Black Beauty Project Build - 06 Ford F-250 Super Duty **1/27/18 - New pics starting on page 41**

[scooter99]

Honestly I've seen those on a few trucks, and I'm not a big fan. They look cheap to me, like ebay lights or something. Not saying they are cheap, or not quality, but it just doesn't look right to me. I'm going to do projectors at some point, but right now I'm balls deep in the steering.

I changed the drag link out before we went camping last Thursday, lmao that made the wife happy! "Honey I'm going to swap out the drag link real quick on the truck". She said "Um we're leaving as soon as I'm done packing. How are you going to have time to do that and leave with us (we were taking two cars)? This causes me great stress (yes she said great stress)". So I said "you go pack, I'll be done before you come back." Sure enough, two bolts, a couple whaps on the pickle fork with the old Ford Hammer (4lb sledge) and old one was out, greased up the new one, matched the length etc, and bolted her down. I was clicking the last bolt with the torque wrench when she came out. "Ok honey I'm ready to go, did you get packed like you wanted". LOL.

Anyway, so that made a big difference. Didn't get time to do the tie rod ends, or the track bar, but just changing that drag link and the heavy duty moog end, I went from two white knuckled hands towing the trailer to a single hand sitting back in my seat and listening to the ball game on the radio with no stress!!! Still wonders a little bit, but after those tie rod ends and the track bar, I think we'll be closer. The worst case, I'll have to swap out that steering box, which I may consider doing anyway, but it may not be this year. But, that's inevitable. Red Head Steering Box is going in at some point. Just a mater of when.

But everything here is going to come grinding to a screeching halt! I HAVE TO, MUST, get the beast done. We're paying $120 a month to store the trailer at a storage spot, when we have the room on the side of the house. I have to get the beast up and running so I can get it out of there. When it's running, I'll be able to sell it. When I sell it, I can pay off my credit cards. When i do that I can slowly start building the back end of the system.

I officially, btw, have all of the front part of the system together. 4 sets of AA 165 Components, 2 AA150.4's (just got the second one last week), 1 AA2000.1, and 2 DC Audio M38's. The tablet mount is started, and I have an idea for something else to do with the AA3800.1 case. Basically the entire cabin install will be done sometime in the next few months. I have all the cable I need for that part as well, from the civic. So be patient everyone, I will get on it soon, but if I want to stay married and enjoy my family and my house, I need to get the beast running soon!

That's all for now.

[scooter99]

So last night when I got home from my birthday dinner, I decided to sneak out to the shop for a few minutes. I don't know why, cause I have a ton of other projects going on, but I waned to get the tablet mount set on the dash. I guess one more step forward. I don't have a pic to post now, but I will. I'll work on it tonight after I get home. I know I keep saying that, but i have beast pics of the motor rebuild, and pics of the dash and a video for this. I will produce something tonight folks. Sorry, it's been so slow.

[scooter99]

Ok so it's been long enough. How bout some build pics? It's not much, but it's something. I am trying to do little things here and there.

Alternator!

Ok so this was the resting voltage before the alt swap. Love XS Power!

Running voltage off of the stock alt. It was a bit, how do we say, LACKING!!!

If I recall correctly, this was the voltage right off of the stock alt. The one above is off of one of two batteries under the hood.

Let's get it started.

Pull the belt. There's a kickstand under the pulley down below the alt, and if you pull up on the belt hard enough, you can engage that kick stand and it will hold the pull up and the belt loose. Then I held it in place with a bungee chord.

The kickstand is engaged in this pic. It's right in the middle of all 3 pulleys and right at the edge of the shadow.

Removed the battery to alt cable. Oh did I mention I'm also rewiring everything? Sky High Car Audio FTW!!

13mm socket to remove the alt. This is in a real tricky position so you're going to have to contort real bad to get to it............................................

Just kidding it's right on top. Took me longer to get the belt off and moved then it did to remove the alt. lol

Next I removed the wire clip there on the left, and the positive cable. Only because it was easier to pull it all with it separated.

Took pics of the sockets in case anyone was needing the sizes.

Side by side look. Oh all of that oil and the green fluid in the back is for the oil change after this is done.

Got the new clip in. It's a bit different than the stock clip so Mike gave me an adapter for it. Thanks Mike​!

Here they are connected. I just wrapped the wires in electrical tape for now. I wanted to do some techflex, but I may just wire loom it. We'll see later on. Anyway, I'm not remembering what it was for, but there was another loose wire in there too. Mike gave me instructions but I can't recall them right now. something about meters or something. It's tucked away in the tape.

[scooter99]

Let's clean up the wires.

Better. For now anyway.

To put the belt on and let the kickstand loose, once the belt is on, pull up on it, and the kickstand will pop out and the belt will tighten as you let it down. Double check that the belt is on all the way around, and let's see what she'll do.

At passenger side battery

At Driver Side Battery

Directly at the alt

Now it would seem I have some resistance issues, since it drops from 14.81v to 14.68-14.70 at the batteries. I'm not sure what that's about.

Let's rewire it.

Sky High Car Audio 1/0 OFC cable. Yes please!

Cable for between the batteries.

Time for this little guy to go away!

That's better!

New Battery to Alt. For now I left the original. It run in a big loom of wires and I didn't want to mess with all that just now. Yes I'm going to add fuses. I already know.

Driver side battery.

Now I forgot to check the numbers after I did this. I need to get the meter back on it and see where it's at after changing out the cables. I need to get fuses in the system also. So that will be up and coming soon!

[scooter99]

Was also messing around with positioning a bit, since I have the oem big size alt loose to be able to do it with now. Here are the pics of those positions.

There are a couple of mounting holes here for the secondary alt bracket, which I can't seem to source. i could utilize those for a bracket as well if needed.

Here's the other way to do it. Flip it around. Plenty of room up here but it messes with me being able to put a coolant filter there.

Might have to cut the outer fan shroud a bit, but otherwise nothing else to worry about.

And the pulleys line up, or would line up to utilize the same belt line.

So those are the options. I'm not sure what i'm going to do yet. I'm not even sure if I'll need the second one. Right now I'm nowhere near ready for the sub portion of my design. I have lots of time and until I get the beast done and sold, money is very low to be buying amps, batts, and an alt. So I'm not in a big rush for this.

Let's move on to something else a bit more fun.

[scooter99]

So when I had the civic build going on, I wanted to do a nice tablet install on it. I bought a little Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 for it, wifi only, and was going to use that. HOWEVER, when I sold the civic and bought the truck, I decided I wanted something bigger but still wanted a tablet in the dash. These super duties have a nice big semi flat dash to them. SO I bought a secondary dash to cut up and not worry about whether I could replace it if I messed up. I'll get to that.

I was looking for a tablet or something that I could put in there that would really take up a big portion of the dash, and yet still look good. I didn't want to put a 20" screen tv in there where I'd have to do a bunch of modifications to make it fit. I wanted it to look as classy as I could get. So anyway, I decided to pick up a Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2. BIG screen, lots of features, and added it onto my cellular service so I don't need a wifi device or have to tether it to my phone. Win WIN!

Let's get started with pics. I wanted to figure out a way to have it be a flush type mount where there wasn't a big frame around it. It has a decent sized frame around the screen already from stock, so I didn't want something more than that. I bought a case when I bought the tablet, and it actually works perfectly!!

So i decided to use it. Holds the tablet in really tight, has spots for the buttons on the sides (which I won't need later). It's nice.

You can see around the frame that it has cutouts for the buttons and speakers and s pen etc. it's pretty flush with the screen front.

The only real issue with it is this. The lip on the top and bottom are what holds it in. Good for someone wanting to keep it on the tablet, but not for someone wanting to remove the tablet from say a dash. It's real tight and real tough to just pop it out.

I think some heavy grit sand paper will take care of that just fine!

Progress. That's working out real well. In some spots it looks like more than it should, but believe me, it's perfect. Lots of sanding and looking and feeling and sanding and all over again.

Now that I've taken that lip away, it still stays in fairly tightly and I have an idea on how to get it out now. The problem of course that I face is, if I'm doing anything significant bass wise, which some of you know the plans and that will be significant, I don't want it falling out either.

So my idea is this. I have these magnets from home depot, neo magnets, and they hold really really well. I want to figure out how to put them in the case here, as well as in the tablet. Those will hold it in place easily.

Unfortunately with the cover on it, it is too thick for my tests. Magnets on the right.

Oh well both feet in here we go!! RIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPP

No more cover flap.

Gonzo!!

Wasn't much more on those tests. I figured out how to get the back cover of the tablet off, and I'll be ordering a replacement one of those for this project too. I think I'll be able to drill holes into it, the size of the magnets, and then CA glue them in. Then also do the same in the back of the case. My only fear, is that if they connect directly, they may be too strong and break off the CA Glue. So I'm still thinking about this one. May try it with some scrap stuff first.

[scooter99]

So here's the extra dash I bought. Got a good deal on it from Ebay. I wasn't worried that it didn't have the wood grain like my tuck does because it's all going to get painted anyway, or something. The rest of it is the same grey black color.

First I have to remove this tab. This is what the cover flap clipped to.

Did that with my trusty air saw. Love this thing. Gotten me through so much!!

Now to start going over this thing. This is the only air vent I'll be loosing. I have an idea for a later project however, that might bring it back and may also bring another one along with it. The one on the right side of the radio area is staying, for now.

So I got them cut out and cut the middle out did some test fitting. I got real excited here!!

so I had to put the tablet in there. Man it fills that dash nicely!!

[scooter99]

After a little bit of test fitting using some hot glue, I found a couple of things I'll have to deal with.

First is there is a bit of a curvature to the dash. i could've just cut the hole thing out and make it flat, but I wanted to save the lines of it. It flows nicely. SO I'll have to figure that out. Where it was sitting, you can see here, the center of the mount, sits below the dash. This is the top.

And on the sides its the same way only not so much as the top on this left side.

So I'll have to do some adjusting and make it work. I think I'll be ok to build up the corners if I bring up the middles to meet the dash.

Next I sanded the middle part of the dash down with the heavy grit paper. this way the epoxy, ca glue, and filler holds.

And did the same to the tablet mount.

Then attached it with CA Glue. She's in now!

Now, next I need to fill the long hole on the right. Also need to fill in where the vent ear was on the left. I picked up some abs so I'll use that for the right side. I'm also trying to figure out if I should fill this or use epoxy on it.

The other thing I'd like to do is fill in all those cut outs on the tablet mount. They're no longer needed and I think it would make for a much cleaner edge if it's all the same. I'm just not sure how to go about that. Thought about taping up the actual tablet, and then putting it in place. Then filling those with epoxy and sanding it and finishing it off.

If anyone has any ideas, or suggestions I'm listening for sure.

Oh I never mentioned it, but the idea about pushing the tablet out is to use a door lock actuator. Just a little pop at the top, will do just fine. Then i can grab it with my fingers and pull it out.

So there it is for now. Something at least getting done.

I do have my complete front stage now btw.

4 sets of AA-6.5 Componenets

1 pair of DC Audio M38's

2 AA 150.4's

1 AA 2000.1

So I'll have all that starting here in the next couple of months. One small thing at a time.

[scooter99]

Oh I forgot, I do have a video of all that, with explanations of what I'm doing or thoughts etc. I have to edit it and I'll put it up when that's done.

[03silvergt]

Awesome stuff. What alt did you end up going with?