Axle pt 14

 Here are a couple more pictures of the passenger side spring mount. I also manged to take off one of the brake calipers as well as snap off the bleeder valve.

 

U joints

 Thomas dropped by the other day and was concerned because Old Blue was acting up. There was a loud bang when he would shift in to drive from park.
I figured it was a bad U-joint. One peak under the truck and my hypothesis was confirmed. We picked up a couple new U-joints and after a fair amount of "persuading" with a 10lb hand sledge and punch we got the old ones out. The new ones pressed in relatively easily and the whole job only took a hour and a half.

Axle pt13

 I finally was able to weld out the axle today! Luckily the management at the shop I work at are super cool and let me use one of the MIG welders after work. Its been years since I have done any serious MIG welding and I still got it! I also notched out a piece of the bucket to allow for clearance of the heim joint.

Axle pt12

I addressed the coil buckets tonight. I tack welded a piece of angle iron in-between the lower control arm mounts so they would not move and cut off the other end. I also trimmed down the track bar bracket so it would fit under the coil perch. 

Green

As expected after blasting I hit the lug nuts with some self etching primer and green engine enamel. 

Grillin

Thomas finally ordered a new grill and blinkers for old blue. 

Track bar

 My Ruff Stuff track bar came in quite a while ago and I forgot to post about it. Here are a couple pics.Check out the size of those heim joints!

 

Axle pt 11

 I was able to squeeze a little bit of wrenching in. The lug nuts on these 89 F350 are huge! I did not have a 1-1/16 socket so I had to use a crescent wrench with a cheater bar. Here is a shot of the axle with the tires off, most people hate the dually hubs and want the single wheel hub and even go as far as having the hubs machined down. Me on the other hand I want the dually hubs, it was either those or wheel spacers. The beauty in these hubs is that I can mount Humvee wheels with out modifying them at all.

After pulling the lugs I glass bead blasted them, and they cleaned up quite nicely.   

Started!

After Quite a bit of searching I couldn't find out what the function of the loose cable is. I read about the 47rh transmission quite a bit. The only interaction between the first three gears and the engine are via the TV cable. I read up quite a bit about the TV cable and its adjustment. The is a button at the end of the housing near the end of the throttle cable(throttle cable shown above)that allows adjustment of the throttle cable. You can push the button in and slide the TV cable housing forward (to allow sooner shift points) or backward (to allow later shift points). I moved the housing forward about 3/16 " and test drove the truck and it shifted as it should. The truck still jumps out of overdrive as soon as you back of the pedal (even slightly). Being that over drive is electronically controlled we will address that issue by replacing the TPS sensor with a potentiometer which will allow us to determine when the truck will shift in or out of overdrive.  
If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything