First Bronco I got at the end of last month; 1990 5.8 w/ 149K on the odo. Only one owner, so here were the sales pictures:
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
When I looked at it, the battery was flat dead and had an obvious draw on the system. When the jump-box was pulled off it would die, so seemed the alternator wasn't putting out either. Told salesman I had to drive it to make sure I wanted it. Called the next day and said it was "all fixed" and only the alternator plug had come loose ... yeah. Took it for a test drive, could tell it had 20 years of use, but was overall in good shape, could hear the heater core gargle, so figured coolant must be a little low. Got it home, parked it in the garage and two days later the battery was dead, again. "All fixed!" I went to work and tracked it down to Fuel Pump priming with key off. EEC Relay went bad and was forwarding Voltage on to FP Relay. Fixed, no longer draw, and charges at 14.4 volts: perfect! Two days later I go to move Bronco and there's coolant on ground ... start poking around, and intake gasket is seeping on driver's head! Pulling it apart, decide to replace head and exhaust manifold gaskets while I'm in there. A few studs snap off in driver's cylinder head after a day's soaking with PB Blaster. Great, so now I want to get reman'd heads, its a loonnnng story too. Well, here's a picture after I pulled the heads off April 30th:
![]()
And here is that 5.8L motor, strewn about my garage:
Here it is May 22nd, and still no heads!!
Why is it so hard to get a set of Ford 5.8L truck heads???? Ford only sold a million of them? :whiteflag Only place around that had them was a machine shop. After getting them home I noticed one head was an E5 (of course the one head I didn't check the casting on). Wanting both E7's (for period correct reasons) I took the heads back. O'Reilly said they could only get the "hi-performance" heads, but then couldn't give me any details as to what all the specs and details were? Do they have smog holes? Hi port? :goodfinge
So then the chicks working the counter at Vautozone told me "no sweat", and then after having laid out the cash, kept jerking me around saying "3 days tops". About 4 times they strung me along until I gave up and asked for a refund. Here I am waiting on a set of heads from ebay, and hoping they'll show up within the next two weeks or you'll likely find me on a tower in Texas with a "hi-performance" deer rifle? :toothless
At least I'm getting some time to clean all my parts up a little! :beer
Oh yeah, the pinstriping was the first thing to go, lol:
(Sorry for the long winded post, some people like dialogue ... if not, don't read it. :cry)
