Tag Ford F-150

This is the Ford C6 transmission built by Ford to be a rugged automatic capable of handling their V8 lineup. It’s pulled its weight in everything from daily drivers to stump pullers, off-road rigs, and tire smoking strip machines. Hi folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage. Today we’re shining a spotlight on one of Ford’s toughest and most iconic transmissions, the C6 automatic. Its sheer strength and dead simple design make it a favorite for all kinds of car and truck builds, and it still holds its own in a ton of classic Fords today. But how much do you really know about what’s going on inside that case? Stick around, because by the end of this video, you might just know more than your mechanic does.

Hello, the C6 rolled out in 1966, stepping in for the older MX and FX automatics. Ford needed a gearbox tough enough to handle the muscle of their big V8s like the 429, 460, and the iconic FE series engines. Enter the C6, a three-speed automatic built for serious torque duty. Unlike its cast iron predecessors, the C6 used lighter materials while still delivering solid performance. This transmission quickly earned a name among Ford fans and builders as a gearbox that could handle anything. It stuck around in production until 1997, an impressive 30-plus year run that proved its staying power.

What really makes the C6 stand out is just how many roles it can play. You’ll see it bolted up to everything from small block Windsor to Ford’s massive big blocks and even the International Harvester diesels in Ford’s toughest trucks. But here’s the catch: the bell housing isn’t interchangeable. You’ll need the right C6 for your engine family, and Ford made four main versions: one for the small blocks like the 302 and 351 Windsor, another for the big blocks like the 429 and 460, a version for the FE series engines like the 390 and 428, and the diesel-specific version for engines like the 6.9 and 7.3 L IDI.

Hey guys, future editor Ed here, and I just wanted to make a note that the transmission that you see up on the screen now is the diesel version of the C6. The bell housing is extremely similar to the big block housing for the 460, but there’s a cutout on the bottom for the diesels that’s a little bit different, and also the dowel locations and the holes don’t quite line up between the big block and the diesel bell housings. Now, you can make one fit the other with some modifications, but it’s a bunch of work. So, your best bet if you have a 460 is to go out and find a big block housing. If you’ve got a diesel, go out and find a diesel housing. But just to let you guys know that you can make modifications to make those two interchangeable if you really want to.

And it didn’t stop at cars and trucks. The C6 even powered industrial gear and military vehicles. Its rugged build made it a perfect fit for extreme environments, whether it was digging trenches or rolling through battlefields. Ford hit the jackpot with this one, and the C6’s rock-solid design locked in its legendary status.

Now you might be wondering which vehicles came with the C6. From 1967 to 1996, it was a staple in F-series trucks paired with engines like the 316, 351 Windsor, 390 FE, and 460 big block. It also showed up in Broncos, Galaxies, Mustangs, Cougars, and Thunderbirds, just to name a few. Ford even made 4×4 variants by modifying the tail shaft bolted up directly to transfer cases like the NP 205 and Borg Warner 1356. With all this versatility, it’s no wonder the C6 became Ford’s go-to automatic gearbox for all those years.

Let’s get into the specs. The C6 is a three-speed automatic with gear ratios of 2.46 to 1 in first, 1.46 to 1 in second, and direct 1:1 in third. Reverse comes in at 2.18 to 1. This thing is built tough, tipping the scales around 165 lb dry. The main case, along with the bell housing, is aluminum. Every now and then, you’ll find a cast iron tail shaft, but those are very rare and for specific applications. So generally, the tail shaft will also be cast aluminum. It holds 10 to 12 quarts of Type F fluid, which is famous for its friction properties to give the C6 those crisp, snappy shifts. If you keep up with your fluid changes and filter swaps, this transmission will run smooth for decades.

The C6 wasn’t just tough; it also changed the game with some really clever innovations. One standout feature was Borg Warner’s flexible shift band. Traditional rigid shift bands wore unevenly and led to sloppy shifts over time. The flexible shift band in the C6 wrapped evenly around the drum, delivering smoother, more precise shifts and serious staying power. It’s the kind of thing you just might not notice until it’s not working.

One of the C6’s smartest features is its Simpson planetary gear set. This setup combines two planetary gear assemblies into one compact unit, cutting down on moving parts while cranking up torque transfer. What does that mean for you? Well, it’s less complexity, fewer breakdowns, and better performance, especially when towing or tackling really steep grades. That Simpson gear set is why the C6 can handle heavy loads and big horsepower like a champ, making it a favorite for racers and heavy-duty truck enthusiasts.

Like the C6, it also offered Ford’s select shift capability, letting drivers manually hold the transmission in first, second, or third gear using the column or console shifter. It gave drivers the control they needed for towing, tackling steep grades, or handling rough off-road terrain. Now, while this might sound like a standard feature today thanks to manual modes and paddle shifters, select shift was ahead of its time. With mechanical linkages and internal valves adjusting the gears, it gave drivers a hands-on tactile feel with every shift. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, this feature made the C6 stand out as a driver-focused automatic.

The C6 was sometimes referred to in conjunction with Ford’s select shift Cruisomatic branding, highlighting its smooth shifting and driver control features. Select shift is a key part of that image, proving you could have comfort, capability, and control all in one package.

One of the C6’s biggest strengths is its old school simplicity, which makes it a favorite for installations, swaps, service, and upgrades. Its one-piece design for the bell housing and main case eliminates weak points, making it tough as nails and practically leak-proof. Two big wins over older automatics. Builders love the C6 because it can take on serious horsepower right out of the box, and with a few tweaks, it is practically unstoppable.

Of course, no transmission is perfect, and the C6 is no exception. If the gears start slipping, it’s usually down to worn clutches or low on fluid. Hard shifts, that’s often a sticky valve body. Leaks usually pop up around the pan gasket or seals, especially in older units that haven’t seen regular TLC. Stay on top of fluid changes and keep an eye on seals to head off most problems before they get serious.

There’s also a few other downsides to keep in mind with the C6. The biggest downside is no overdrive gear. At highway speeds, the engine revs pretty high, which kills fuel economy. That’s why a lot of builders looking for modern drivability swap in transmissions like the AOD or E4OD, which come with overdrive. Another drawback is the weight. It’s a hefty unit, and the extra mass can be a concern for certain builds. The C6 also isn’t the most efficient; it eats up more power compared to modern automatics before getting it down to the wheels.

Now let’s talk about hooking it up and plugging it in. The C6’s input shaft has 31 splines at the torque converter end and 30 at the clutch hub. Thanks to its consistent spline design across all the years, torque converters are typically interchangeable across years and models as long as they match the engine family: that small block, big block, FE, or diesel. Ford offered a range of torque converters with stall speeds tailored for specific vehicles and applications. Thankfully, the aftermarket has you covered. If you need something custom, higher stall converters are a favorite for performance builds, while heavy-duty options shine for towing and off-roading. Pick the right converter for your engine’s power band and how you drive, and you’ll squeeze every ounce of performance out of your C6.

Speaking of upgrades, the C6 has one of the best supported aftermarket ecosystems you’re going to find. Shift kits are a go-to upgrade for crisper shifts and less slippage, while high stall converters and steel planetary gears are staples of high-performance builds. Chasing extreme horsepower, builders often even beef up the case and swap in heavy-duty clutches and bands. For off-roaders, a deep transmission pan is a must; it boosts fluid capacity and keeps things cool under tough conditions.

If you’re thinking about alternatives to the C6, the AOD and E4OD, which I mentioned earlier, are worth a look. The AOD throws in an overdrive gear, making it perfect for highway cruising, but don’t expect it to outlast the C6 in terms of toughness. The E4OD, on the other hand, is a heavy-duty four-speed with overdrive built for towing and hauling. It’s more complex and expensive, but it’s a fantastic choice for modernizing old trucks for later duty jobs. The FMX or C4 are solid options; they’re smaller and lighter, and they won’t stand up to the same torque as a C6.

So down to the bottom line: the C6 is a tank, rugged, dependable, and ready for just about anything. It’s right at home in trucks, off-road rigs, or even high-performance street cars—any build where toughness takes a spotlight. Sure, it’s not the most modern or fuel-efficient option, but its simplicity and strength make it a true classic that’s pretty hard to ignore. Whether you’re restoring a classic Ford or dreaming up your next swap, the C6 should definitely make your short list.

All right guys, well there you go. That’s everything that I know or pretend to know about the Ford C6 automatic transmission. Now, I don’t know if you know more than your mechanic does at this point, but you know, I feel like I learned a bunch doing this video. I hope you did too. Guys, if you did, give me a like, give me a subscribe. That really does help me out. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, if I got something wrong, put them in the comments. I read them all. I really appreciate that. Thanks again so much for watching, guys, and we will see you next time. She’s rough around the edges, but she’s doing fine. Take her away, get things to shine, and oh, Bullnose Garage, she’s considered divine. Thanks again for watching. We will see you next time. Thanks again for watching. We will see you next time.

Howdy folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage, and this is my project for the weekend. This obviously is a brand new stereo system for the truck, and this is a $15 head unit from Amazon. You see it’s got the old retro look. It’s supposed to have Bluetooth and hands-free calling. We’re going to see if it actually works for $15. I don’t know, there’s not even a picture of it on the box. It is super crazy light, like there’s nothing to this thing. But for 15 bucks, you know, we’re going to see if it’s worth your time. So I’m going to put that in, see how it goes.

The other interesting thing as part of this project this weekend is this speaker right here. It is by far the most expensive thing on this entire table. You can get a 5×7 speaker from Amazon for like $10 or $15. This one here was about 80 or 90 bucks, but the reason is because it’s actually a dual voice coil speaker that has both left and right channels built in. It’s specifically made for old vehicles with a dash single dash speaker like my truck or older car. So we’re going to see if that’s worth the money once I get all this stuff put in. And these are obviously like just cheapo JVC 6 and a half inch speakers, the cheapest ones I can find on Amazon. So at some point in the future, I’m going to put a real stereo system in this truck that’s really nice with some subwoofers and amplifiers and the whole bit. For now, I just want to be able to listen to Pandora while I’m driving, so that’s the goal I’m trying to reach today. Let’s see if I can get there. Stick around.

Hello! All right, so the first thing is to get this door panel off. It’s pretty simple. There’s a screw here that holds this on, and then there’s a bunch of these little clips back behind the door here that go into the panel, and then the door clips onto these. If you’ve got an older truck like this, I highly recommend going out and getting you some of these clips. I’ll put the link in the description. Before you get these, these break pretty easy, and if they do break while you’re taking this off and you put it back on without using these clips, the door is going to flop around a little bit and rattle. It’s just going to add to the general cacophony these old trucks make. So, uh, get them secured, and they’re pretty cheap. They’re not very expensive, so make sure you do that. All right, let’s get this thing off.

All right, there we go. And here you can see where those clips just pop in here. Especially if you got an older door panel, you don’t want to be too rough with these. This is actually pretty nice plastic, so it doesn’t break real easy, but it’s possible. So you just want to be careful taking these off. Here is the speaker. These speakers as well are aftermarket. They’re Polk, and they don’t sound too bad, but since I’m doing the entire system, I’m just going to go ahead and replace some of the speakers that I know, so I know what the RMS and the wattage are of them. That way, I can match them to my head unit and not have to worry about them. But like I said, these are pretty good speakers, actually. They sound pretty good, so I’m going to save them, but I’m not going to use them for this.

If you’ve never done stereo installation before, it is really simple. All these speakers just have two wires, a positive and a negative. You just have to make sure that you wire the positive to the positive side, the negative to the negative side, and that’s pretty much it. It does get a little bit more complicated when you start talking about crossovers and amps and, you know, different capabilities of head units and RMS wattage and all that stuff. But for the most part, if you’re just swapping out some stock parts, it’s real simple. It’s got the two plugs here. Whoa! They’re pretty old. Come on, there we go. Yeah, busted that off. It’s okay, it’s just the mounting point. If I want to use it again, I could maybe super glue that. They’re pretty old, but otherwise that still works. It’s still connected to the speaker, so it would be okay.

So while I got the door open and off the panel off, I’m going to go ahead and pop that new speaker in. For those of you curious, this is a set that I got from Amazon. They are really cheap. They’re like 25 bucks, JVC CSJ 620. We’re going to see how they sound. They got pretty good reviews. They’re just a cheap speaker I can use until I get the real thing put in this truck, you know, once I’m done with the engine and everything else. So let’s see how they go. This one’s actually missing a couple of screws. I’ll go see if I can find some that’ll work. When you’re working on old vehicles like this, a lot of times you’ll find missing screws and stuff because this is behind a panel you’re never going to see it. I don’t really care that they’re different colors. I don’t really care that this one here is a little bit crooked. Like I said, you’re never going to see it, so it doesn’t really matter. But having the screw in there is a good idea because it’ll stop things from rattling around, and like I said before, in the cacophony of noise these old trucks make, anything that you can stop from rattling is always a bonus. They are loud enough as they are. Let’s get the old radio in, so I’m going to go check to see if it works.

Okay, it is possible it’s the speaker itself, but it may also be the wiring. So to verify whether it’s the wiring or the speaker, I am going to swap this speaker to the other side of the truck and see if it gives me the same problem. If it does not give you the same problem, that means it’s a problem with my wiring. So if it’s a problem with the wiring, it’s probably here in the door. It may actually be these connectors that are back behind here, just old and corroded and not giving a really good connection. If that’s the case, then I can swap the ends out and put new connectors on. I’ve got those. So, uh, but yeah, we’re going to go see on the other side if this is a speaker problem or a wiring problem.

Okay, so, uh, I can’t let you listen to this because YouTube will give you a copyright strike, but, uh, it’s coming through fine on this side of the truck. So I’m going to swap this back over to the other side, run it again, just verify that I think it’s probably the wiring, and then we’ll go through the troubleshooting steps over there to figure out why the wiring over there might be kind of janky. Yeah, so there is clearly a problem somewhere in this wiring. So the easiest thing to do is just cut these off, assume that these are the problem, cut these off and replace them, and we’ll see if that does it. Normally, I like to do solder connections for most of this stuff, but because this is just a really kind of cheap, almost temporary repair, temporary for a few years, I’ll just go ahead and crimp like, you know, everybody else does. They’re doing car audio.

Always nice when your first instinct is correct. That’s awesome. Here we go, classic hits 101 gold. Now for the rest of this, you got to pull apart the dash, and there’s several screws up underneath here that you got to use to take. You take the screws out, and then you can pop this top off, and then these dash panels will come out so you can get behind here and do what you got to do. That’s it to the top speaker here and also old trucks. All right, best get to the speaker up here and to get back behind the radio, obviously. So let’s go ahead and get started.

Interesting story, when I first bought this truck, I had a hell of a time trying to get it registered in New Mexico from Texas because I bought it in Texas. One of the problems was the VIN number, and for some reason, I’m not sure if all the ’85 or Bullnose trucks are like this. In this particular truck, you can’t see the VIN number and the dash plate through the windshield, and I suspect it’s because this is an aftermarket windshield, and it’s got this black border all the way around it. Now, maybe not, I’m not sure, but for whatever reason, you can’t see the VIN number from the outside. So I had to actually take this dash panel off, the top dash pad off, before I went to the DMV so that they could actually see the VIN by crawling into the truck and looking through the top.

So you don’t have to take all these screws out of here. I took a whole bunch of them out because I wasn’t sure which ones I had to take out, so just took a long, and that piece comes off real easy. And so there’s my radio, pretty rough. That’s actually going to be a problem. All righty then, uh, let’s see what we got here. Well, there’s a ground there. Ooh, is there no antenna adapter? There may not be an antenna adapter. I may have to go buy one of those. And here is the wiring harness, and that one there is cut. I’m not sure where that used to go to or what that does. Power, ground, and remote is here, and that’s what the harness is still there, but all of the speakers have been cut at some point, and I’m not sure if this center speaker is wired in. I’ll have to dig into that, open this up and take a look at it. And see, it also looks like I’m going to have to get a new mounting for this. If the original harness was back there, I could rewire it back in, but it’s not. He just cut this. Whatever the original harness was, he just cut it. Yeah, see, there’s four, these are the four speaker wires that went to the center speaker. He just cut them. He’s like, I need that, just cut them, which means I got to rewire them. He probably, he may even pulled them out. Who knows? Hell, he may have rewired this whole thing.

So first of all, I got to get the mount for this so this will go in here and mount correctly, and I got to wire these together. This has been rewired. Okay, guys, so let me talk briefly about the situation that I found here. When you’re working on an old vehicle like this, especially if you’re doing wiring, changing out the stereo is a prime example. You never know what you’re going to find. So the previous owner, at some point, whether it was the one before me or somebody even before him, looks like they wired this whole thing. So these speaker wires are not original to the truck. Looks like they’ve also disconnected this top speaker here completely, and here’s where you can see originally where it wired in, and they just cut them. They just cut those wires, and unfortunately, they didn’t leave me the old harness, so I don’t have a harness that I can plug into my harness piece that I bought from Amazon. Don’t do that, guys. Please, if you’re wiring a radio, don’t just cut the wires. Unplug the harness and leave the original harness. Go out and buy the correct harness adapter for your vehicle. They’re not expensive. They’re like 10 or $15 at the worst. That’ll save you so much time and energy, and anybody who comes behind you, it’s just a courtesy, you know?

Now this radio is probably changed 20 years ago, so who knows what they were thinking back then. But now what this means is not only do I have to rewire this top speaker completely, but I have to figure out what I’m going to do in terms of these speakers because do I just do like they did and just wire it directly into the speaker wires, or do I actually build a harness? In my case, I think I’m just going to wire it directly into the wires, and the reason is because I think when I upgrade the audio next time on this truck, which will be a serious upgrade, we’re talking amplifiers, crossovers, the whole bit, I will probably, excuse me, I will probably rewire all of these to be new wires. And so when I do that, I will build a harness when that happens. But for now, I just want to get this working, so I think I’m just going to go ahead and cut these and rewire them directly. The power and the ground and the remote are all still hooked up, so I’ve got the wiring harness for that that I can plug into the radio harness and do that on my bench.

In addition to the screws that you have on the front here, there’s also some screws back up in here in the air vent area. You got to be careful with these because you don’t want to drop them. This dash pad is slated for replacement too at some point, but that’s in the future. And then once you got all the screws, it just comes right out. Oh, yep, there are those wires you cut right there. Yeah, all right, we’ll get something in through there, and we can rewire this speaker. I want to save that because I might be able to use that. Is that this? Because if that’s this? Yeah, okay, all right, of course, here we go. Okay, is that this? It is this. All right, so that means that I can use this when I do my audio upgrade next time. I don’t have to worry about trying to find that harness somewhere. Let’s see how this works. Not bad. So this is clearly the original speaker. I can use this harness, so I’m going to use it. Interestingly, also, this is only a single voice coil speaker, so it’s never designed to have stereo. So no matter what I was going to do, I was going to have to rewire part of this. Well, it should sound way better. We’re going to find out.

So here’s the new one. It’s a D572 5×7 from Retro Sound. It’s dual voice coil, got left and right channels going into the same speaker. We’re going to see how it does. They are not paying me for this. I bought this with my own money. It’s the only one that I can find that was reasonably priced. I’m kind of excited to check it out. And there she is, my new center channel speaker. As you can see, it’s got a connection for both left and right, two separate tweeters there to do left and right channel. Now, obviously, you’re not going to get great stereo surround sound from this because it’s coming from the same location, but I’m hoping it’ll bounce off the window, the windshield, and give me a little bit of more full sound than what came from stock. So let’s see how it fits. Factory, pretty much. Now, obviously, I got to wire it, run new wires, and all that jazz. But yeah, as a matter of fact, it came with wires. I think I might just be able to use these. They may be long enough. Oh yeah, yeah, that’s what we’re doing. We’re using these. I just got to make sure that I mark them.

One nice thing about older vehicles is that the dash is way simpler than in new ones. Man, I know some of these newer trucks, you have to want to wire something from up top here down through the dash, you have to take half the dash apart, run it through the door panel, come back in. It’s not quite that bad, but there’s still, I got plenty of room back here, so I’m just going to keep this wire the same length. I’m not going to worry about cutting it. It’s just open all the way through here. There’s just nothing. Oh, 1980s, you were a fun time. All right, that’s good. Putting it back in was actually easier than taking it out, so cool, that’s in there. I am going to wire this. The front goes to the dash, and the rear goes to the doors, which is kind of odd, but I think in this truck, in this case, just the way I need to go.

All right, so real quick, guys, I’m going to go over the wiring. This is the radio that I bought, and this is the harness that I bought for the truck. And there’s only two wires that these two connect to. One is constant power, and one is switched power, and that’s it. So constant power is the yellow, switched power is the red. The black, the ground actually goes to a ground that’s inside the truck. It’s not part of the actual wiring harness that comes from the truck. You have to ground it to a wire that’s in the truck there, so I’ve got that plugged there. This is an antenna wire, which the ’85 doesn’t use, and also this is an antenna wire, and this is a dimmer wire, and the radio doesn’t use a dimmer. So all we got is just constant, switched, and ground, and I’m going to go into the truck and hook up the ground now.

So this is the ground that I was talking about that’s already in the truck. It’s just simply bolted to a chassis bolt back here. Well, not really chassis, but there’s some metal framing back in here, and that’s all it’s bolted to. And I know it works because it worked for the old radio. Most vehicles that I’ve worked on have a ground built into the wiring harness for the radio, but this one doesn’t.

All right, and with that, we should be ready to test it. Just for now, I got power. I got power. Try again. 29% financing for 60 months plus $1,000 bonus cash. Don’t miss the B-Tough sale. Oh, perfect. Okay, so I’m going to turn that down so you can hear me. So the screen is really dim. I don’t know if there’s a way to make it brighter or not. That’s just a thing. This screen is really kind of dim, so that is what it is. As far as sound goes, it actually sounds pretty good. Let me see if I can figure out how to pair a phone with it, and I will be right back.

There we go, BT on. Okay, does it work? My God, old school. She’s an ’85. Paint’s a little… um, yeah, that’s a preview of something that’s coming. Uh, yeah, hello? Hey, sorry, what’s up? Nothing, I’m just actually testing my hands-free calling in my truck, so how do I sound? Okay, yeah, you sound fine. Okay, cool. For she’s rated the radio.

All right, guys, so I figured something out. Got her all mounted up nice and tight into the bezel. Doesn’t move or rattle or nothing, and I don’t have to use a mounting plate that you would buy from Amazon or from O’Reilly’s or any of those auto part stores. This radio is light enough, this particular model is light enough that it will mount right into this without any problem. It’s still super light, right? And here’s how I did it, a little bit of down-home engineering. Okay, so the metal bracket that comes… Make sure you guys can see this. Yeah, you can. So the metal bracket that comes with the radio right here, right? If you, uh, it’s just slightly bigger than this. This bezel is just a little bit, but the radio front around here is also just slightly bigger. So what you can do is you can sandwich this in between this metal piece and the radio bezel itself right here. The problem is that this metal piece won’t move forward far enough to clip into here like it’s supposed to because this bezel here is too thick. So all I did was put a couple of screws in here on the top. Right now, you think, oh my God, don’t screw your radio. Well, the thing is that there’s so little electronics inside this thing that there’s plenty of room in here. These screws aren’t even touching any of the boards or electronics or anything inside the radio, and that holds the body of the radio from moving back and forth, right? It’s not going to move.

Okay, now here’s the other thing is that the radio is actually just a little bit too thin this way for this opening, so it slides up and down unless… uh, let me go get something real quick. I’ll be right back. Unless you put something in here to keep it from sliding up and down. So all I did was I put a piece of airline tubing that I use for my airbags in my other truck, slit it right in there. Okay, that goes up from down to up. Sorry, I got this in my mouth. See, it goes down and up and down, right? It moves. Well, take a piece of air hose, get it to the right size. It’s a little bit tight, which is what you want. You pop that in there, push it down, and now it’s black. It matches everything else, and this doesn’t move up or down at all. It is not going anywhere, and I can just pop that right back into the truck, and away we go. And this isn’t going to rattle on me or move, and when I go to push the button, that’s going to have nice solid feedback. Not to worry about it rattling or moving around on me. That is great. I had no idea it was going to turn out that way. I love when things like this happen.

So there you go, guys. If you happen to get this particular radio and you have this particular dash piece, you can do this the exact same way with just a couple of screws and some air tubing. The more you know.

All right, guys, here we are paired. Now you can see that the… you can’t really see it. It’s very, very dim right there. You can kind of see it. Let me turn it down a little bit. Okay, but that’s how it looks. I’m pretty happy with it. Obviously, you can’t hear it, but it sounds good, I think. So I’ve already used it to make a phone call, and according to the person on the other side, I sound pretty good. I’m imagining that this is the little microphone here. I have really no idea, but I would think so. Um, yeah, I mean, so the interface is not great. It’s got a lot of glare, and it’s really kind of hard to see, and the background illumination is nowhere near bright enough to see in the daytime. But for my purposes, I think it’s going to be fantastic for $15, and pretty simple installation is definitely worth the money and your time to do. I do think it looks nice. I love the look inside the truck. You know, I’m super happy with that. It’s so nice to have Bluetooth that I can listen to music on my phone now. I’ll probably never use the radio again, really, because the radio reception around here is not great anyway. So yeah, I’m super happy with that.

All right, guys, well there you go. Weekend project officially a success. Got everything put in. I’m really happy with it. I think for 15 bucks, you can’t go wrong. Yeah, it’s got a couple of issues, but man, it’s $15. It works pretty good. It installs super simple. It’s a huge upgrade for me. Bluetooth hands-free calling, yeah, definitely worth it. The front speakers that I put in, the JVCs, they’re pretty nice. They sound really good for $25. They can’t be beat. And then that dash speaker, you know, I’ll have to listen to that for a while and figure it out. Right now, it sounds really good, but I didn’t have one hooked up before, so anything I put in there is going to sound better than that. But yeah, I don’t know if it’s worth the 80 bucks I spent on it, but we’re going to find out. Regardless, it sounds way better in here. So, guys, hopefully you learned something today. I know it’s a simple radio installation, and a thousand guys do them. There’s probably videos all over YouTube, but this one’s mine. At least you get a chance to see one of those vintage radios in action, the really, really cheap ones from Amazon. Yeah, I think it’s probably worth it. So, uh, yeah, if you got any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, internet ramblings, stick them below. Thanks again for watching, guys, and we will see you next time. She’s rough around the edges, but she’s doing fine, tinkering away, getting things to shine. No G, she’s considered divine. Thanks again for watching. We will see you next time. Thanks again for watching. We will see you next next time.

hi folks Ed here welcome back to Bullnose Garage and today I have a question for you what do this wiper motor this washer pump and this wiper washer switch all have in common they’re garbage and it runs for just a second and it turns off and it’s really inconsistent making those clicking noises that’s actually a way for you to know that there’s something going on with your motor if that module clicks like that all right so clearly that stuff is garbage today I’m going to replace all three of those things on my bullnose truck right here and I’m going to show you how to do it on yours the easiest is probably the washer fluid pump which is just a basically you pull out the old one and pop in the new one then we’ve got the wiper motor and that wiper motor is a little bit tricky cuz if you buy one from Amazon it uh seems like a direct replacement but it’s not quite you got to do some modification to it to make work and I’ll show you exactly how I did that to mine so you can do it to yours and finally a great upgrade is one that I did on the interior for the uh wiper and washer switch and I changed it from the old high low style to an intermittent style which is a really great modern upgrade for these old trucks so stick around and I’ll show you how to do all of that today hello let’s take a look and see all the bits and pieces that make this system work so first of all we’ve got your uh wiper motor right there that uh links to the wiper arms there and there and there’s only one motor for both uh there’s a linkage back there that controls them uh there we’ve got our sprayer nozzle on the 85 F150 there’s only one and then the line obviously comes down and goes to the reservoir which I’ve already got emptied you can see here down there that is the uh fluid pump and it just uh hooks up right there and pretty easy to replace so what I’m going to do is I’m actually going to take the entire Reservoir out get it good and clean uh it’s pretty gross in there and then uh go through and start doing the replacement I think the hardest part of this is going to be hooking up the motor and uh getting the cowl off so there’s several Phillips screws that you can see there that you got to take off to get this cowl off so first things first we got to get this cowl off and it’s not too difficult but there are a few steps you’ve got to know uh before you can just go ahead and pop it off of here so the first one I’m going to do is take off these wiper arms to do that get a screwdriver underneath this little bit there pull that up pop that out set that back down like that and now you can just wiggle it off of here get my screwdriver out of my hand so I can use both hands here there we go and this side will obviously be a little bit more difficult just cuz it’s uh you got to reach further but it’s the same idea pop that out set that down wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle oh it’s so hot wiggle something loose that ain’t been wiggle loose in 20 years wiggle wiggle wiggle there it goes almost took you guys out okay now we’ve also got these screws here to remove and we have to take off the anten mount anten mount’s pretty simple try to get under here and pop it off you can see this is already a little bit loose I’ve already taken the screws loose from underneath there we go oh that puppy’s already loose and then you just uh unplug it me let loose here there he goes there are several Phillips screws under here for the cowl and you just have to kind of go and take them out some somebody put a different screw in that one got a little following behind somebody else’s work all right here we go handy dandy correct tool for the job there’s some damage going on there so I’ll to be honest here and say I don’t know how this came from the factory but this truck is been around the block a few times so whoever had it before me has done some stuff to it and there’s some zip ties and some other stuff in here so I’m going to have to cut that off so that I can start working on uh getting the cowl off and uh replacing these lines take care of your truck you have to pull it from underneath the uh the trim here I’m a onean show so I got to do it myself I said this before guys I will say it again I am playing the learn as we go game I have watched videos on this and done a lot of research but I’ve never actually taken the cow off myself it takes some real wiggling and if you don’t want to scratch the paint on your cowl guys you have to be more careful than me I don’t know that I care that much about my paint cuz I’m going to repaint all this anyway but that’s going to be a real pain to get back on there without scratching the paint when I do it later you may take your hood off if you want to do it without scratching the paint for sure okay guys this is the ever popular 10 mm and this should be the only thing holding this Reservoir on and there we go we want to take this locking ring out and then just pulls right out of there okay guys so when I pulled mine out of here the uh the pump came out but the impeller and Gasket is still stuck in there so I got to figure out how to get that out of there uh but you know I got a pick set that I think I can get in there and uh yoink that out with all right guys here we are like a one week later I think I discovered that my wiper switch uh right there is actually faulty I think that’s what’s causing both the wiper motor and the uh the washer uh pump to not work correctly so I went out and got a replacement actually I got an upgrade so this is an intermittent wiper module uh my truck doesn’t have one from the factory so I’m going to go ahead and uh while I’m doing this add intermittent wipers so uh this whole setup is about 80 bucks from eBay uh that’s about the only place you can find them they got to pull them from another truck somewhere so uh but this one looks like it’s in pretty good shape and uh yeah let’s see how it works so to get to uh where this switch is so I can replace it you got to take both of these knobs off off uh my wiper switch knob has been broken for a long time so it just pops right off uh my light headlight switch though is actually still uh got good retention here so you have to find this little Notch uh that’s right there slide a tool back in there behind there like a hook and compress a ring back in here that’ll pop this off once those are off uh then you can come underneath here and I’m not sure if you can see or not there are uh a few Phillips head screwdriver or screws screwdriver a few Phillips head screws right there uh that’ll help you get this Dash panel off um and in my case I’ll probably have to move my tack cuz it’s after market uh sometimes you’ve got to remove this uh steering wheel uh shaft shroud right here but we’re going to see if we can do it without without that mine’s a little bit more complicated cuz I got some extra stuff there we go or to really get it out of the way in a future episode I will be doing this here part again because I have a new um gauge cluster that came out of a different truck and it’s got a tack built in and I really really want the factory tack so that’s why I grabbed that I’ve had it for a couple of years and haven’t put it in yet that’s the story of my life all right and now you just kind of rotate that out of the way all you got to do is get to this all right guys now I’m not sure how well you can see what I’m doing here but I’ve got a bunch of aftermarket goop and stuff up under here that has been added by somebody else so it’s probably going to be a little bit harder for me to get to this and do this than it would be for you guys but here is the old switch it’s just got a plug here so we take that plug out and we get our new one now the new one obviously has a lot more stuff and there’s some considerations you got to have here now the new one should just plug right into the same socket as the old one should it’s pretty rough but they are I mean they are going in there there’s no doubt they’re going in it may just be oh yeah that’s what it is I don’t know if you guys can see that or not but the the uh length isn’t the same on the housing so it’s not going to go in all the way that right there is as far as it’ll go so there we go all right I’ve also got to find a place to stick this ground so there should be plenty of places under here uh I just got to find a good one oh man my hood releas is bust maybe I should fix that while I’m down here it’s always something yeah that’s going to work this guys this is why you never throw any screws or nuts away and if you happen to go to a garage stale or an estate stale where they got buckets of this stuff you may want to pick it up all right now that solves two birds two birds that solves two problems now I got to find a place to tuck this thing yeah all right guys um so I I’m continuing to troubleshoot this um let me turn it on for you okay now if I touch this I’m not sure you can hear it but that works but now you hear that noise let going from this box so either I got a bad box from eBay or what I think is more likely is that my wiper motor is actually not not working correctly um so I I bought a new motor and anticipation of this I thought it was a motor originally so now my line of thinking is probably that the motor is actually what caused my original switch to to go out so uh I’m going to replace the motor and we’re going to try again so before I go through all the work of replacing the motor and going through all the linkages and everything I’m going to test the new one uh plugged into the truck so hopefully this solves the problem because if it doesn’t uh then I don’t know what it would be other than this box being bad so here’s the pump working try that what am I missing here all right guys here we are a couple of weeks later I’m sorry about that family obligations and such uh but I’ve got another day to work on the truck today and uh did some research while I was out and uh I think I got my my problem figured out I think I didn’t have a good ground I think is what’s going on you have to make sure you have good grounds when you’re doing this stuff um or else you can cause all kinds of issues and uh right now as you can see I’ve got a good ground I know for sure that this right here is a good ground I got a couple alligator clips here going to the ground stud on this old motor which is plugged in and if I try to turn it nothing happens and as a matter of fact the little module under here I don’t know if you can hear it or not making those clicking noises that’s actually a way for you to know that there’s something going on with your motor if that module clicks like that so if I get in here and remove this plug and come down here to my new motor plug it in get the ground strap hooked up correctly and now there we go slow fast and intermittent one thing that I didn’t know because I’ never had intermittent on this truck before uh right here is actually in the middle of the uh uh the movement of this if I turn it to the left this rotation here is what causes the intermittent to happen and the further you rotate it right is uh how it goes faster and then right here this next click that’s off and the next click to the right is slow and the next click to the right is fast and I didn’t know that’s how that works so last time I was a little bit confused as to why you know I didn’t know how it turned on how it turned off I was having it turned all the way to the left thinking maybe if I had it turned all the way to the left that it wouldn’t go at all but all this is is the slowest intermittent setting when it’s all the way to the left like that so yep and that was explaining why this box down here was making all kinds of weird clicking noises and stuff um if the motor doesn’t run correctly this box will do all kinds of weird clicking and everything uh but it’s actually a great indicator of uh of an issue so what that means is that now both my wiper motor and my uh wiper fluid pump are good to go so there’s also this little CI kind of thing here and mine’s in pretty rough shape so I’m going to take it off here and give it a quick once over and evaluate it and see what I want to do with it now let’s see if that comes off looks like there’s also some sealant stuff under here so yeah all right there we go yeah you can see how rough that piece is under there I may want to paint that clean it up paint it before I put it back on all right now there’s a linkage back there that connects the motor to the uh the arms underneath here where the wiper goes there you go that’s it yeah so I got to figure out how to disconnect all that all right guys I’m not sure how well you can see this clip right here that’s what’s holding everything on and so I think what I’ve got to do is get a screwdriver in this little part right here pop this part open this way then move the whole thing off passenger side goes in front driver side goes in the back and there is the clip so let’s take a look at these and see if they are indeed different okay so here’s the old one and here is the new one and take a look yeah yeah they are different yeah the old one’s got a much longer pin so I’m not sure if I’m guessing I’m going to take that whole entire arm off cuz those arms look like they’re they’re about the same uh in terms of length and uh jog right there so I think I just take this there’s a there’s a a bolt there a bolt here I’ll take those arms off and swap them and that should hopefully should take care of it okay quick update for you guys uh I got them both off they are index the same um so if you look they have the same kind of uh holes although they aren’t they don’t have the same Return To Zero location and they are actually a little bit longer but I think oh you know what what I’m doing I got them back to back that’s the that’s why they oh yeah but they’re still they’re backwards right right hm not sure how that’s going to work have to put it in and try it um the other thing that I noticed also is that uh the hole on this one is a little bit smaller than the hole on this one so I may have to file out the inside of this just a little bit to get it to fit on the on the uh Mount pin over there all right well it took some filing and I had to use some torque to get it on there but the old arm is and pin are now on the new motor so let’s get this in the truck and zeroed I’m going to plug it back in I cuz I when I was trying to get this on here um it moved the motor a little bit so I want to get this back in hooked up real quick set it back to zero and then uh I can get it mounted back up so another thing I want to try to do is reuse this ground strap right here it’s uh got this fitting here that goes in that should give me a good solid ground to the body of the truck um and it’s nice and short doesn’t get in the way so hopefully we can reuse it I’m not going to tighten this until I’ve got the mounting done in the back so I can see what this it look like all right that actually looks right all right all right guys I apologize if you missed a little bit uh my phone died on me while it was uh in the middle of putting my wipers on I think it got too hot for the phone out here even in September it’s like 93° outside in New Mexico anyway future editor Ed note here don’t make the same mistake I made and put your wipers on before you put your cowl back on because I had to take those wipers back off again to put the cowl on yeah that was a pain clip uh that Clips down and holds them in place you just have to make sure that uh you get them in the right spot when you put them back on so that they they wipe correctly uh but the the motor goes back to zero automatically and so you just wait for it to go back to zero and then you put the wipers where they belong all right guys so here’s the deal this right here is the old uh sprayer and it’s a dual head so well it’s a single head but it’s dual uh dual sprays okay that’s what came with the truck the kit that I got from Amazon are two single sprays and so if I wanted to use these I could either uh just do a single spray point it toward the driver’s side keep it in the same location and go from there or I could actually drill holes in the cowl on either side and then pop these into the new holes and then run the lines and have a dual spray set up if I wanted to um but I’m going to be honest with you guys and and I think I blew some air through this uh it’s fine and I will tell you this old hose is way better than this new uh hose I got from Amazon I mean it’s just way thicker and it’s still uh in pretty good shape it’s it’s Supple for being uh from 85 if it’s original it may not be I don’t know but uh yeah it’s still in really great shape so I’m just going to keep the old hose and I’m actually going to keep the old sprayer nozzle too because I think uh it’s going to be just fine I think it was just the pump that was the problem uh then I’ll keep this for a spare if I need to but I’ll tell you that the quality of this is nowhere near as good as the quality of what came on the truck and I’ve been learning as I’ve been doing this that that happens quite a lot uh the new stuff that you can buy from Amazon just isn’t as good a quality you know for a long time I was thinking that uh you know if you’re going to replace systems in an old vehicle like this that you probably ought to go through and just replace the entire system with new stuff uh cuz it’ll be better brand new but but the longer I do this the more I go through it the less I think that’s true I think you may be better off keeping some of the old stuff on there because I think it’s just better quality especially the older stuff from like the you know uh prior to the the ’90s and the 2000s uh when a lot of this manufacturing started getting moved over to China now no dig against China well maybe a little dig against chn but generally the newer stuff is not as high quality so there you go take that for what’s worth the the amount for the nozzle is actually on the cowl I can’t Mount that nozzle until I get the cowl back on the truck but I do want to paint this piece first it’s pretty uh pretty rough and uh it doesn’t look nice so while I’ve got it off and I’ve got the opportunity I’m just going to go ahead and clean it up and hit it with uh some bed liner actually some sprayon Rustoleum bed liner that I’ve got um I don’t actually use that for bed lining cuz I don’t think it’s tough enough for that but it is tougher than regular spray paint so uh I’ll hit this with that and that way it’ll be nice and clean and look nice and I’ll put that back on there but before I go through all that I’m actually going to test the nozzle real quick for you guys and go hey look at that beautiful all right here we are the next day and here’s the piece all painted up just uh cleaned it up hit it with a primer hit it with uh uh the rustolium bed liner and then a real quick top clear coat satin finish and uh it should last a long time the cow is tricky especially for just one person and I’m fortunate in that my paint’s not in great shape anyway so if I scratch something up or or uh ruin quote unquote ruin the paint it’s not as big of a deal if I had just got done painting this thing I’d be much much more careful obv obviously why would that not work what’s going on there is there a kink somewhere okay so even though I tested it before with the with it out of the truck and it worked fine now when I’ve got it back in the truck only one side’s working and it’s not working great so hooking That Thing Up and unhook it it’s a real pain in the ass because uh you have to get underneath the cowl and uh try to hook that that hose up to uh the the spray head so what I’ve done is I’ve uh made this little extend and that way when I plug this in it should hang below the cowl and I can actually plug and unplug it down there what have to reach up into the cow to get that done let’s see if uh that works out for me okay well this hose is not the same size I don’t know if I can get that on here or not let’s see almost come on need to go down there good and tight almost there hey look at that all right yeah that’s not going anywhere good oh that side’s blocked so something got in there either got in a hose or when I was uh working on the uh pump there something piece of debris or something got in there and now it’s jammed up inside here okay nope still nothing there there we go all right we got air coming from both holes now good good oh now let’s see if this fitting is going to be big enough for this hose it may not be oh no oh you know what though I think I can make it work maybe we’re going to find out and then when I’m driving down the road later and it all goes to hell I know who to blame just myself as always where’ my hose go there it is that feels like success to me and now if I ever have to mess with that thing there my connection is beneath the cowl inside the hood of the inside the uh the engine bay so as long as it doesn’t come unconnected get up there toward the top where I can’t get to it yeah you know even if it does that new hose is thin enough it’ll actually go through the hole in the cowl which is the problem with the hose that came with the truck it’s too thick to go through uh that ho that hole in the cowl so yeah yeah I’m happy with that I’m going to go inside and button up the inside of the truck I’m not going to bore you guys with that uh it’s pretty simple just putting things back together in there so I think I think we’re done hopefully you learned something today um I know when I went out to look in how to do this there were some videos but nothing quite this in depth so I’m hoping that uh that uh you know you learned something and that maybe this can help you do your own thing especially when it comes to swapping out that motor um and changing the arm around uh I read on Amazon where I bought this thing I’ll put the link in the description for it where um you had to do some modifications but the the the descriptions weren’t real specific as to what modifications you had to do it was most just folks complaining about the fact you had to do a modification so at least now you guys know exactly what sorts of modifications you you got to do you swap that uh the arm around on the back of the motor there you have to I had to file the motor itself uh the mount point on the motor I decided to file the mount point of the motor rather than the arm because that arm uh is original to the truck and I have no idea how I would get a replacement for that um whereas that motor was fairly cheap on Amazon so if I screw it up well okay I use another motor so uh yeah I filed the the mount point on the motor and then got it down to where it was it was almost there and then I used the uh uh the bolt on the back to sort of torque that down and and seat everything real good and it seemed to work just fine got the clip and everything on there uh it went back to zero in the right spot just get your wipers back on and uh good to go there as far as replacing the the water pump or not the water pump I’m sorry the uh the washer pump Ah that’s that’s pretty simple uh there’s not a whole lot to that so uh yeah you just pull the old one out put the new one in and if that’s your only problem that’s like a 5 minute fix there’s nothing to that so yeah again guys hope you learned something if you did please give me a like And subscribe I really appreciate that help out uh helps me out a lot I i’ think I’ll get a hat but I’m not wearing mine today cuz I don’t want to get it messed up uh this is my working on the truck hat so uh anyway thanks again so much for watching guys we will see you next time fine take a r away getting things to shine she’s considered Divine thanks again for watching we will see you next time thanks again for watching we’ll see you next time

Howdy folks, Ed here from Bullnose Garage. I’m getting new wheels and tires, and that makes me pretty happy. Um, here we are. As you can see, I’m back from the wheel and tire store. Got my brand new wheels and tires. These wheels are Vision Soft Eight wheels. I presume they’re called Soft Eight because they got eight holes around the center. They’re made by Vision, but actually, these particular wheels are branded by a whole bunch of different places. You can get them from, uh, Krager, Vision, Blackrock, Pacer, even Jegs has a version of these that’s under the Jegs brand. My guess is that some place manufactures them, and then other places rebrand them and sell them as their own. Whatever the case, Vision was the cheapest for me, so Vision is the brand that I got. I just love the look of these old-school black rims with the chrome center caps. These are actually trailer center caps, but they work pretty nice. And then, of course, I got my bullet lug nuts on there. The tires are Cooper Evolution HT tires, so those are highway tires. And I got highway tires because this truck is never going to see any kind of off-road work other than my driveway, and I want it to be a little bit more sporty than off-road looking. It’s a two-wheel drive, so it doesn’t need to have big knobby crazy tires on it, but I didn’t want something so sporty that it didn’t look like a truck anymore. So that’s why I chose a highway truck tire. The Coopers just happen to have fantastic reviews and were the right price. And another big thing about them that I like is that the, uh, Cooper Evolution lettering is white outlined when you have it facing out. And I’m actually going to take a white Sharpie oil-based pen, paint pen, and color that in so it pops a little bit more. I’m going to have a separate video on how I’m going to do that. Should be really interesting. I’m looking forward to seeing how that turns out. So, God, it’s a lot. Just love that old school look with the white wall or the white letter tires and the black rims and the beauty rings. I can’t wait to get my beauty rings on. So, uh, let’s go ahead and do that now.

I said before that I really like the look of a classic black steel wheel, especially on an old school project. So I got the Soft Eight because that’s exactly what it is, and it allows me to sort of customize the way that it looks. What I’ve got here is some of the stuff that I’m using to do that customization. We’ll start with the center cap. This is just a four and a quarter inch push-through center cap. It’s like five bucks from Amazon. There’s not much to it. Generally, these are actually used for trailer wheels, but they’ll work perfectly for what I’m trying to do here. And they have a removable center so that you can grease your hubs. And what I’m going to use this for is I’m going to go find a 50 millimeter Ford sticker that I can put right there to make it look a little bit nicer. You got several center cap options. You can do something, a push-through cap like one of these. You can get a branded push-through cap for different wheel manufacturers. You could also get the sort of OEM look, uh, Ford center caps, or you can go out and get a real fancy sort of old school spider center cap that has the lug nuts kind of coming off from the bullet center. All of those are expensive. These are like five dollars a piece, and they look really nice. But the nice thing is that if I decide later on that I don’t want these or I want to do something different, I can just take them off and put something else on. I chose these bullet lug nuts because I thought they’d look neat, and it’s actually cheaper to go online to get these from Amazon than it would be to have, say, Discount Tire, who is who I’m having put the tires and wheels on, uh, to buy their lug nut kit. It’s like 45 bucks. These on Amazon were like 25 bucks. So, and they’re kind of neat. Uh, for my particular truck, these are one half by 20. So always make sure you get the right size.

And finally, I am a sucker for chrome beauty rings. So that’s what I have here is a, actually, it’s a metal 16 inch chrome beauty ring. And because the Soft Eight is your basic steel wheel, this should just pop right on. Just, uh, blings things up a little bit for me. If I’ve got a black tire on a black rim, they kind of blend into each other. I like having that nice separation there that makes it very clear where the rim ends and the tire begins. Personal preference. I got these beauty rings or trim rings from Amazon, and they’re kind of generic. I’m not entirely sure they’re going to fit on this rim. Everything that I’ve read in the research that I’ve done says that beauty trim rings should fit right onto these old school steel wheels, even if they’re aftermarket. But I’ve never done it before, so it’s moment of truth. Wish me luck. It’s pretty tight, but… and there we go, trim ring installed. Now, like I just said, it’s pretty tight, but it does go on there, and I guess that’s good. It means it’s not going to come off while I’m driving down the road. Keep in mind that if you do this, you’re really going to scratch up this black paint because that’s all it is. It’s just black paint on these rims, and I’m not too worried about that because these beauty rings are going to cover that up, and I’m planning on always having beauty rings on here. And worst case, you can always repaint them if you have to.

Here’s the back rim. I thought I’d give you a little bit more close-up view of what I’m doing. These trim rings are just real simple. All there are some clips. Make sure you get your valve stem through the right spot right here, and just bang them on. Like I said, they’re tight. And there we go. So, of course, you can’t put on new wheels and tires without adding custom valve stem caps, which is what I have here. Let me see if you can see that or not. There we go. Yep. So probably nobody’s ever gonna see it, but they’re neat, and they were a gift, so I’m gonna put them on right now. Here we go. Nice. These tires are 245/75/16. Now, the stock tires that came on this truck were 15 inch tires, and these are, of course, 16 inch rims with 16 inch tires. I went with 16s because, of course, bigger rims are a little bit sportier, and I also knew that I was going to be having this big trim ring around the outside, which is going to sort of enhance the apparent size of the rim. So I went with 16s. I could have went with something a little bit wider or even a little bit taller to fill out the wheel well more, but again, it’s supposed to be more of a sporty truck. I don’t want to lift it. I don’t want to make it, you know, a big monster or anything. At some point, I may lower it a little bit, but probably not. I think I’m just going to keep it stock height. And so these tires, I think, fill these wheel wells appropriately. I think they’re the right size. They’re a little thinner than I could have gone, but again, that’s more for the sportier nature of the truck, and they’re a highway tire, so they don’t really need to be really wide or weird looking. Down here in the Southwest, you get a lot of vehicles that have really, really wide tires or tires that stick out really far from the wheel fenders, and I just like that look. So I wanted something more or less stock that was just a little bit sportier. That’s why I went with that size.

While I was going around changing all my wheels and tires, I figured I probably ought to do the spare too, so I went ahead and got a 15 inch spare tire. It’s about as cheap of a tire as I could find, but it’s still a full-size tire. So if something ever happens, I should just be able to pop that rim and tire wherever I need to pop it on and drive it for pretty much as long as I need to. So that was important because all of the tires on this truck, especially the spare, were very old. Now, the tires that were on the truck were at least 10 years old. I have no idea how old the spare was, but it’s probably a good time to talk about that fact that those tires were 10 years old, and I drove this truck for a couple of years with tires that old. And just recently found out that tires older than 10 years are really pretty dangerous. As a matter of fact, I went to the same place I got these wheels and tires and tried to have them patch one of my old tires, and they refused and said, ‘No, that’s too old. Company policy says we can’t patch a tire that old.’ And after giving them a little bit of a sob story, they went ahead and patched it for me just so I can get back on the road again. But that really sort of tripped me into getting these new wheels and tires because I think it was time. And, uh, of course, being a father of two now, I need to be responsible for my own health. So blowing out on the highway probably wasn’t a good idea. So if your tires are over 10 years old, change your tires because even if the tread is good, I learned this, even if the tread is good, the tire rubber itself starts to go bad, and it’ll dry out, it’ll crack, it won’t be as, uh, elastic anymore. You won’t be able to take those bumps, and, um, it won’t be as able to absorb things on the road. They’re easier to blow. Um, yeah, it’s just bad news all around. So make sure if your tires are older than 10 years that you take care of that.

One thing you want to make sure of when you’re buying an aftermarket rim is that you get the correct width and the correct offset and backspacing. Offset and backspacing are kind of the same thing. They’re different numbers, but they relate to each other, and that’s how far the rim sticks out side to side. And that’s going to affect you, especially in the front where you’re turning the tire, turning the rim, whether or not that’s going to impact inside your fender well, if it’s going to rub or bump anything up in here. As a matter of fact, if you get it too shallow, it could even interact with some of the steering components, uh, brake components up in the front of your vehicle. So you want to make sure that you get that not too shallow and not sticking too far out because you get it sticking too far to look funny. Another thing that you want to do is make sure that you get the correct width rim for the tire that you’re going to fit. So tire sizes like this one is 245/75/16. The 245/75 is a ratio of width to height, and the 16, of course, is the rim size. So the wider the tire, the bigger that first number is going to be. So 245 for a truck is not that wide. If I got something like 275, 285, 305, then I might actually start running into problems with this rubbing the fender wells, or especially in the front where you’re steering, it could, you know, hit the fenders or some of the, uh, this, the plastic stuff up in here. Actually, it’s metal back here. Well, who knew? So anyway, yeah, that’s something you want to, uh, definitely pay attention to. And if you’re getting extra wide tires, you want to make sure that you get a rim that has the correct width because if you don’t, then the tire, if it’s just too thin of a rim, the tire could actually bulge out, and then you’ve got uneven wear. And if it’s too thick of a rim, then the tire will actually come out and create like a little V-shape, uh, which is not good for the tread and tire wear and safety either. So for 245, this is an eight inch wide rim. It’s perfect. And just make sure when you’re getting your tires and wheels together that if you’re doing it on your own and you’re doing your own research and you’re finding your own stuff that you appropriately match the tire width to the rim width.

When I went looking online for how wheels and tires like this set here would look on my older truck, I found it really hard to find examples of how these particular wheels would look. All these wheel and tire stores online have these visualizers, you know, these fancy web programs that let you see what the wheels look like on your vehicle, but none of them go back to ’85. So the only option that I had was to go online and try to find someone who had not only put wheels and tires like this on their truck, but also had taken pictures of it and posted those pictures online for everyone to see in a way where I could search for it and find it and take a look. I just didn’t see much, so these wheels and tires were kind of a shot in the dark, and I’m really happy with how they turned out. And that’s one of the reasons that I made this video was so that anybody else who’s got an older truck like this ’85 F-150 could see what wheels and tires with this kind of a look would look like on that truck or a truck about that same year, and then also what kind of options you had in terms of your, uh, push-through center caps, lug nuts, beauty rings, that kind of stuff.

Now, I know a lot of guys would tell me that I shouldn’t have strayed away from the OEM look, that these old Ford hubcaps are classic and, uh, that they really just make the truck look nice, and that if you’re going to do a truck restoration or a registration of any kind, that you really should just stay with OE stuff and not add all this fancy bling-bling stuff. And to those guys, I say, well, you’re entitled to your opinion, but it’s my truck, and I’m going to do things the way that I want to do them. And I really, really like the way that these turned out. By the way, you may notice that these tires look a little bit different than they did earlier in the video, and that’s because I’ve gone ahead and colored in the letters to make them pop more, make it even more of a kind of white wall old school look that you just can’t get from tire stores anymore. So you have to paint that, and I’ve got a video coming up that’s going to show you exactly how I did this and, you know, talk about what materials I used and how long it took because it took forever. But I do like the way that it turned out. I think it looks really cool. I look super cool on the truck, but you’re gonna have to wait for that video to come out to see just how all four tires with the new white lettering looks on the truck going down the road. I’m super excited to shoot that and get that out.

Guys, if you found this video helpful to see what wheels and tires like this might look like on a truck like that, or if I entertained you in any way, shape, or form, go ahead and give me a thumbs up for the video. That really helps me out. And hey, you know, if you, uh, if you’re interested in seeing where I go with this truck, what kind of stuff I do to it in the future, all the big plans that I’ve got for it. I know I’ve got a brake overhaul coming up. I’m doing front and rear brakes completely overhauled. Um, I’m probably going to end up redoing the suspension, and obviously I’ll be doing the engine and all kinds of interior updates, maybe stereo, all kinds of stuff. If you’re interested in seeing any of that, keeping up with what I do, make sure you subscribe to the channel. I’ll be posting videos, uh, as much as I can to get this information out there. I really enjoy doing it, and I hope you guys enjoy watching it. So, as always, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, internet ramblings, stick them below. Thanks again for watching, guys. We’ll see you next time.

Hey folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage. Today we are on the way to, uh, pick up some parts. Anybody who’s done any vehicle restoration, especially of an older vehicle, knows that parts are very important. In fact, they’re one of the hardest parts of restoring a vehicle. So actually, the parts that I’m going to pick up today are some interior parts for the inside of the Bullnose: um, door pillars, visors, and actually, uh, the whole dash piece. It’s not the gauge or any of the trim, but it’s the actual dash, big plastic piece itself. And, uh, you can’t find those. You can’t buy them online anymore. They don’t even reproduce them. So the only place to get them is from old vehicles. And I happen to have somebody here in town who does sort of the same thing that I do, and he goes out and gets old vehicles, tears them down, strips them for parts, and then sells those parts on Facebook Marketplace, which is where I found him. And he’s already got the parts to our part. All I got to do is go pick them up. So that’s what I’m doing now.

As anybody who’s done an old vehicle restoration can tell you, sometimes the hardest thing is parts. In fact, I would wager a guess that the hardest thing is parts. Not just sometimes. A lot of these old vehicles, some parts you can get reproduced, but a lot of them you can’t. Again, in my case, I can’t find these door pillars, and the ones in my truck aren’t that bad, but they’re cracked. And if I wanted to try to repair that, I’d have to, I don’t know, do some plastic work or fiberglass or something, and I don’t want to do that. It’s much easier for me to find the parts that come out of another truck. Now, you can sometimes go online to find these parts, places like LMC Truck for this particular truck or CarParts.com, used to be JC Whitney. Sometimes you can get them from eBay. Sometimes you can get them from Amazon, although you don’t usually get the older parts from Amazon. But so far, my best resource has actually been the guy I’m going to see right now.

So if you can somehow forge a relationship with somebody in your area that has the kind of part that you need, then you’re golden. You can always go to a pull-apart. In my area, there’s not a whole lot of pull-aparts around. Now, there’s a lot of yards that have old vehicles, but they don’t advertise, and you have to just kind of drive up and hope that somebody’s there. And the pull-apart parts don’t tend to have vehicles that are as old as my Bullnose. Sometimes they do, but you got to get in there really quick. So again, I have found that the best place really is Facebook Marketplace. Another great option that you have, and one that I will almost certainly use, is finding a parts vehicle. That is, finding a vehicle that is the same general make and model as the one that you’re trying to restore. In my case, it’s an ’80 to an ’86 F-150, 250, 350, or maybe a Bronco. Finding one that’s going for a cheap price because either it doesn’t run or it’s got some other kind of a mechanical issue, and you load that thing up on a trailer, you tow it home, and then you can scavenge the parts that you need out of that. In a lot of cases, that’s going to be about the only place that you can find the kind of parts that you’re going to need. And if you’ve got a vehicle that’s more or less complete that way, then you can pull everything off of it, and then whatever you don’t need, you can sell.

For me, I’m both lucky and unlucky to live where I live. I live in the Southwest, so vehicles don’t really rot down here. They last forever. You know, the truck that I have is from ’85, doesn’t have a spot of rust on it. A whole lot of vehicles you see driving around are really old and vintage because they just don’t rust down here. But that does mean that the interiors wear out, and also especially the dashes get cracked really bad because the sun shines in and just destroys any kind of plastic or anything really down here that the UV can get. You know, especially on the older vehicles that don’t have the same UV protection in the glass that the newer vehicles do. So it’s sort of a double-edged sword. I can find great bodies and great frames, really nice metal parts, but all the plastic is just destroyed, and a lot of the trim on the outside of the vehicles is also that way, also destroyed by the sun. So it kind of depends on where you live as to what you can find and what you can’t in a junkyard or from a local dealer. And that’s where you may have to go on to eBay. But what’s nice is that if you live in a place like the Southwest where I could find a great body, maybe not such great interior bits, but a great body, then what I can do is I can pull off the parts that I need and then turn around and sell the parts that are nice that I don’t need because my other vehicle is also nice. I can sell those on eBay to somebody from the North who needs rust-free parts, and that just gives me more money to play with.

Let’s take a look at some of the parts that I got, and I’ll use them to kind of go over some of the things that I think are going to be important to finding parts for older vehicles or for restoration vehicles. So we’ll start with these door pillars. These are the door pillars that I got from that guy locally. They look pretty good on first inspection. They’re the same color as the interior of my truck, and the pictures online look fantastic. But if you look real close, I’m not sure you can see this or not, but there’s a crack right there, and that’s exactly the same that the door pillars in my truck are cracked. And that’s the entire reason I went to go pick these up was because I needed to find a way to get that crack fixed. And the easiest way is to find old stock, so that’s something to note. One thing is understand that if you find old parts in a junkyard or from someone on Facebook in a vehicle that’s already been on the road, it’s gonna be used. There’s nothing you can do about that. The pictures on Facebook aren’t going to pick this stuff up. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even really notice it until I got home. Now, it was still a good price, so I don’t regret buying it because it’s always good to have a backup, which is another good tip. Always have a backup of the parts, especially parts that you can’t find anywhere else because if I want to try to maybe paint this or fix this with some super glue or some epoxy or something, I can do that, and if I screw it up, I’ve still got my original. It’s in my truck, so that’s not a big deal.

One thing to note about parts that you can’t find online and you have to go somewhere to get, like an older truck or an older vehicle, is that a lot of these parts always fail the same way. For example, these here, this crack right there, this one here, exact same crack in the exact same place, and both of my pillars in my truck have cracks in this exact same way, in this exact same place. So a lot of these parts fail the exact same way, whether it’s a weak design or just the way that people take them on and put them off. For whatever reason, a lot of parts tend to fail the same way, so be on the lookout for that.

Another part that I got was these visors. Now, these visors actually are in quite a bit better shape than the ones that I have in my truck. And again, what’s great about these is that if I need to, I could probably take this all apart and redo it. You know, I don’t know if you reupholster visors, but put new coverings on them. And then if I screw them up, well, I’m only out the money that I use to buy this stuff, so, and it wasn’t that much. I got a good deal on it.

The last thing that I got was this interior complete interior dash piece, which is nice because it’s got the glove box, it’s got the AC vents, it’s got the entire AC duct work behind it. Now, it’s got the environmental controls, but these don’t match my truck because this one’s got a selector switch for front and rear gas tank, and my truck’s only got one gas tank, so I can’t use this. But I might be able to pull this off and sell it, or even in the condition that this one’s in, probably more likely give it to somebody who’s going to need it, and then I can forge a friendship with someone who needs the same kind of parts that I do.

Another good thing to note, which I don’t have an example for here, although the AC unit controls here is kind of an example of this, is just because the part fits a year that comes off of your vehicle or a generation, maybe the same truck. For example, I believe these parts probably came out of a Bronco, which is the same generation as my truck and generally has the same interior pieces. But just because they came off the exact same vehicle, the exact same year, doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to fit. So you got to make sure that you buy parts that you know are going to fit your vehicle. So these parts that you need, just, yeah, if you need to take them off your vehicle first and inspect them to make sure that they’re the right fit. You could, uh, a lot of times these parts have part numbers on the back. I don’t know if you can see that right there, but there’s part numbers right there, and those part numbers will tell you exactly what part you’re looking for. So always be, uh, cognizant of that. That just because it comes off a vehicle the same make and model and maybe even same year doesn’t always mean that it’s going to fit. On the other hand, some parts from vehicles of a completely different generation may fit yours. So for example, this is an ’85 F-150. The generation goes from ’80 to ’86, but the following generation of trucks from ’87 to ’91, a lot of times parts and pieces from those trucks will fit directly into this truck. Parts of the chassis, parts of the suspension, the interior parts like seats, that kind of stuff sometimes just a basically direct swap.

So learn in your vehicle what different generations parts are interchangeable. A lot of times, uh, especially, you know, for this truck here, there’s a site called Gary’s Garage Mahal that has a lot of interchangeability information, and, uh, those sites are really invaluable. So if you can find a site like that that has interchangeability information for your vehicle to other vehicles of the same make and model but different generations, that’s a great resource when you do find parts that are hard to find for your vehicles. And if you can get a good deal on them, even if they’re not perfect, you may want to go ahead and grab them because there’s a lot of ways that you can refinish parts like this. Even with the crack, you know, I could super glue this crack. I could perhaps put some epoxy in here. Um, I could repaint this whole thing, and if you get textured spray paint, then you cover this up and never even know the crack was there. And as long as you seal the crack well enough so that it doesn’t reappear when you put your screw in, then you’re good. You could put fabric over top of this. I’ve looked at doing maybe some canvas or some other kind of fabric that you can get some spray adhesive and spray on and then roll on top of this. And again, if I’ve got an extra piece and I screw it up, oh well, I’ve got the original still in my truck. Pieces like these visors, you could cover these with basically whatever you wanted. I could go get some denim and cover them with denim. You can make the look in your vehicle whatever you want. Now, unless you’re going for specifically the OE original equipment look, then your options are more limited. But I’m not really doing that. I’m just kind of going for what I think looks cool, so I could cover these with anything I want.

Another option that you have, especially for plastic parts, is to dip them. So I may, I’m not sure yet, but I might dip my dash. Dipping is a really cool procedure where you have a film that goes on top of a tub of water, and you dip a plastic part into the film, and the film attaches to the plastic and then wraps around it. If you’ve never seen any videos of it, it’s really cool. You should check that out. I’m definitely thinking about maybe doing that for some parts in my dash.

So I talked earlier about how I got these parts from Facebook Marketplace, and there’s a reason why Facebook Marketplace is my favorite place to get old parts. We’ll get into that in just a little bit, but before I do, let’s go over some of the places where you can get new parts for trucks, especially like the ’85 F-150 behind me. So you can go to LMC Truck. It’s lmctruck.com. They’ve got parts for Ford, Chevy, GMC, Dodge, all these different kind of older trucks, and they’re a fantastic place to get whatever parts you can that are reproduced. You can usually find them at LMC. You can also go to Rock Auto. Rock Auto is a good place to get, uh, automotive parts, more mechanical parts. Usually, you can go to CarParts.com, it’s formerly JC Whitney. I’ve already said that. Of course, eBay is a fairly decent place to get parts, especially you can get new or used parts from eBay. eBay is the place where I would go to sell parts if I parted out a vehicle because you could also go to Craigslist, but your local area usually, especially in a smaller area like I live, you don’t have a lot of options to sell especially specialty parts for older vehicles. So eBay is usually your best bet there. It’s also your best bet to find those parts because of that same reason. You can go to Amazon. Amazon sells basically everything except for old used parts you can’t find anywhere else. Um, of course, there’s the old standbys: AutoZone, O’Reilly’s, Napa, those kind of places, but you’re probably not going to find vintage parts there. That’s for things like, you know, oil filters and spark plugs, that kind of stuff. Um, if you’re doing a performance build, then you can look at places like Summit Racing or Jegs to get your performance parts. And, uh, there’s always, again, the option of going to a pick-apart, although I’m not a huge fan of pick-a-parts. Again, because the ones around here especially don’t have vehicles that really match the years and generations that I’m looking for. And then you have to bring a bunch of tools with you. You’ve got to go into the yard. Sometimes it’s muddy and dirty and nasty and disgusting. You got to crawl around, and you have to know, which is kind of a downside for me, is you have to know how to get to the part that you want. I’m a rank amateur at this stuff, so even though I know where the part is and what the part is, it may be hard for me out in the field to know exactly how to get it out. And I don’t necessarily want to go take a Sawzall to somebody’s, you know, junk or truck, even though it’s a junker truck, just to get the part that I need. So I tend not to go to pick-a-parts unless I really, really need a specific part that I can’t find anywhere else. And then, of course, like I said before, there is Facebook.

So let me give you an idea of why I think Facebook is really, right now, as of October 2020, the best place to find some of these old parts. Now, the complaint that I had earlier about Craigslist was that it’s only good for the local area, and you may say, ‘Well, Ed, that’s the same problem with Facebook Marketplace.’ You only get results from your local area, and that’s true. You do only get results from your local area. But Facebook has something that you really should take advantage of if you’re restoring an older vehicle, and that’s Facebook groups. Because I guarantee you, no matter what vehicle you’re trying to restore, there is a Facebook group for your vehicle. There is at least half a dozen Facebook groups for this truck right behind me. There’s a Bullnose group, there’s a Ford truck group, there’s a group for the engine that I’m using, there’s probably a group for whether or not the truck is lifted, there’s a group probably for the color of the truck. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but there’s a group basically for anything, and there’s new groups being started all the time on Facebook. If you join these groups, you’re going to get together with a bunch of people who are like-minded, who have the same sort of passion for that vehicle that you do, and they probably know collectively way more than you’ll ever know. Even if you’re an expert, you can always ask the group questions to get answers to, you know, whatever problems you may be facing with your vehicle. And if you’re looking for a specific part, nobody’s going to know how to find that part better than this humongous group of people who work specifically on that kind of truck out of a passion for that. Well, I said truck, but whatever vehicle it is, right? I deal with trucks, so I say truck. But, you know, in my case, if I was looking for, for instance, the trim. Now, I’ve got a chrome trim around my wheel wells here, but there are a lot of these F-150s and Broncos that have trim up on the side or they come down a little bit further down, and a lot of that trim they don’t reproduce, and it’s almost impossible to find. Trucks that did have that trim a lot of times didn’t survive, and the ones that did have the trim and did survive, the trim can be in really bad shape. So maybe somebody removed it. Trucks like that in a junkyard, the guys that know that this trim is worth a lot of money go and scavenge that trim pretty much right away. If you need that kind of a trim or that kind of a part for your vehicle, the only place that you’re going to be able to find it with any kind of reliability is going to be these groups. Now, you may have to pay a pretty penny for it, but I have been shocked at the number of times that I have seen someone ask for a part that is incredibly rare or incredibly strange or something I’ve never even knew came standard on some of these trucks, and I’m thinking, ‘Man, they’re never going to find that part.’ And within a couple of hours, somebody responds and says, ‘Yeah, I got one of those in my shed. I got one of those in my garage. PM me and we’ll get together.’ That stuff happens all the time. So if you’re restoring a vehicle and you’re looking for these parts, join a group. Join a group on Facebook. Even if you don’t have a Facebook, I mean, who doesn’t have a Facebook? But even if you don’t have a Facebook, it’s worth joining Facebook just for one of these groups. Learn how to use it. Learn how to do it because if there’s a part you’re looking for specifically, that’s where you’re going to find it, is one of these Facebook groups.

There you go, guys. Parts, you need them, you want them, you got to have them, and those are the only ways that I know how to get them. Now, I’m sure there are other ways, and if you know other ways or better ways, please let me know. Drop it in the comments, send me a private message, whatever you got to do, and I’ll, you know, make a video about it later. But yeah, let me know what your best way to get parts are. For me, these are the ways that I know how to get them. So as I said before, parts for these old vehicles, sometimes they’re the hardest part. Now come on, I’m a new dad. I gotta be able to make dad jokes. That’s just part of who I am now. So if you don’t like puns, you’re probably on the wrong channel. All right, guys, as always, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, internet ramblings, stick them below. Thanks again for watching, and we’ll see you next time.