Eric’s Cave

Lilly Re-powered Part 6: Gauge swap

Posted on February 9th, 2015

IMG_6142-0.PNGSpent the night swapping the diesel gauges over to my 62 dash. The important one I needed was the tachometer due to how the diesel reads RPM. On the 62, the tachometer gets the RPM signal from the ignition coil.  Since the diesel engine doesn’t have an ignition coil, you have to get the RPM’s from either the alternator, fuel injector lines, or by the factory setup, the flywheel. It uses a Hall effect sensor which is a type of transducer that varies its output voltage to the tachometer in response to a magnetic field. Basically it detects the teeth on the flywheel as they pass the sensor and converts that signal to the dial you see on your dash.  Read more...

Get more from your torque wrench!

Posted on February 6th, 2015

By Eric B

While doing my 2H diesel swap, I had to remove the timing gear cover and that involved removing the crankshaft pulley. Removing the nut was easy with an air impact gun. Once time to install the nut, I checked the torque required, 325 ft lb, and realized I didn’t have a torque wrench that size. I didn’t want to pay the costly amount for one that size and attempts to borrow or rent one failed. After a few days of thinking about what to do, I realized I can use my 150 ft lb wrench and multiply the torque using an extension.  Read more...

Lilly Re-powered Part 3: Making things fit

Posted on January 24th, 2015

As with all conversions you will eventually have to fit something somewhere or adapt something to suit your liking.  No different here.  Took the afternoon to address some location issues for a few components.  One was fitting the battery switch and isolator I am wanting to move into the engine bay from the glove compartment inside.  One of the things that I removed that will no longer need is the bracket for some of the vacuum/EGR emission components mounted to the fender.  It looked like the perfect place to mount both switch and isolator.  With a few modifications it was good to go.  Read more...

Lilly Re-powered Part 2: 3FE comes out

Posted on December 26th, 2014

In preparation for pulling pulling the engine, I started removing what I could until the hoist could be picked up.  The fun part about this was not worrying about labeling vacuum lines or wiring in fear of not knowing where they went upon reinstallation, it all wasn’t getting reinstalled.  I basically made two piles, the reuse pile and the discard pile.  The discard pile was winning in size.  Read more...

Lilly Re-powered Part 1

Posted on December 24th, 2014

decal032

By Eric B

Well the time has arrived, although not do to my planning.  Due to multiple times overheating, ending up finding coolant in the oil, as well as going through quart of oil a week, the 3FE gave up.  With roughly 275K miles, she was for the most part trouble free till now.  Time to pull the plugs… literally.  Read more...

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