Bumbles Bounce Don'tcha know.. (1 Viewer)

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ok you have seriously exceeded your toy allotment, the toy boxes are overflowing.

The Bumble goes where the wench says...

The Bumble is the wench B!tch
 
Welp, one step forward 2 steps back. Starter took a dump on me today. I'm pretty sure the headers are heat soaking it and it's just fried from all the driving lately.

Haven't really paid a lot of attention, but it had been acting up a little lately. Pretty sure it was trying to tell me, but I wasn't listening good enough.

Stopped by a friend's after work to look at some drainage issues and when I went to leave, click, click, click.... tried jumping it. Click, click, click.

Lights work, radio works, fan blows, just click, click, click...

Crawled underneath and starter motor was quite warm, so Pretty sure it's heat soaked. Feel like if I let it sit for a few hours, probably start right up, which would pretty well make the case. Going to look into a starter sleeve or a heat shield for the new one.

Always something.
 
did you try the magic BFH trick on the starter? Headers do a number on starters depending on proxcimity / heat soak in general. Anything with headers where the pipes get close to the starter....will have problems. I would look for a dedicated heat shield or try to make one. I hate headers...unless no other option, or something performance driven. There might be some nice heats shields out there for the 460...summit or jegs or some place dedicated to 460 engine builds/parts.
 
Starter swapped, back in the road. It was very toast. I let it sit at my buddies til this evening, still just click click. So ran home, changed, grabbed my tools and headed back. Took about an hour, just tedious.

And @Elbert I had read that headers killed starters, especially on the 460s, but I ordered the headers with ceramic coating to try and help that, but in hindsight, I think the starter was already staring to get weak before the headers, they just finished it off.

I picked up a DEI starter wrap/shield today to go along with the new starter. It is doubled on the header side, so hopefully that will help. I need to get a steel zip tie on it to make sure it stays put.

We back on the road again as Willie says.
 
sounds good, I use to deal with header related issues during my "hot-rod" days...which at the time, seemed a necessary evil, which included starter failures and melting spark plug boots and cables. And it was my experience you never could get away from exhaust leaks of some type. Each family of engines have their own unique related issues or work better here and there depending on cylinder head design / overall layout. At one point I had a fairly good running GM 5.7 / Z28 and changing the spark plugs became a torture test of the third order. I had one favorite spark plug socket with a built in surface on the end that allowed a wrench to grip it and it cleared the header by a "hair", nothing else would work on the passenger side cylinder head. The specific socket was "just right" as they say in clearance... later the "hot-rod" motor tanked after many hard runs and I went to a mild 5.7 build with OEM type exhaust manifolds...it still would push north of xxx mph, I of course back in the day when I had something fast I had to see how fast that was and test the ropes of sanity/skill/luck/stupidity in my street racing days. In the old days it was something to have corvette heads off a 70 vette, with the large valves etc and other things and to make somewhere north of 350hp...etc. Street motor. I'm talking about the cool 80's.

yea, I soured on headers. Now its crazy how much hp many of these performance cars and trucks make, with zero modifications. Even the "rams horn" style manifolds I have now....I'm dealing with some similar issues, as I have 5.7 from 1999 (vortec) and I'm running a style of exhaust manifold that is similar to a header in the way its desigined around the cylinder head ports...which back in the day when these type rams horn manifolds were stock, they mated to a cylinder head that had OEM heat shields to help protect the spark plug boots and cable. My problem is the new (1999 vintage) 5.7 cylinder heads do not have the same bolt bosses in the head to facilitate the use of the OEM style heat shield., so I'm a repeat purchaser of spark plug cable set. And of course the heat shields that work with the 1999 cylinder head, do not work with the rams horn style manifolds. I would run the stock OEM GM exhaust manifold, except that will not work for clearance reasons.

Maybe when or if I jump to a GM 5.3 or 6.0 engine.....my issues may be solved in the manifold/spark plug arena.
 
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Rotated tires today for the first time since they got put on 4 years ago. For my future reference at 178,562 miles
 
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Started fooling with the trans cooler upgrade and after deciding I needed more bits to get that all sorted I decided to tackle the trans temp guage instead. Didn't get any pics of all the install, but routed thru the floor next to the shifter and then up the "A" Pilar to the guage.

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It's in and it works, but it's kinda temp wired right now. Finding a switched power source in the cab is proving difficult. I found a keyed fuse to test it and it works fine, but since I need more than just one, I've worked out a plan to get a key on distribution set up in the cab.

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I have to get a few bits and some wire, but I should be able to knock this out this week after work. I've also managed to misplace all my wiring stuff, so having to re-stock my electrical supplies. With 2 moves and multiple places that things live I've found myself having to buy more things I already have because I can't find them.

Cooler will go in this week/weekend and oil changes and other fluids to get ready to go to the ACC ride at Choccolocco in 2 weeks
 
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Well you can put the blame on the 2 moves to why you can’t find things. However, it’s really just old age catching up with you. Of course I’m speaking from experience here.
 
Decided to do some test fitting on a few misc bits after work today.

Got some solo motorsports brackets to mount a 30" bar behind the grill, so mocked that up along with the new trans cooler to make sure everything would live together up front.

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Then stuck the grill on to see how the light lined up.

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Er'thang looks like it's going to all play nice together so I'll start trimming tomorrow. I have to cut away some of the grill support, so I'm going to get some square tubing and trim it back to make up the support that I have to cut out to allow the light bar to slide back about 5/8".

Then with that in, I'll pull the stock cooler out and start mounting the new cooler up. I have to get some line adapters to go from the hard lines to the 3/8" soft lines.
 
Ordered trans line fittings today and picked up some wiring this afternoon. Should get started on some of this mess tomorrow afterwork I hope.
 
Welp, due to concerns over the gas "shortage" we didn't pull the pig to choccolocco last weekend, so I went ahead and started tearing into the front-end to get the trans cooler sorted for our pull to GSMTR in a few weeks.

Bumper and grille out so I could see what I have to work with.
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Got the old cooler out and started mocking up the new one.

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Old cooler is about half the size of the new one. Changed up the plan a little. New cooler will mount low, tucked more behind the bumper openings. Should do well, and will free up the front for better flow thru the radiator.

Need a piece of flat bar to bend up some mounting brackets. Going to try and get that this week so I can get this knocked out and plumbed up so I can do a test pull before the long haul up the mountain.
 
CAD template for bottom stand-off.

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I picked up some flat bar today. Now I just have to figure out how to bend it into shape.
 
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Angle iron, c clamps, and a block of wood and hammer to get the crisp 90s. Hope you went thinish on the flat bar or my method won’t work.
 
Angle iron, c clamps, and a block of wood and hammer to get the crisp 90s. Hope you went thinish on the flat bar or my method won’t work.

Thinnest they had was 1/8", guess I will see how I fair with a hammer and vise to start. If that fails, then I will just go pick up some sheet and cut it down to strips.
 
Came back last night so I could have some shop time today to work on the Ford. GSMTR is fast approaching and he needs to be ready to tow. Trans cooler is on deck for this week after I wrap up this light bar install.

I had to cut the header in half to let the bar set back into the front.
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Just clears

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Mounted loosely
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Clearance the grill

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And I had to hotwire it to take a look at how it looked.
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So everything is ready to blow apart, finish fitment, sanding, paint, final assembly and then wiring.

Then on to mounts and mounting and plumbing the trans cooler. Then a fresh filter and fluid for the E4OD should get us ready for the haul east in a few weeks.
 
The progress may be slow but I remain impressed with each post.

Yeah, it is moving slower than I would like. But seems like I can only squeeze a few minutes here or there to work on it. Hoping for a big push this weekend to get these two projects wrapped up.
 
Last night I spent several hours taping off the grill, sanding and then hit the cutouts with some fresh paint to hide all my grinding and cutting.. pic of that in a bit. So today was a good day. Lots of progress.

Started out marking out the brackets.

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Then I pulled the grill tie piece out, prepped and painted it to dry.

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Then while that was drying I set out making the lower mounts. No vice and not bench, so grinder was my friend, grooved them, bent them and then welded the corners back up.

Boom!
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Then I put them in and started fooling with the upper mount.

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The upper bracket took a hot minute because the welder is in the garage and I am working in the shop. Got to get that electrical sorted.

After a few trips back and forth, I finally got something I was happy with. Hit with some flat black and left to dry.

While that was drying, I went ahead and finalized the light bar mounting.

Then with the brackets dry (enough) I went ahead and bolted everything back up for the final time.

Passenger upper
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Drivers upper

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Lower mounts
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And with all that in, I pulled the cardboard off the trans cooler.

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Then I put my freshened up grill back in.

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