Ownership Verified: 1995 Ford F350 XLT - Powerstroke Diesel

bone said:
how, why are those better?
i don't see the advantage... in normal driving, i guess there isn't much difference? but the system i posted always has the right amount of brake pressure applied without any manual adjustment (don't want to overbreak a trailer), and the main advantage is when going downhill. you can just put the car in 2nd or 3rd, and let it roll. the trailer will press against the tongue and brake itself just enough to keep the same speed as the car. with the electric system the trailer will just speed up the car? and you'll constantly have to press the brakes
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Except it actually doesn't, and there's no easy way to adjust it. The electric controllers are easily adjustable for load, the hydraulic ones are not. Also, you have the problem of getting the thing to work in reverse. There's a reverse lockout available for the hydraulics, but that's not exactly a great solution - especially if you're on a ramp or incline. In addition, getting it to work with a fail-safe system that applies the brakes if the trailer disconnects from the tow vehicle is problematic at best whereas it's easy on an electric system. Electrics are also far more reliable.
 
The slow because of slow car idea for caravanners does not hold water. Even though here I've seen my fair share of Golfs and Peugeot 308s towing caravans, most old people use a massive diesel LandCrusier or similar. Even when they have a twin turbo V8 diesel at their disposal, they still choose to create massive tailbacks just for the fun of it. So it's not just because their cars are underpowered, usually the drivers are ancient.

Also, my dad's Commodore has an electric brake controller under the dash. He insisted on having it installed to tow a 1000kg caravan. Overkill maybe, but the adjustability was still useful. Pointless now of course that he doesn't have a caravan anymore.
 
Spectre said:
Except it actually doesn't, and there's no easy way to adjust it. The electric controllers are easily adjustable for load, the hydraulic ones are not. Also, you have the problem of getting the thing to work in reverse. There's a reverse lockout available for the hydraulics, but that's not exactly a great solution - especially if you're on a ramp or incline. In addition, getting it to work with a fail-safe system that applies the brakes if the trailer disconnects from the tow vehicle is problematic at best whereas it's easy on an electric system. Electrics are also far more reliable.
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I'm going to agree. Any trailer I've ever pulled with hydraulic surge brakes the brakes felt under powered and was impossible to back up without the brakes locking (even with the lock out engaged). With electric brakes it so much easier to reach down, turn the dial and get a bit more braking. Especially if you go from an empty trailer to a trailer with a 5,000 lb truck.
 
bone said:
how, why are those better?
i don't see the advantage... in normal driving, i guess there isn't much difference? but the system i posted always has the right amount of brake pressure applied without any manual adjustment (don't want to overbreak a trailer), and the main advantage is when going downhill. you can just put the car in 2nd or 3rd, and let it roll. the trailer will press against the tongue and brake itself just enough to keep the same speed as the car. with the electric system the trailer will just speed up the car? and you'll constantly have to press the brakes
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If you are reversing down a hill you have no trailer brakes. Same goes for it you are driving forward up a hill. Although slightly less important. Also, some trailer brake systems allow you to modulate the braking without touching the tow vehicles brakes.

Edit: Didn't realize this had been answered, didn't notice the third page.
 
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bone said:
a what? does it have a pneumatic/hydraulic brakesystem for trailers??? never heard about a trailer brake controller in the car itself. here trailers tend to have a braking mechanism in the trailer tongue (black rubber is a master cylinder)

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That's not hydraulic, it's mechanical and cable operated. So it isn't a 'master cylinder'.

And that security cable is designed to pull the handbrake and then break off, in case anyone wondered.
 
Perc said:
That's not hydraulic, it's mechanical and cable operated. So it isn't a 'master cylinder'.

And that security cable is designed to pull the handbrake and then break off, in case anyone wondered.
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So it's even more ghetto and useless than previously thought.
 
RockAuto sent me the wrong window motor, so I had to abandon replacing that. Since there was a limited amount of daylight left, I decided to go ahead and install the replacement steering column - courtesy of a junked Mercury Grand Marquis. Had to pick the lock to get it out of the column (so I could install mine.)

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Yeah, the guy who told the Ford truck forums it was a direct bolt in except for having to swap one bracket lied. Ended up taking more than three hours to get it all dealt with - had to swap over the gearshift lever, turn signal stalk (though that was just to have matching levers), reroute and swap over almost all the wiring and swap all of the brackets on the bottom of the column.

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Oh well, it's in now and it mostly works; I have to make an adapter harness so the horn buttons and cruise control buttons will work again, the rest functions as designed. One bolt went missing, have to get that in the morning.

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I got the truck with no working windows, so that had to be fixed. Especially since the rear two windows kept lowering themselves as you drove, necessitating tape to hold them up. And rain was and is in the forecast.

Replaced the rear two window motors and discovered that both doors had electrical issues, so I jumpered the motors to a battery and rolled them up in turn. No more dropping windows.

Removed and rebuilt the faulty gearbox of the front driver's door motor - that one was back in action and working perfectly right away. Only one left is passenger front, and I'll get to that tomorrow. Picking up some Polk speakers after finding out what was in the doors last night:

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As for the motor replacement, it literally isn't possible to accomplish with it in-situ unless you do one of two things - grind down a bunch of rivets on the door and dismount the entire regulator to get access to the motor or (and this is also a factory approved technique) drill some .5" holes in the door to get access to the bolts holding the motor on. On the front doors, they thoughtfully marked the drill points with dimples, but not so on the rears. Big PITA - guys, would it really have been that much harder to just punch the holes in the door in the first place? Access holes are smallish and sharp pointy things are common in them too - overall one of the worse door designs I've worked on it a while. Took me quite a while to get those three doors done. Don't drop a screw in the door either or you'll play hell getting it back.

Edit: Forgot to mention - the window motors appeared to be the originals and never previously replaced or rebuilt.
 
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Die Clarion speakers! Die!

Die Clarion speakers! Die!

Never been a huge fan of Clarion aftermarket speakers; Clarion makes (or made) some surprisingly good factory sound systems for car manufacturers, but their aftermarket offerings here always pretty much just blew goats. So you can imagine my displeasure when I opened up the front door panels of the truck to perform repairs and found those Clarions (pictured in prior post). I'd not been happy with the stereo, but with the messed up windows (and the resulting air gaps) generating a lot of noise, I couldn't properly evaluate what I had.

Further research showed that these weren't cheap speakers back in 1995 when they were installed. These were some of their more premium offerings as best I can tell, being "water resistant" among other features. All water resistant meant back then, for Clarion, was "sounded worse than normal Clarion products due to waterproofing." I figured fine, no big deal, I'll pick up some Polks (since I planned to upgrade the stereo system eventually anyway) and just put the Clarions back in for now. Listen to the Clarions for a week or two while I wait for the other pieces of the budget system I'm putting together to arrive. How terrible could they be in a mostly-sealed truck cabin? I thought.

Yeah. You know what's coming next.

Drove it around today with the three fixed windows and the last one sealed with a tape strip at the top. Some of what I had thought was wind noise was actually the speakers distorting. First thing I did when I got back from work this evening was evict the Clarions. I'd say they probably weren't very good to begin with and time has certainly not improved them.

:james: As you know, on Final Gear, if I purchase a car that comes with inherently crappy speakers, those speakers eventually get set on fire on the sill thing outside my apartment.

:jeremy: And this is no exception!

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Good riddance to terrible crap.

Replaced them with a new-in-box set of Polk db650s (additional info at Crutchfield). Didn't take pictures of the install as I was rushing to complete that and the last window repair (which I did finish) before the rain came. Now I have good front speakers and all four windows either roll up and down properly or are full-up thus keeping out the elements.
 
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Had it in to have the alignment checked as well as have the steering wheel straightened after fitting a non-broken column. Due to the hour, I was compelled to have it done at an NTB, a national tire/service chain. Well, it turns out that the damn thing is too big to fit on most NTB alignment racks and I had to travel across town to the one NTB location that they were sure had a rack big enough to fit the truck.

Even at that, it barely fit, considering that part of the setup for the machine is to roll the truck backwards about a foot to allow the optical sensors to register the targets clamped to the wheels.
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It was pretty close to going onto the ramps when they rolled it. :D
 
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I'm jealous, i love those trucks.

I used to drive a same generation Bronco XLT, i got into an accident with it, some moron in a Mercedes, with the common newer Mercedes attitude, thinking they own the road, pulled out in front of me in an intersection, where i had the right of way, i didn't have time to brake, i demolished the Mercedes, it had to be scrapped, barely some scrapes in the plastic molding on my bumper :p

I miss that car, though i din't drive a diesel, the Bronco was a 302 V8, with two cone air filters, the sound... was marvelous :p

I've been looking at F-250's with the 7.3 Turbo Diesel, i'm considering swapping both the Buick and the Volvo for one :p

How is the diesel ones with the AWD active? the Bronco was kinda slow, so i couldn't get wheelspin even on ice pretty much, unless i put in low range.
And how is it when doing kick-down? the 302 powered Bronco... i didn't dare trying to overtake, it just didn't have the power to pass unless it was a really long straight, or if the car i wanted to overtake was practically stopped.
 
They're kind of slow off the line, though mine moves out about as well as my old 302 F-150 did. However, once it gets up to about 2000rpm, the truck sort of gathers itself up and starts powering ahead. It doesn't seem to matter whether it's in 2WD or 4WD, it accelerates pretty much the same. Getting wheelspin is a bit of a problem for it since 1. it weighs 7000lbs and therefore it makes its own traction and 2. I have the taller gearing (3.55 vice 4.10) and optional larger tire package (235/85-16 vs 215/85-16) plus the tall-gear E4OD slushbox that wants to shift up to second quickly. Not impossible, though. :D

Replacing the stock tiny downpipe with a 3" or larger one and getting a chip for it yields up to 80 more HP and more fuel economy, not to mention helping the turbo spool faster, so I'll be doing that shortly. As for passing, that's actually not a problem for it at all as that gets it into the turbo's spool zone even with the stock downpipe. Tell you what, I have to drive the thing all the way across my metropolitan area tomorrow. I'll find someone who's being a back marker on the the highway and overtake them with my iPhone filming on the dash, you can watch how it reacts and decide for yourself. It does really well on the highway, though it appears to be optimized for about a 55-65mph cruise speed. The next-gen 99-03 7.3 is actually probably a better bet for higher cruise speeds, if that's your thing.

Edit: By the way, a good means to get one of these is to find one that's extremely hard or impossible to start when it's cold; often the owner will want to sell cheap. It's either a glow plug issue or a cam position sensor issue and usually can be fixed for $40 or less - it's just that most people don't know about it. :D
 
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WIth the Bronco, i've ended up behind cars doing 60kph in the 80kph zone, and Norwegian roads are not the straightest normally, so overtaking means you have to look for a straight where you can see traffic ahead, with the Bronco, i couldn't do it, accelerating from 60kph to 80kph was really slow, so the straight would be over, it had some larger 33" wheels on it, might have affected it.
It's that sort of overtaking i was curious about, 80kph is the highest speed limit around where i live anyways, so don't need the top end really, just able to reach it reasonably quick.

this is the one i drove for a few months while i were without a car:
http://img848.imageshack.**/img848/9213/dsc3872k.jpg
 
Hemily said:
WIth the Bronco, i've ended up behind cars doing 60kph in the 80kph zone, and Norwegian roads are not the straightest normally, so overtaking means you have to look for a straight where you can see traffic ahead, with the Bronco, i couldn't do it, accelerating from 60kph to 80kph was really slow, so the straight would be over, it had some larger 33" wheels on it, might have affected it.
It's that sort of overtaking i was curious about, 80kph is the highest speed limit around where i live anyways, so don't need the top end really, just able to reach it reasonably quick.

this is the one i drove for a few months while i were without a car:
http://img848.imageshack.**/img848/9213/dsc3872k.jpg
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Yeah, 33's will slow them down quite a bit, especially if they have the taller ratio axle gears. With 33s, you need 3.73-4.11 to get back up to stock acceleration (per the Bronco guys). My guess is you have/had the same 3.55s I do, which is what most of them came with, IIRC.

I will get that video later today.

Deviate said:
Great trucks. I had a '96 myself, albeit it had a woefully undersized 351W and was 2wd. Thing had over 250k on the clock when I got rid of it ~6 years ago. Still running well to this day, too.
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Yup. Though do me a favor - if you see my truck around, don't get close to the forward right side. As you probably know, you can't see any car as low as your Bullitt over there, especially if it's mostly forward of the C-pillar. :p

Edit: Why yes, I have almost smeared a Miata and a Dumb (a not-so-Smart forTwo) car with it, why do you ask? :p
 
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Deviate said:
You could just put a convex mirror on the right side... Had one on mine that helped tremendously. Or, screw it, just run over the forTwos. No big deal either way. I would imagine it's a lot like stepping on a roach; you hear a "crunch", look down, shrug, move on with life.
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I do have a convex mirror over there. It doesn't help much if most of the car is ahead of the mirror, and there's a lot of truck ahead of that mirror. To be safe, please stay away from the right side forward of my C-pillar. :p Aft of the C pillar I can see just fine, for sure, between the regular and convex mirrors.

While I wouldn't have any problems squishing a Dumb (the last one scuttled away like the aforementioned roach), I would at least feel bad about hitting a Mustang. :p
 
Spectre said:
Yeah, 33's will slow them down quite a bit, especially if they have the taller ratio axle gears. With 33s, you need 3.73-4.11 to get back up to stock acceleration (per the Bronco guys). My guess is you have/had the same 3.55s I do, which is what most of them came with, IIRC.
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That's correct, those Broncos had 3.55's standard. My truck has a 3.55 rear end with the stock size tires (275/70R15 or something close to that) and it has no trouble getting up to 75mph. The '78 actually got noticeably better highway mileage, but with 31" tires and a 3.00 axle it had no balls. At all.
 
Sadly, traffic wasn't being very cooperative today, but you should get a decent idea of what it can do 60-80kph, 80-120kph at part throttle and ~80-120kph at almost full throttle. Also, not too bad for shooting video blindly.

 
Doesn't seem too bad really, when you think how huge that thing is...
The Bronco mostly made more sound when i did a kickdown :p
 
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