Work on the beleaguered Ｕ．Ｓ．Ｓ．　ＢＲＯＷＮ　Ｃ．　ＳＴＥＮＮＩＳ has been continuing at a rapid pace! For what really is the first time with one of my projects, I called for extensive backup from friends willing to lend some elbow grease. First, because some of them are more “car people” than me, and second, because everything on this thing is heavy. It’s like the Chevy of trucks: cheap and heavy.

Wait…. Hang on.

This post recaps all the events of about 2 weeks ago following its return from my mechanic; I elected to take it back since it had not yet been consistently diagnosable (i.e. it was becoming a “throw parts at it” situation) and I didn’t want to keep running up labor charges. I ended up going through a series of cross-checks and inspections and discovered the problem was all too familiar, but obfuscated by a compounding issue. In the end, it was literally entirely my fault, so I’m very satisfied; unlike most people, I’m only happy if I caused the entire mess in the first place.

Let’s begin.

Prodding Ford Truck Bro forums and groups led a lot of Internet mechanics to suspect an ignition problem. The ignition coil on these things is tucked snugly into the valley between the two V8 cylinder banks (seen above) and its electronic control module can also succumb to temperature-related failure. As I described it, where the engine will start and run for only 10-20 minutes, it sounded like a temperature-dependent electrical issue.

I had my doubts, because it would only some times start and run for 10-20 minutes, and other times have a hard time starting at all. But seeing as these parts were all fairly cheap, I decided to outright replace them just in case.

 

That’s the Ur-ECU ignition control module. I like how it’s just bolted into the wheelwell stamping like a good ol’ retrofit system that got put into production. “Looks good here! Build ’em like this!”

So this didn’t resolve anything. I started wondering about other electrical systems in the path of the fuel pumps. For some reason, there are a whole bunch, as illustrated by this handy diagram I drew in a fit of frustration:

I managed to locate and test the fuel pump cutoff relay but couldn’t find any trace of the fuel tank selector relay. Based on some more sleuthing, I deduced that the DPDT selector switch might have been wired directly to the fuel pumps. The object that says “NEW!!!!” all over it is this contraption:

Another one of those “Well why the hell did you do that?” parts on this thing is the fuel tank selector valve. It’s basically a small hydraulic solenoid valve that connects one circuit to two, but shittier and plastic. And it was the source of one of my troubles.

See, while bypassing the fuel pump power safety cutoffs, I did numerous impromptu fuel pump volume tests (because I wanted to see if it was pumping fuel with shortcut wiring). This led me to discover that some times, the fuel volume was low or nearly nonexistent. It would start off good, and then taper off. This actually corroborated a weird behavior I noticed where some times when the engine would start sputtering, I would wiggle the selector switch repeatedly for a few seconds and it would gain some run time. This was in fact one of the symptoms that made me think a power supply to the fuel pump problem.

Uh oh. Suspecting that this valve had been bad from the beginning despite me testing it on the bench  listening to it turn over, I performed another volume test upstream of the valve. Both pumps were giving the correct volume, so I scrambled back to Pep Boys and picked up a new valve and spliced it in. I don’t know exactly what kind of failure mode it is – maybe the mechanism inside is sufficiently worn or damaged such that it might travel fine, but can easily be pushed out of position by fuel pressure. Maybe that causes it to backflow into the un-powered tank, or maybe it just plugs up and sits there.

The recurring lesson I’ve been learning from ＶＡＮＴＲＵＣＫ is “BTDMIW” :  But That Doesn’t Mean It Works. Just because I jiggled the component on the bench, or in isolation, doesn’t mean it actually is working correctly when installed.

But there was more! The fuel being pumped from the front tank, the one I personally serviced with a new pump and float  – was rather ＢＲＯＷＮ. It was darker than what I usually knew gasoline as. Even more telling was that there was sediment on the bottom of the jar.

I instantly knew what was happening. The next thing I did was run around to the front and start unscrewing the carburetor fuel inlet line:

…and I sheared it off in the process, because I untwisted the first big nut looking thing I saw, but it was really the nut that went into that nut. Brilliant!

I couldn’t even blow through that little metal sponge. It’s the “filter of last resort” for the carburetor, and it had trapped in it all of the rust slurry being pumped from the front tank. You can see some of the visible grunge on top.

Dedicated readers might recall that I also replumbed the fuel tanks in the same operation that I replaced the front fuel pump in. Even more dedicated (or observant) readers will also notice that I did not install an inline fuel filter on the front tank. Why? Who knows?! Maybe I’m just traumatized by fuel filters. Maybe I thought the fuel pump’s jizz sock thing was enough.

I patched this section of steel fuel line with some rubber hose and called it good.

Here it is installed behind the zinc-chrome part in the lower center. That is a “vapor separator valve”, or as I kept calling it, the vaping valve. It was bypassed earlier this photo series by a chunk of fuel hose. Unlike a modern fuel injection system where there’s a fuel pressure regulator bleeding off fuel into the return line, this is just a little pipe with a hole in it. Its nominal purpose is to prevent vapor lock by having fuel vapor escape through the little hole, along with small amount of fuel. Ford sells these in several hole sizes depending on how much you want your engine to vape and also to help modulate fuel pressure. What the hell? Almost every system on this vehicle in some way is analogous to touching a variable resistor to something. None of this is okay.

And you know what? It ran GREAT!  Rev for days! Piss of the neighbors!  Ａ　Ｍ　Ｅ　Ｒ　Ｉ　Ｃ　Ａ　Ｎ　　Ｐ　Ｒ　Ｉ　Ｄ　Ｅ． Oh crap, what’s that smell??

This is a giant puddle of ＢＲＯＷＮ  that was slowly increasing in magnitude as I was having too much fun firing gun-wielding Bald Eagles out of the exhaust. Which, by the way, was backfiring (afterfiring) like crazy. It was clear the thing was running super rich. I now had literally the opposite problem as before. Hurray!

A little research showed that all of this ＢＲＯＷＮ was coming out of the vapor canisters. So much fuel was getting into the carburetor that it was coming out of, and flushing, the vapor collector lines and washing out the canister. Great! It’s like clearing your sinuses!

(The parking lot is still ＢＲＯＷＮ and smells like a freshly coated gym floor there, to this day)

So what was the cause? I dug into the carburetor manual a little after observing it with the air cleaner removed. That’s where I discovered another “tighten the incorrect nut” problem.

I found a little nut on the carburetor that I thought was left loose by the mechanic; since, you know, I kind of bailed it out of their hands before they could put it back together. So I tightened it. All the way.

Well it turns out that’s the fuel level adjust screw and accompanying locking nut for the secondary throttle (which only opens after about 50% throttle travel or so). All the way down is all the fuel, all the time, forever and ever. I noticed the secondary throttle discharge was completely wet even while idling.

This screw was adjusted more correctly.

 

And off we go! I went on a “Lap of I-95” test. On the whole, performance was excellent. I made a point to exit and then re-enter the freeway repeatedly to do full throttle pulls from ~25 to 70mph. It still tended to be a little backfire-y when letting off from high throttle demands. Given that the mechanic didn’t have a chance to properly tune and road test, I think something’s still a little whacky, but that is now an addressable problem.

Hello, Mr. Tesla. Get in my belly.

In the end, I concluded that there had to be a very specific series of events and misjudgements for the running condition to get this bad. Here is my assessment of what happened:

• I replace the front fuel pump. Given that I had no lift and was working entirely on the ground without help, mostly in the dark, I didn’t drop the fuel tank fully and inspect it. I only lowered it enough on the straps to grab the fuel pump. Therefore, I didn’t see how much rust was inside.
• When the front fuel pump went back in, I neglected to install an inline filter on the output side.
• Filling of the fuel tank with new fuel, plus the force of the collision, likely washed a lot of loose debris into circulation, where it was picked up by the pump.
• I specifically used the front tank around town and during the Motorama trip attempt to ensure the system was operational.
• The carburetor began clogging with this rust slurry, causing me to abandon the Motorama trip as problems gently surfaced.
• Gradually, with additional around-the-town usage, it became worse as more rust slurry blocked the caburetor inlet screen.
• The particulate debris MAY have also affected the operation of the fuel tank selector valve – I am uncertain if it played a substantial role in the earlier problems.
• The mechanic was able to test for proper fuel volume delivery because the valve problem was a some times thing, which incorrectly ruled out the fuel system as a source of trouble. The Ford official player’s guide makes you only time the delivery of 1 pint of fuel as the test. I was pumping into a 5-gallon gas can and was purposefully holding the pumps on for a while in case something caused them to lose power.
• After the carburetor rebuild, I told him to continue testing using the front tank, because the rear tank was in an unknown state to me and had a non-functional fuel gauge sensor, whereas I said I had replaced the front fuel pump and fuel gauge sensor.
• Furthermore, for debugging systems in isolation, they bypassed the fuel tank selector valve completely and directly piped the front fuel tank to the carburetor.
• The carburetor began clogging with rust slurry again, leading to much the same symptoms and to the frustration of all involved.
• This timed well with me electing to cut my expenses and asking them to stop work.

So there you have it. Once again, one of my vans is stymied by the uncertain nature of fuel delivery. You know what? Electrons don’t need fuel filters! What are you gonna catch, some neutrinos?

How bad is the front tank? Probably very. Before I turned anything on again post inspection, I went and bought the biggest clear inline filter Pep Boys had to sell and dropped it on the front fuel tank’s output line. That’s what it looked like afterwards. Delicious, delicious ＢＲＯＷＮ . I’m not likely to do any fancy fuel tank treatments to stop this. New replacements can be had for $100 or less, and as long as the bed has to come off, replacement will be easy. Plus, unlike Mikuvan’s filter, these two things are easy to reach, so I am likely just going to keep changing big plastic pubbles first and foremost.

Next time, the action starts for real:

 

Awww yeah, it’s getting warmer! Let’s go work on some vans! Aww, it’s raining. Okay, it’s dry now! Crap, I can’t lift this myself. WTF? Why is it 30 degrees tonight!?

-me for the past 2 months

After the skirmish with the insurance company, I spent several weeks scanning Ford Truck bro forums, Facebook groups, and Craigslists all up and down the east coast for 80s and 90s era F-350 dually long beds. This was a triple threat challenge. First, the year range meant the majority of them had long dissolved. Second, short bed trucks were (and are) more popular, so a long bed is already a harder find. And last, it had to be the dual rear wheel version with the built-in fender; while buying a single rear wheel bed and adding fenders was an option, I found that the fender flares were 1. about equally hard to find, and 2. about equally expensive.

I obviously passed up a whole bunch of really crappy ones; those which if I weren’t out to have something nice looking at the end, I would snap up in a hurry, weld patches over rust holes, and ship it. Other choices were simply too far away (i.e. rust-free desert states) to be economical to get. So I bided my time and reached out also to some of the area auto yards I went to previously. I even called one of the ones I frequented in high school back in Atlanta to ask them to keep an eye out in their network. If I’m not obsessive, at least I’m resourceful.

In the mean time, Vantruck’s runability problem worsened dramatically and for reasons I couldn’t easily determine at the time; I can’t be arsed to sit outside during the middle of winter at night and fix vans that often. While previously during the failed Motorama run it made it all the way past Framingham, MA (and back) with only minor hiccups, now it was beginning to fall asleep almost at random. Basically it felt like it would lose fuel feed, stall out, and then take a while to start back up again. Its confident usability radius was decreased to Home Depot runs and moving heavy objects to and from MITERS.

Well that’s no way to own a truckensteinian monster. In mid-March, I decided to send it to live with the same mechanic who performed the exhaust and fender repairs pre-accident, with the idea that he’d pick at it while I searched for a bed. I’d bring the bed to him afterwards and we’d carry on with the anticipated restoration. This plan almost worked:

Hurrrr

I made it about 3 miles out before it had trouble staying running. Being it was still several more to the mechanic, I decided to abandon the mission, turn around, and got maybe 1000 feet. No amount of sweet-talking or coercion could elicit more than a few seconds of running. Not wanting to dump the battery trying to start too often, I called for backup.

That’s one of my friends who has a diesel F-250 which at the time had half a lift kit installed (notice the front of the truck is higher than the back). And in between that truck and Vantruck is a yellow Harbor Freight tow strap. This unique assemblage slowly confused its way through four Boston-area towns. Now, if you guys have flat-towed your friend’s beater down the highway for the 5th time this year, this might not sound like a big deal. Here’s the path we had to take:

Several miles through ill-timed red lights, one-way tight (for something 21 feet long without power steering or power brakes) turns, and the occasional displeased taxi driver. Luckily, and somehow, no police. Needless to say this was a less-than-legal, literally fly-by-night operation!

Alright, well that was exciting. A week later, I got a lead on a great condition 1997 dually bed, which was awesome since it was the newest it could get. The seller was located in Kentucky, and the bed only had some surface rust and a dented tailgate. Among the ad photos was this gem:

 

Yeah, uhh, I’ll take that one. No, that one over in the middle. No, more middle!

I need to up my van game, man. This guy has me beat in a topological sense.

It so happened that the seller had a delivery to make in eastern Maryland in 2 weeks. I offered to meet him in Harrisburg PA (roughly halfway between us) and do the handoff, and he agreed! Well crap, now I had to figure out what to transport a 8 foot dually truck bed with! Gee, if only I had some kind of truck-like vehicle with an 8 foot bed and dual rear wheels. Now, at this time, the mechanic had yet to duplicate the same failure mode consistently, and I wasn’t about to risk rushed work to go 800 miles in its first mission. I’m only marginally smarter than that!

It was time to get Mikuvan a trailer hitch. So begins Operation ＥＮＤＵＲＩＮＧ ＢＲＯＷＮ…

 

Fast forward a week, after I bothered the local U-Haul guys to call several of their hitch distributors, many of which responded with “What?” when presented with the year, make, and mode. I’m used to it. One of them said their computer system says they had one in stock, but he would have to wait until the following Monday to go verify because he’d “never recalled seeing it on that shelf”.

Well, good – Mikuvan itself, despite its local uniqueness, also hides in plain sight like that, since most people’s descriptions of it stop at “white van”. Your move, Cambridge police.

Fortunately, it was indeed in stock, and I had it rush delivered. The package exploded in a cloud of warehouse dust when I opened it up. Yes, I can tell you’ve never seen it on the shelf. It actually didn’t attach where I thought it would; Mikuvan has two structures at the end of the frame near the leaf spring shackles which I thought were tow hooks, but in fact this hitch mounted to them and not the more numerous thru-frame holes. Makes sense – they’re likely to be the single strongst parts of the frame.

U-Haul wouldn’t sell me a trailer without a lighting harness, so I had to pull out one of the tail lights to install one. The system they sell is quite well-packaged. It’s a little headcrab thing that splices into the turn signal, running light, and brake light circuits, derives power from any one of them, and at the same time senses which light is activated, piping this information to the trailer lights.  It took me about 45 minutes to install.

 

It’s a bright and early April! After making sure the seller wasn’t just a friend of a friend playing an elaborate April Fools joke, I set out with a 11′ U-Haul trailer. My, how the tables have turned.

They don’t have flatbed trailers, so I made sure the bed could fit over the roughly 4′ 6″ spaced side rails of their standard utility trailer. Worst case, I’ll throw some 2x4s on top of it.

This trailer weighed 900 pounds empty. I could feel that every bump when it would tug on the hitch and Mikuvan’s short wheelbase failed at not bobbing up and down. This was going to be exciting indeed. A couple of hours later, and I end up in….

 

….Upper Manhttan!? Wait, this isn’t Harrisburg!

I needed lifting (bro) help, and all of my friends are gainfully employed and couldn’t head out on short notice on a weekday for a mission with an unknown completion date (van missions NEVER have a competion date!)

I thus enlisted the help of Cassandra, fellow van connoisseur , with the only issue being I had to take that trailer into Manhattan to pick her up. I don’t know which was more painful, threading a trailer through 133rd St., or paying that much money to New York State for the privilege. (The observant would note that maybe I could have gotten a 1-way trailer from Harrisburg; this would have cost much more than a two-day local rental. There are no miles kept on trailers, and I also wanted to make sure I got a feel for it on the way down)

 

On site in our favorite Waffle House parking lot. This Waffle House is my gateway to the South; it’s been part of every Dragon Con trip so far, usually in both directions. Leaving the Harrisburg Waffle House is like exiting the Panama Canal, or rounding the Cape of Agulhas.

The seller showed up with the same red flatbed, just with less trucks on it. The transfer went quite smoothly – the U-haul trailer’s side rails were only a few inches taller than the flatbed, so less lifting than we both anticipated was needed, more sliding.

Here’s Cassandra and I posing for the glory shot.

Next, it was off to Lowes to pick up heavier-duty ratchet straps and a rubber floor mat to cut up and insert between the bed and the trailer’s side rails to prevent damaging the bed on the bottom.  I mostly rigged the bed straight down to hooks on the bottom of the trailer floor; this had the added advantage of looking like the bed is just hanging on for dear life to everyone else on the road, so hopefully they stay further away!

Not less than eleven hours later, I emerge on the other side of hyperspace in the warehouse parking lot. A typical Motorama return run takes 6.5 to maybe 7.

This was probably the single most stressful thing I’ve done in my life so far. The trailer itself was well behaved and did not wobble. Beyond that, I had zero rear vision. Day turned into night quickly after leaving Harrisburg, with a fucking rain front chasing me the whole way. Furthermore, the bed weighed a few hundred pounds on its own, and also presented a huge cross-section to the wind. It limited my speeds to generally 55-60mph just by being unable to power past it without hammering the engine the whole time, which put me square against all the 18-wheelers who wanted to go 75-80. And when they pass, the wind load would push the trailer a few inches sideways; Mikuvan of course lovingly and devotedly followed each time.

Then it came time to drop Cassandra off in Manhattan. So here I am, blindly driving a flying truck-ass through Manhattan and up the George Washington Bridge, at night, in the rain, with weeknight post-rush-hour traffic. People there don’t take kindly to that sort of thing. Are you fucking trying to kill both of us, or are you trying to make some kind of statement by buzzing me on the right? I have a flying truck-ass. You don’t.

I also couldn’t return through the Hutchinson and Merritt Parkways, which forbid trailers, so I had to fight it out on I-95 in Southern CT. By then, the rain had turned into sporadic mist and fog, so I was also working with reduced visibility; the only way I could tell there was an incoming semi was the soft yellow halo around the bed getting more intense, then getting shoved aside a foot. Let me tell you about when this happened on both sides at the same time as I was in the middle lane near Stamford.

Around 1AM east of Bridgeport, I decided to pull into a rest stop and regroup. Leaving there around 2AM, I got back into town at 4:30. I just sort of died mentally the day after. Sorry for not answering your calls about where your trailer is, U-Haul. You have my credit card info, now fuck off.

 

A day later, I drop the bed off at the mechanic’s! Things were gonna be AWESOME!

If only it were that simple. The next thing to hit me was tax season – let me tell you, the government is not pleased with me refusing to be a wage slave. Seriously, there’s not much love for the self-employed going on here. What it put me in was a situation where it was not adult-responsible to have a $6K project car build coming up. By the way, do you need something designed or prototyped? How about some Ragebridges?!

 

Not like they were having any more luck on their end. I asked them to prioritiz getting it running before any of the planned bodywork. After a carburetor rebuild did not resolve the sporadic running problem, I decided to cut my losses for the time being and asked them to stop work, and put it mostly back together so I could have it towed back to base. I didn’t want to run up more shop charges on something which hasn’t yet done anything consistently to diagnose. If it was going to become throwing parts at it, I’d rather take the time to do it myself.

 

I went over to help with the rigging of the replacement bed in preparation for a return tow. See, this is what I’d WANTED to do to get the bed in the place! Doing this at least made me feel better in one way: All the important exterior dimensions lined up. There might be some hope, then, that it is a drop-on replacement. Even if not, it 1. won’t be fugly, and 2. might only require some flat adapter plates.

The same night, I got a call from the truck driver that he was on the way over. I actually passed him going the other way:

Ah, nothing like watching your hopes and dreams pass by on a hook.

I spent the next few days pondering my priorities. Do I want a working vantruck, a white vantruck, or a Tesla-powered vantruck? These are almost 3 different goals. What if I just replaced each cylinder with a melon and a bevel gear?

I considered going to an aftermarket EFI conversion kit (like this!) first, as an intermediary step. You can’t begin to get me to trust carburetors, no matter what, even if it’s not the cause of the problem, which it looked increasingly like it wasn’t. At least that would bring it up to something in this millenium! However, I wanted to make sure I found the root of the problem before buying anything drastic.

Hell, I even considered the nuclear option of selling it as-is with the new bed attached (where-is?!). That would put me ahead financially and subtract a potential eternal project / rental liability from my life (as I’m not in a position or area where it’s easy to keep a non-running vehicle hanging around forever. Anyone have a front yard and some cinder blocks?)

but where is the fun in that

The great battle of the Ｕ．Ｓ．Ｓ．　ＢＲＯＷＮ　Ｃ．　ＳＴＥＮＮＩＳ　continues. Stay tuned for more!