1961 Ford Falcon Ranchero restoration

[Harvuskong]

Looking for an update!!!

[rickairmedic]

Originally Posted by MAC702

Outstanding idea. Is there a best brand? Or just get a few spray cans from AutoZone?

Mac Duplicolor sells bedliner in a rattlecan at Autozone thats what I would use personally.



Rick

[MAC702]

The thing sat in the driveway for a while. I got discouraged because as I was accumulating the parts to rebuild the front suspension, I would start it periodically and let it run and warm up. It ran great. Until one day.

My brother revved it up, which I also did from time to time, but then it settled down and refused to idle. I asked all kinds of people, but no one knew what could cause it. Looks like I never got around to asking on here. Sorry about that.

I took the carb off, took out the adjustment screws, and hosed the entire thing out with carb cleaner. No change.

Then, last week while my step dad was helping me with the new ignition on the Jeep, I mentioned the problem to him. He's a diesel mechanic, but he still immediately said "power valve". I'd never heard of it.

I Googled it. Sure enough, its problems fit my symptoms. I got a rebuild kit for the carb and replaced the power valve. The thing runs beautifully once again.

The generic dynomat arrived. The carpet kit is on the way. I'll be taking it to my mechanic this week to do the front suspension, then off to the alignment shop. By that time, I hope to have the seat and door panels reupholstered as my friend gets back to his shop in Los Angeles next weekend, and should be ready to sew a week after that! I think I might spring for some imitation sharkskin, but real leather.

I'm pretty sure I mention some of this, so I blame the recent SFT server outage.

[MAC702]

My stepdad wanted first crack at the front suspension. Today was the day we finally got together to take a look at it. I've even cleared out the fabrication table in the shop to put the car inside!

As soon as we jacked up the entire front end, one of the problems became immediately obvious. There was a serious toe-in issue, but mostly on the passenger side, as the driver side was straight with the steering wheel. This prompted looking more closely at the parts under there.

The driver's tie rod end had been screwed mostly out of the connecting sleeve. So we disconnected it from that tire, recentered it in the sleeve, and then only by bottoming it out, and mostly bottoming out the passenger side were we able to restore the toe. But this comes at the expense of the steering wheel no longer being centered. But it gets it to where an expert has something to work with later. Worst case, I should be able to remount the steering wheel and live with whatever the difference in the stops or turn signal switch winds up being.

This is probably the biggest thing that was wrong with it when I was test driving it around two years ago. I've also replaced the rear springs last year, which corrected the rear track that had been an inch off.

So next is actually replacing the bushings, tie rod ends, center link, and ball joints.