1987 F150

reminds me of the time . when I had to do the one on ranger pick up
and it was on top of pipe
if it wasn't for liquid wrench in the bottles . it wouldn't have come out
I too sacrificed a 7/8 wrench in the process

 

I used these guys in Kirkand 8 years ago. Their prices were decent back then: https://www.carbconn.com/hemi

 

Good to know, that's who I got referred to, I left them a voice mail, see if I get a call back monday or not.

 

I just sold the 89 i6 4x I bought last spring. That thing was rode Hard and put up wet but I had very few parts that needed replaced. It’s strange with trucks in general here some love a nice easy life but bleed ya dry while the beat ones seem to keep going right along. I really liked that one of mine but the big six never was even as good as my old 79 4wd six in terms of mpg’s. Hopefully the new beater, a $500 Tacoma 3rz is better.

 

The ECU swap is partially to help with the mileage, in addition to just general tunability. The stock tunes on the EEC-IV systems weren't much to write home about.

 

Boy, am I getting bloody tired of your basic FLAPS parts being garbage. Just got home from about a 1600 mile trip in the truck, and everything was great, even on a pretty rough tune, my mileage is up to almost an average of 15MPG in this 35 year old beater.

But on the way home, coming out of Susanville yesterday, the brand new engine thermostat I put in it appx 2 years ago decided to fail.

Luckily I generally always buy "Safety" Thermostats, so it fails open, so it wasn't going to hurt the engine, but cruising along at highway speeds, all the way to Klamath Falls, generally seeing about 160F, and it would cool down so much on long downhills, that it would actually kick on the engines warm up enrichment.

So I got to change a thermostat in the parking lot of the hotel in Klamath Falls last night. Woo.

Maybe I'm just unlucky, or maybe I'm an idiot and doing something wrong installing them, but this is like the fifth or sixth premature thermostat failure I've had with FLAPS thermostats over like the last decade.

 

I've owned (3) 1989 F150's all with the 300 I6. Crazy questions, but are there any pull-a-part yards near where you live? The yards were always had several 87-91 trucks on them and i used to come out with wheelbarrow full of spares. Hate to hear your problems, mine were great trucks - would own one again.

 

Ugh, I went through a similar thing back with my Fox-body 347 powered track car. I bought a brand new Stant "quality" thermostat that had a safety catch that locked it open if it go too hot It NEVER got too hot, but the thermostat locked open and I could never get the engine up to temp and out of enrichment unless it was really highly loaded. I though I was chasing a tuning issue for about a month until I realized the thermostat was junk. Such a pain in the rear. Hours wasted draining all the coolant and changing to a "lower quality" thermostat to solve my problem.

 

There are, just miserable to go hit them this time of year.

 

Yeah, it's getting ridiculous.