Imagine, if you will, that it was still approximately March and I still had not reinstalled that clear acrylic cupholder thing as I said I needed to do from the hitlist… so I’ve been running around completely cupholder-less all winter.

Well, the useful daylight is back and my spring mountain shitposting rally is coming up in a few weeks. It was time to get to work on that list! The original post was quite long and a little more of a bunch of complaints. Over about the ~2000 miles after the first bootups and test drives, I got to know everything well enough to start determining what was a ‘bug’ and what was just expected behavior.

For example, yes… the E4OD is just that doofy feeling and I’d need to have some modded parts installed and likely go to the aftermarket control options if I wanted less sloshy behavior. It’s just a 1980s 4-speed truck transmission based on a 1970s 3-speed one.

The remaining salient points were related to quality of life and operation. It was still too arcane to use, and I wanted to bring things to a “walk-away” state at a minimum. I therefore considered the following items still relevant from the beginning.

• The little Facet clicker pumps I was using for oil bilging, as robust as they were to date, definitely had to go. I’m going to replace them with a single motor pump which will add a lot more flow capacity and the power overhead to push through the unrefined maple syrup that 15W-40 (and really even 5W-40) becomes when it gets cold.
• I needed to put the oil bilging system on a timer circuit such that it will keep running for 10-20 seconds after I power down. I was accomplishing this by cycling the key to on/run and waiting for that much time, but that gets annoying and also was forcing the glow plug circuit to cycle as well, each time.

Those were what I called the “big design points”. I also came up with some relatively minor bugs to address:

• I wanted to reroute the PCV system upstairs to a point immediately behind the air filter, in the interest of eventually figuring out an oil catch can system. Vantruck currently nibbles on engine oil at a rate of about 1 quart per 1000 miles, largely a consequence of me stuffing boost into a high blow-by engine design and having two turbochargers worth of foamy, aerated oil coming back in. The compressor housing and inlet of the left turbo is always wet with oil at the moment, and it’s definitely annoying.
• I retained the internal-regulator alternator from the 460 big block because I didn’t want to mess with the externally regulated alternator wiring. It’s a smaller physical frame size and so doesn’t like to charge with the slightly lower idle speed of the IDI. I’ll need to either swap alternators or regear it slightly with a smaller pulley.
• I wanted to relieve two sharp bends that the Boingy Hose™ had to make exiting the compressors, replacing them with silicone elbows instead. I didn’t want the highly strained hose layers at these bends to eventually become a weak spot.

Those last three are pretty easy, but the first two needed design work. Let’s begin! First, the relay that will save my empire:

This is an adjustable time-delay relay that is found under a couple of brands. Fundamentally, it’s a little timer circuit connected to a coil driver, and you can get them in various timer setups (e.g. delay off-to-on, on-to-off, one shot for a number of seconds, and so on).

This one is a delay on-to-off variant, meaning it will turn on instantly with a signal at the trigger input, but will hold the contacts closed for some amount of time once the trigger signal is removed. Under the black lid is a trimpot that lets me set the delay-off time in seconds. Not super accurately, but for random process control functions, it’s perfectly fine.

The CATBOI (Complicated Automatic Turbo Bilge Operating Interface)

Contrary to Pentagon committees, I spent about 37 seconds thinking of that one. It came to me while I was assessing the edibility of an indigestion (that’s the collective noun) of QuikTrip roller grill egg rolls, my comfort food of choice. I ended up selecting four of the strongest of the litter.

Anyways, now that I’ve eliminated any possibility of this post being picked up by a mainstream automotive news website… What I was looking for was a bit more complicated of a state machine than “run for a bit after key off”.

• If I key to ACC, or ON/RUN without the engine running, the bilge pump should only run for a few seconds. I don’t want it to just stay on the entire time if I were just hanging around powered down.
• If the key is in ON/RUN with the engine running, it should stay on. Or, there should be a means to bypass it completely such as an oil pressure activated switch.
• If I key off, it will keep running for a few seconds.

Ah hell… something about a thousand words. Just look at the state table in the drawing:

To achieve this goal, I dug around on the Internet™ and found some circuits that let you make a “one shot” pulse using two relays. That way, turning the key to ACC or ON/RUN will only trigger the delay-off function of the timer relay once.

PSW1 is an oil pressure switch that is closed when pressurized and open otherwise. It’s wired to completely bypass the pulse generator relays, just keeping high (12V) on the trigger input of the timer relay. Strictly speaking, it’s called a “Oil pressure safety switch” – the combination of words needed to find a normally open pressure actuated switch for some reason.

You’d think it would be the other way around… Normally closed and wired to alarm or warning light, and otherwise kept open by oil pressure if the engine is running normally.

I rigged up this bench test of the circuit to make sure everything worked the way I thought it would. The two toggle switches simulate keying ON/RUN and PSW1.

Notice the little motor that’s in the middle (to the left of the three relay bank). I found out that the one-shot pulse generator was too fast, and the timer relay discarded the trigger as noise. Adding the motor inline between the pulse generator relays “stretched” the pulse by forcing the second relay to take longer to switch.

The circuit otherwise worked as I had drawn out. Flip the ON/RUN switch, the green motor at the right runs for about 10 seconds. Flip the PSW1 switch and the green motor stays running. Unflip both switches, and the motor stays running for about 10 seconds.

I dug around my mental illness hoard treasure trove and found an adjustable inductor from some unknown application that had approximately the characteristics of the motor winding. It couldn’t be too high in resistance, or the second pulse generator relay would never trip. But if it were low enough resistance, most of the time the inductance was too low to pull the pulse long enough.

And yes, I did try “Just wire another relay’s coil in between”, but that fell on the “too high resistance to trigger any more” side of the hill.

I sacrificed one of the other automotive relays in my boomer unicorn figure collection Electronic Components Archive and simply soldered the inductor in place of the former relay coil. It was then encased in moldable glue putty.

There. Nobody will ever know you aren’t a relay.

I ordered a small relay and fuse box enclosure to make the final wiring according to the circuit diagram. These are all over the Bezos-Net and eBay and seem to be a genericized part.

I found one problem. The timer relay is extra tall and hence doesn’t fit in the enclosure. Soooo…… what now? Order a different one? See if I can mount it sideways?

Nah, I just marked the location of the relay with a paint marker and transferred it to the cover while it was still wet. Then I took a hole saw to it, forever ruining any sort of weatherproofness this box ever had

(None. It had none. The back of it is open, and the lid has no gasket. The wire exit has no grommet either.

I terminated the wires in various flavors of Weather-Pack connector. There’s only four connectors: One for power in (12V), one for the oil pressure switch, one motor output, and one input signal for the Hot In ACC/RUN (HIAR) circuit of the ignition switch.

By some weird alignment of the Chinesium-rich asteroids, I found that Vantruck already HAD a set of fender through-holes that somehow lined up exactly with this generic Amazon relay box. Down to the planar offset of the two mounting ears, even.

What the… Was this relay box a knockoff of some generic U.S. auto industry hole pattern from the 60s-70s? Maybe, because this was where the “Duraspark” ignition control module of the 460 went, so perhaps it was actually shaped for an existing standard. A lot of Chinesium automotive products seem to have similar traits to this: They were bred from vintage American car parts and continue the bloodline today in genericized forms.

The motorized bilge pump’s mechanical integration was next. I already owned one of these generic gear pump looking things from a round of candidate parts purchasing in 2022 after Snekvan was put together.

For a while, I used it for…. pump stuff. Transferring oil around, siphoning my own gas tanks, siphoning everyone el’ yeah anyways.

Now it comes time to mount it to Vantruck’s frame. After some scurrying around underneath, I identified a location close to the front right of the engine mounting crossmember where it could hang out and be close to the turbos, but also have a clear shot upstairs to the oil return fitting I put into the timing gear cover.

I cooked up this BRACKET™ to mount the motor by its four base-mount holes and attach to the crossmember using a through-bolt. It’s made of the moist remnants of a reel of carbon fiber nylon. Nothing very strenuous, and the through-bolt captures all of the layers together so I’m not dependent on layer strength to hang a heavy motor from.

It sits here, nested right by the right-hand intake and immediately aft of the suspension swingarm. A tee fitting joins the two turbo drains at the pump inlet. The pump outlet has a check valve facing upwards, so any oil that is ejected but remains in the ~3 foot vertical rise section of the hose doesn’t just start coming over and sleeping on the couch again swearing it’ll get its act together soon.

A couple of feet of oil/fuel hose later, and I was ready for business. The business:

Yep, I decided to crack the dashboard open again and make good on a promise I made to myself last year: NO BOOMER WIRING. Epithets aside, y’all know what I mean: Avoiding the pile of spaghetti almost all project car wiring devolves into.

Well, to even access the HIAR circuit at all, I had to tap the ignition switch circuit and the only way to do that was to open the dashboard up.

From the 1986 factory wiring diagram, I selected circuit 297 as the HIAR candidate since it also had a convenient breakout point where power is supplied to several existing circuits.

I then extended the pages of my notebook dedicated to the LEWD (something something Jalopnik will not run this one uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu… LEWD, CATBOI, where will it end?) with a new definition for the timer module. I found that my C-218 had an empty spot where presumably some option wasn’t checked when the chassis eventually becoming Vantruck was ordered.

And so, I commandeered it for the timer module. I ran the connection using one of the several extra redundant wires embedded into the LEWD, for just such an occasion. My notebook diagram notation is in the same style as the 1980s Ford schematic for consistency.

Really the only thing after the dashboard interfacing was finding enough wire to make it across the engine bay and down the side. For such a long run, I wanted to up the wire size from 16-18 gauge, so I picked up some new spools of 12 gauge primary wire. These don’t actually fit into the Weather-Pack housings, but I made it work with some squeezing…

Alright, well NO BOOMER WIRING sure lasted 15 minutes. I officially have ONE wire that runs outside of the big bundle! It goes from the timer module to the pump motor. It’s all over.

Time to fire it up and test it and oh…

Oh nyo. This pump just doesn’t even. It would seem like all this time I’ve been transferring fluids with minimum upstream pressure – basically free flow. The check valve adds a little bit of “cracking pressure” (forward voltage, if you will) and that seems to have made the rickety cover plate of the pump unhappy. Oil was dripping slowly but surely out the sides as it ran.

I found out why, too. The plate wasn’t even flat. It was bowed downwards at the corners, where presumably the piece was in the punching die. This meant the O-ring behind it barely, if ever, sealed. I’m guessing the pumps that cost more than $69 don’t have this problem.

Oh well – if you burn through the cheap Chinesium thing, it’s time to buy a real one (also still likely made in China but to slightly more emotional support when growing up)

My solution was simply to turn the plate around so the corners bowed upwards away from the pump surface. Then when I tightened the screws, it became preloaded instead. This, of course, caused the pump gears to jam and I had to run it in for a half hour to free it up again.

(Easily predictable future failure…. noted for the world to see)

The other small kibbles

The motor pump and timer circuit both worked as anticipated, so I now had what I called “walk away” ability: I can just power down and walk away. The pump keeps pulling for about 10 seconds after the fact, and I can leave it on ACC mode too and it won’t keep running forever.

With that mission achieved, I moved onto my other small points of annoyance.

I designed a small right angle fitting to be 3D printed from nylon. One end accepts a hose with a bead-ish end, and the other is supposed to press fit and gently snap into a hole drilled into the air filter. The air filter will have a hole drilled into the top, in a bit of a homage to the original snekvan integration.

The PCV hose now gets rerouted above-board towards the driver’s side. It’s the chunky black hose coming from the center of the intake area here.

I used a GM 6.5 CDR valve (part number CV916) which has hose fittings on both sides, unlike the Ford/International part number which is supposed to be clamped to a bushing. This made the interface easier than the janky approach I took with Snekvan with flaring out a hose around the short bushing nipple.

Only downside is that the hose size is a little awkward: It best fits a 7/8″ or 22mm hose, which is not super commonly found except in very thick wall (think gas station dispenser hose) rubber with steel armoring. I ended up finding some short lengths on eBay. A barb fitting in the middle between this hose and the air filter changes it to a 3/4″ diameter.

(It was tempting to use coolant/heater hose instead, since those come in 7/8″… but be well aware they are different kinds of rubber and the coolant/heater hose will disintegrate if it’s put into contact with hot oil fumes)

The Fitting™ completed and implanted into the driver’s side air filter. I’ll need to keep an eye on this filter over the next few thousand miles, since it’ll likely slowly collect oil gunk in it and could clog up quicker than the other side. If I were to dream up an oil catch system, it’ll likely live above this filter.

Next up was correcting the sharp bend in the Boingy Hose™. The tightest bend it makes, where the spring reinforcement is basically touching itself, is on the driver’s side. I was going to replace it with a 2″ silicone elbow, and to do that I need couplers. Out comes the ol’ eBay bead roller and a chunk of exhaust pipe.

The 2″ silicone elbow had one leg cut short, just long enough to accommodate the T-bolt clamps.

Here is the bend installed and the Boingy Hose™ reattached orthogonally to where it used to be. This allowed me to control the bend radius but more importantly the offset. Previously, with the Boingy Hose™ left loose to Boing, it tended to wander close to the unshielded exhaust downpipe and turbo inlet area. I didn’t want this thermal gradient causing long-term aging and fatigue problems.

I also just replaced the left hose entirely since it’s already been beat up some by me pushing and poking at it. Now, with the silicone coupler starting it in the right position, its bends are less severe and I better constrained it in the middle and near the top.

I decided to skip doing the right side for now, as the bend was much less sharp (about the same as the silicone elbow) and it actually required removing the whole downpipe assembly. I’ll revisit this later when it pops in a very inconvenient location!

Finally, with the system basically reassembled, I popped the alternator belt and pulley off to full send the last item on the agenda.

When pulley too large, simply make pulley smaller. I threw it on Tinylathe and set the compound slide to the V-belt flank angles and had at it. I made the pulley 10 percent smaller in pitch diameter to increase the alternator speed a little beyond a 460 big block at idle. Hopefully this will give me a bit extra margin as well.

…….and of course, I did my usual here. I mean, every industrial pulley you buy seems to be painted or powder coated in the belt bath. I guess it just rubs off quickly?

And that’s it for what I called Vantruck’s “v1.1 Patch” while I was working on it to various people in my social groups. Patch is now live, devs listened, mods are asleep.

Maybe some day I’ll make a jackbolt style tensioner for this thing like Econocrane had (and which I made for Spool Bus) but that night wasn’t the night. A big wrench to grab the alternator ear it was! Because that coming weekend, April 6th, was the Doing of the Thing…

And the Thing Was Did

Bright and early (for me. Read: 11:45am) and on the war path to Robbinsville, NC. There were no more excuses. I’ve trusted this thing for just under a year now, and it’s been all over the place in the Atlanta area and done a little bit of everything. I know it inside and out.

And so, Vantruck checks off the last box in my typical christening ceremony:

• ✅ Go buy your own parts (local roads, lower speeds, short distances)
• ✅ Go to McMaster-Carr (nearby, optional highway)
• ✅ Go buy me boba (cross metro, mostly highways, but within Oops-I-Didn’t-Tighten-The radius)
  
• ✅ Tail of the Dragon (no mercy, burn the ships)

That was great! Well, for some definition of “Great”. Here it is after the northbound pass! I popped the hood to let things cool down some more and had some very enthusiastic onlookers to entertain.

It was every bit as terrifying as I remember it back in 2019. But now it was faster, almost comically quick for something its size. With all new shock absorbers, it didn’t bounce much either. As a result, I began cooking probably hotter than I should have, the dually rear end helping immensely with stability. It had enough torque to throw the rear end out on at least two of the hairpins, much to my 1. abject horror the first time, and 2. unmitigated giddiness the second time.

I came in with roughly even wear across the steer tires and left with the outer halves of the tread basically scrubbed clean. This I feel is largely the effect of the Ford double-cross-T-Rex-arms swing-axle style front suspension they call the Twin I-Beam, which seems adept at pointing your axles in random directions.

The Press Photos

Forget anyone else, this is what I have been waiting to see for over 2 years!

First off, we have the “See photographer, squeeze the goose” shot. The IDI will shoot out a bit of “diesel puff” from overfueling before the boost rises to match it. It gets the point across without being too obnoxious. This is not a coal roll tune – if a mechanical diesel were set up for that much fuel, it would be undriveable and be billowing smoke all the time.

Second, the hero shot/poster shot! The lighting on this one was absolutely perfect and the composition really evokes the wallowing school bus dynamic.

And finally, we have the “oh, so that’s why 1/2 of my front tires are missing the tread” shot. Behold, the 90% A/R sidewall tuck. I actually inflated the fronts all the way to 80 PSI and they still got this bad.

I went northbound and then southbound and then HONESTLY, THAT’S ENOUGH FOR ME. I’ve said that driving this thing on the Dragon is not pleasant in the least, and after this point it’s only a ‘Have To, not Want To” activity. It was to say I did it and the “project” can officially close.

This was a fun little day trip. I hung around the resort/tourist trap area for another hour or so to cater to curious onlookers, and was off the mountain around sunset. I took the somewhat relaxing, less mountain descent in the dark route of highway 515 because I was just fed up with throwing the steering wheel 690 degrees every 15 seconds.

We All Know What’s Next: The Spring Pile of 2024

I lied. Every ship of the line also has to do the funny thing after the final commissioning, which is obtain another copy of itself. This is the inaugural pile of the New Robot Trap House, a 1988 E350 which was christened in my terrible van group chat as Uploaf (spelled ⬆️🍞, as emoji spelling is considered a must)

Yep! I keep a pulse all over the Former Confederacy for discarded 3rd-generation IDI van chassis based things, and just so happened to find one in Birmingham, Alabama. Just two hours away, and even for $800 in This Unprecedented Economy. Hell, it’s like inflation never hit. Vans are a stablecoin, and I will stand by those words. A running, driving Ford cargo van is always worth $3-5K to somebody, and the apocalypse diesel can command a significant premium if you find an apocalypse-oriented buyer.

I didn’t know that the way between Birmingham and Atlanta actually had mountains. I thought it was just flat, but apparently looking on a topology map, the Apple Asian Mountains do reach down this far. On the way there I was definitely thinking there were going to be a few hills that hurt on the way back. But Vantruck made it disturbingly easy to accelerate up the highway grade while pulling this thing along. I practiced riding the EGT danger zone (keeping it 1200 degrees F or less for continuous use) pulling up long slopes. I don’t think Vantruck will do this very often, but it’s good to know its limits. And after the whipping on the Dragon, I trusted the running gear for just about anything.

As usual (and my preference!), it was Ran When Parked and left some place for over a decade before someone said to get rid of the junk. Good… don’t fuck it up for me by trying to fix it. They definitely tried though, as the engine lid was off and the transmission was drained (huh?) and the battery terminals looked recently replaced. Whatever the case, it really didn’t need anything besides fully charging the batteries, pre-priming the mostly dry fuel system, then just snorting the funny spicy canned air until something lights off.

Uploaf might have been my first commissioned pile. I sold it in June, not to a random Internet stranger, but to two of my friends from Ohio who had the nerve to fly down on one-way plane tickets to DRIVE it back to Cleveland.

What? Are you guys literally insane from huffing microplastics?

I did a fair bit of shoring-up work beyond just getting it running and driving for this reason. I provided a “warranty” and a free escort up to the Bucee’s not far from the Tennessee line, and then it ain’t my problem no more! Based on the chat history, it seems like they made it all the way to Columbus, OH before the alternator belt fell off and hilarity ensued. They got back… eventually.

(Now that it’s fall, I’m thinking of doing a Fall Fix n’ Flip of a similar nature. Or, buying Econocrane back from Speedycop…)