Merle Coggins

That's what they were built for.

I keep a small basic took kit under the seat in my truck. (As a life long professional mechanic I must have tools on hand at all times) It saved my bacon once when I had to swap out my fuel pump,(the dreaded pivot pin failure), after a kind passer-by towed me out of traffic and into a nearby parking lot. (I also had a spare, rebuilt, pump under the seat) I have also dug it out on occasion for minor maintenance on the road, or to assist a fellow vintage motorist at an event.

The length difference is mostly ahead of the axle. However, the longer beds are also 54” wide vs. the 48” 1/2 ton bed.

Those are the brackets used on the B-series trucks to tie the bed sides to the rear sill panel. I don't believe your earlier truck uses them.

I always use double flare on my lines, fuel, brake, or otherwise.

Two wires to the headlights are low beam and high beam, and then the one wire for the parking lamps. All lights are grounded through their mounts to the body. The headlights might have a 3rd wire for the ground, but it likely goes to back to a ground screw on the body.

My truck is a later model, but I used a Signal Stat 900 turn signal switch. It has separate outputs for the front and rear turn signal lamps. The brake light switch also inputs into the switch to activate the rear lamps as brake lights when the signals are not in use. When the switch is moved to either left or right turn position the flasher will then supply power to the. Selected lamps and the remaining rear lamp will still be connected to the brake light switch. I also used my front parking lamps for turn signals. To do that I had to change the bulb socket for a dual element type. That way I can still use the park lamps as designed and the brighter part of the bulb works as the turn signal.

Is it an intake or exhaust valve? It's possible that someone put in a long reach spark plug, or compression tool that made contact with the valve and bent it. That could have lead to it breaking.

That's not an option. There is no switched starter power. The foot activated starter mechanically connects a set of contacts that connect the battery cable connector to the field coils/armature. The foot activated lever also engages the bendix gear to the flywheel. If I used this circuit I would just continue to use my momentary toggle switch to the 87a contact for priming only.

I like that diagram, but I'd have to modify it as I don't have a starter solenoid on my truck with a foot activated starter. Sniper, thanks for the Bosch number for a 6v relay. I've always struggled finding such a mythical beast.

I have a switch under the dash for my pump. One direction is momentary and the other direction it stays on. I have it wired to either direction will run the pump. I usually only use the full ON position when I need the pump on for extended periods, such as when I’ve suffered fuel starvation due to high under hood temps. I then switch it off again when things cool down. I’ve thought about adding an oil pressure switch on the constant ON circuit, but haven’t got a round to it yet.

If your electric pump is pushing fuel through the mechanical pump it may not be able to push the fuel through. I had mine plumbed that way at one time and found that sometimes i couldn’t prime the carb until I cranked the engine a little bit. I think it depended on the position of the diaphragm on if it would allow fuel to pass through or not. I have since re-plumbed my electric pump to run in parallel to the mechanical pump. That solved that problem. As to your question of if it will stop pumping when the float bowl gets full, that depends on the pressure rating of your pump. As I recall these carbs like 3-6 PSI of fuel pressure. Any more than that and it could over power the needle valve and float.

That knee crutch looks a bit sketchy. It would probably take a bit of practice to learn your balance to walk around. When my wife had surgery on her foot a few years ago she got a knee walker. She found one fairly cheap on Facebook marketplace and ended up selling it there after she was done with it. She could zip around on that thing and get anywhere. Not so much around the house, but when out and about it I couldn't keep up with her.

I always thought that was odd too. Then one day I came across some information regarding the tires available and the 15" tires had a higher load rating than the 16's. I don't remember where I saw it though.

My truck has Fluid Drive with the larger 4 speed trans. When I pulled my trans to do clutch work I had to remove that cross member. I dropped the fuel tank out first, then removed the cross member. With the larger trans the park brake drum is pretty much right up against the cross member so it has to be removed to remove the trans.

I agree with Ken and Brian. It sounds like you don't have a good ground for the for the engine block and your alternator ground wire is trying to carry all of the cranking current. Where do you have your battery ground cable attached? Originally they went to the transmission case, using one of the top cover bolts. This provided an adequate ground path when everything is new. But if the mount between engine and trans is no longer clean and tight you may be loosing a good ground back to the battery. I have also added a good ground cable between the engine block and the frame to ensure a good ground for the chassis even though it's probably not "factory".

The bed sides get bolted down to the outer boards. The boards are clamped down to the cross members via the bed strips. And then the whole bed is bolted down to the frame with a few longer bolts through the wood and cross members.

I've experienced it a couple of times after an extended run on the highway on a high 90's type day. It was fine as long as I had good air flow through the engine compartment. Once I got off the highway and was putting through town it would start to stumble and struggle to run. I recognized it as fuel starvation from high temps under the hood and switched on my "primer pump". The engine smoothed out and ran fine again. After a few minutes the temps under the hood stabilized and I was able to switch off the pump.

Go to the DEPTCA web site and look at the Pilots Knowledge page. There you will find a copy of a B4 series shop manual. You can download the rear axle chapter and read through it. Here's a link to the page for you. http://dodgepilothouseclub.org/know/B4_manual/manual.htm There is also a copy of another truck repair manual that covers '49-'58 with the chapters from the Dodge section available for download. http://dodgepilothouseclub.org/know/manual/manual.htm The Rear axle chapter here may give you some other info for reference.

I just had a look in my parts manual and it shows all trucks using the same bearing up through the "K" models. P/N 583830. It shows that the Truck-O-Matic uses a different sleeve/bearing assembly, but all other 1/2 and 3/4 ton trucks share the same assembly regardless of FD or not. When I put that number into the search field at nappaonline.com I get a couple of throw out bearing options. https://www.napaonline.com/en/search?text=583830&referer=v2

I just use a good RTV sealant instead of a carrier mounting gasket. As for the seal and bearings... you can usually find identification numbers stamped into the parts that can be used by a good parts counter person to cross reference them. Or, if you have a parts book for your car you can often cross reference the OEM part number.

The general consensus is that electric pumps are better at pushing fuel than they are at pulling. So the rule of thumb is to always place an electric pump as close to the fuel tank as possible.

Maybe it was just on the earlier ones then. I'm trying to remember... I think it was a '92 F450 SuperDuty service truck that I had that had the belt driven pump. I rigged a fitting off of it so that I could pull vacuum on hydraulic tanks for repair work without needing to drain the tank.

I concur... I always need to open the throttle slightly for hot restarts if it's been sitting for a few minutes.