 
So here's were things are going to begin getting interesting. I still.need to install my new diff, but some legal troubles lately have me in a bind with cash; mostly why the swap is taking so long.

I have decided that I will be running nitrous in this 351. It'll be a conservative shot to keep reliability, but it is cheap power. I am thinking somewhere around 100-125hp. So that will put me in mid 300hp range on an otherwise stock engine with some mild work. If I wanted to, I could crest the 400+ horsepower range but the stock pistons and ring gap may not hold.


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Finally had a little extra money for some new parts. I ordered clear headlight lenses with Xenon bulbs, I want to compare those bulbs with the LED ones I currently have.

I also ordered a new diff cover with a girdle and fill plug along with new hardware, diff carrier bearings along with new SVT Lightning ball joints, which I have to replace one side due to my failure to keep them greased. All I need to get the diff in now is one more bottle of Royal Purple 75w90 and a cover gasket.

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Slash
Finally had a little extra money for some new parts. I ordered clear headlight lenses with Xenon bulbs, I want to compare those bulbs with the LED ones I currently have.
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Which Xenon bulbs did you get and do you know what color temperature they are? The ones that are higher in K value are terrible at night because they are blue, the best range is between 4300K and 5000K since that's the closest to white light without the blue or yellow tint on them. Xenons are also more or less useless in the fog, rain, and snow since it scatters the light really poorly. If you're going to keep them I recommend getting amber or yellow fog lights since that seems to balance it out a bit.

The LED's will probably be better even though they are questionably legal. The ones I had in my truck said they were DOT approved but I'm not really sure and they still produced glare. They were super bright though and was really nice on back roads.

With your mechanical know how, I'd just go to a junkyard and find a wrecked car with HID lights in it and pull the projectors out of them. Then you just silicone them into your existing lights, align them, and you now have retro-fitted HIDs which will be better than pretty much anything you can do with a halogen bulb. I wish I would have done my sooner, it's so much nicer on the trail at night to have some focused, bright lights that also work on the street.
 
Joey D
Which Xenon bulbs did you get and do you know what color temperature they are? The ones that are higher in K value are terrible at night because they are blue, the best range is between 4300K and 5000K since that's the closest to white light without the blue or yellow tint on them. Xenons are also more or less useless in the fog, rain, and snow since it scatters the light really poorly. If you're going to keep them I recommend getting amber or yellow fog lights since that seems to balance it out a bit.

The LED's will probably be better even though they are questionably legal. The ones I had in my truck said they were DOT approved but I'm not really sure and they still produced glare. They were super bright though and was really nice on back roads.

With your mechanical know how, I'd just go to a junkyard and find a wrecked car with HID lights in it and pull the projectors out of them. Then you just silicone them into your existing lights, align them, and you now have retro-fitted HIDs which will be better than pretty much anything you can do with a halogen bulb. I wish I would have done my sooner, it's so much nicer on the trail at night to have some focused, bright lights that also work on the street.
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The housings didn't specify what the temp was; I'm curious myself. LEDs aren't much better in anything other than clear weather; my light bar in anything else which I use as a high beam is useless. My in housing LEDs aren't all that bright mostly because of the polarity mix up with them and the fact that the stock housings are terrible as far as clarity goes. The light bar is easily twice the output. But then again, I did buy fairly cheap LED's.

I have a friend who makes projector retrofits into stock housings. The quality is amazing and the light output is fantastic, but they are ridiculously expensive, and quite honestly I'm in no position financially to do that. That's pretty much why the motor isn't in yet.
 
So, fortunately I preplanned replacing these but one of the two leaf spring hangers finally gave way to rust. Replacing them tonight. I got away with it longer than I thought I would. These trucks are known for this.

For those who don't know where this is on the frame:


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Slash
I have a friend who makes projector retrofits into stock housings. The quality is amazing and the light output is fantastic, but they are ridiculously expensive, and quite honestly I'm in no position financially to do that. That's pretty much why the motor isn't in yet.
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Honestly, you're mechanically inclined enough to probably do it yourself. All you do is heat up the headlights (baking in the oven is common), pull the lens off, install the projector, and silicone it all back up. It just takes some measuring and some cutting.

And those leaf spring hangers looked like the ones on my truck before I replaced them a couple months back under warranty. Salt is a killer of that stuff. With your new ones I suggest coating them in Fluid Film for the winter, the stuff is magical and I'm positive has saved my frame from being eaten like all Toyota frames.
 
Joey D
Honestly, you're mechanically inclined enough to probably do it yourself. All you do is heat up the headlights (baking in the oven is common), pull the lens off, install the projector, and silicone it all back up. It just takes some measuring and some cutting.

And those leaf spring hangers looked like the ones on my truck before I replaced them a couple months back under warranty. Salt is a killer of that stuff. With your new ones I suggest coating them in Fluid Film for the winter, the stuff is magical and I'm positive has saved my frame from being eaten like all Toyota frames.
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I could probably do them, I have bene thinking of buying an old oven for that kind of stuff, and powdercoating etc.

Fluid film is fantastic. I regularly go over the frame and check things, I knew they were going so I bought the parts months back, just never got around to fixing them. I very clearly.saw rust progression in the spring after the winter months. Summer months it stopped fairly good. So I'm trying to fix what I can now. I was waiting until I pulled the bed off, but it cant wait anymore.
 

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