GoPathyGo

I would suggest reman CV. Not worth the trouble to pack the grease. If swapping the brake components and bleeding the system don't work, check the vacuum. I've lost vacuum thanks to crummy intake manifold sealing (stealership left bolts out) and the valve cover issue. You can check the vacuum indirectly (pedal pump test with engine off and engine on) and directly (pull the intake-brake booster hose off at the engine intake end and check that the vacuum levels are between 15 and 25).

Good memory Steve! I had the Ranchos. Awful. Lousy compression and rebound. Felt cheap too. Switched to KYB GR-2s that I bought on Amazon. No problems at all. I have hammered those struts several times with absolutely no issues.

But WHY ? That's a lot of expense and effort.

Awesome Rig. But I don't think it's an R50 anymore. More like the "Morgan 1000" or something!

I didn't see anything specific to this topic, though data is scattered throughout the forums. What tools and clothes do you use when working on your Pathy/cars ? Is there stuff meant for other uses you've adapted to wrenching ? What have you found most cost-effective and useful ? This is NOT meant to be a bragging thread - "Check out all my cool stuff". In fact, I'm so sick of wasting time and money on stuff that's either useless or breaks that I started this topic in the hope of finding ways to save or work more effectively. E.g., the spark plug pullers at Pep Boys are basically useless on my VQ. $10 right down the drain. I used a magnet pick-up tool (the type that allows you to grab screws and stuff that fall into the engine bay when you're working on stuff) to pull the plug instead. Worked fine and kills 2 birds with 1 stone. Also, hopefully this will help new members get an idea of the stuff they may end up needing. Since I'm starting I'll throw out my list. Clothes Basically the cheapest crew t-shirts and cheapest shorts I can find. Current winners are $3.33 crew t-shirts and $9.99 swimming trunks at Sears. I don't care about color or pattern since it's all gonna be black pretty soon anyway! Cheapest sandals I can find. Cleaning up Costco Kirkland Green Dishwashing Liquid. This is their version of Simple Green, which a lot of folks here recommended. It takes off everything from AT fluid to dirt and doesn't rip off my skin. $8 for a huge bottle 24-pack or 50-pack of terry towels. Used for everything from cleaning tools to wiping my face. Costco and HD generally tie for lowest price on these at $0.25-$0.50/each Costco Microfibers. Best deal I could find anywhere. $15 for 30+. Used for everything from cleaning the car to holding spark plugs and stuff you don't want getting dirty Husky 30-42 gallon contractor bags. The contractor bags are DA BOMB. They've taken everything from warm engine/AT/t-case oil to paper towels. Paper towels. Whatever's cheapest. General tools These are used all the time on pretty much everything. 1/2" (20 - 240 lbs/ft)and 1/4" (up to 200 lbs/inch) torque wrenches. Sears Craftsman. The handle on the 1/4" has broken Otherwise they're fine 1/2" drive. This was from a cheap snap-on kit. Only thing that lasted. Used ALL the time since it's relatively small and can take a beating. 1/2" and 1/4" straight extensions. I found the extensions I have that allow you to put the socket in at an angle didn't work well. Recommendations welcomed. 1/4" metric sockets, regular. Up to 15 mm. 1/2" metric sockets, regular and deep. Up to 27 mm. If I had to do it again, I wouldn't have spent the money on the deep sockets. Would have just got the deep impact sockets and been done with it. Craftsman and Kobalt (Lowes). These have held up very well considering the beating they've taken. 1/2" metric impact sockets, regular and deep. Up to 27 mm. Same brands as above. 1/2" swivel head sockets, few sizes. VERY USEFUL for getting at stuff recessed in corners. But VERY pricey. Only bought a few sizes. SK Tools. 1 pair each needle-nose and regular pliers A few swivel-head Kobalt ratcheting wrenches. Very useful for tough spots. A few random screwdrivers. Craftsman 20-ton bottle jack. Worked well and has the height needed to lift my Pathy. 6-ton jackstands. They've held my cars up for over a week at times. Torin Big Red screw jack. These things are AWESOME. It's a jack and jackstand in one unit. You just put it under the jacking point, turn the screw and leave it. No messing about with positioning jack stands and lowering the truck or finding spots that'll allow you to jack up the truck but still leave room to get the jackstand to bear load. Pure hydraulics so the effort becomes greater as you raise the the truck, but nothing some good elbow grease won't solve. Got 'em from Northern Tool via eBay. Prices range from $25-$80 depending on capacity. Tape measure. Two Lasko 20" fans. No HVAC and lots of windows so the garage gets hot. $15 at Home Depot. Work great. Corded worklight you can hang or slide underneath the car. If I had to do it again, I would buy LED. This thing is fluorescent tubes but they get warm and aren't as bright as some of the LEDs out there Multiple 12- and 14-gauge extension cords. My garage only has 2 15 Amp circuits. Bizarrely, 1 circuit has 1 plug and the other has 3 and they're all located on 1 wall. Huge pain to get stuff around. This doesn't sound bad until you try to run 2 fans, a worklight, a charger or two for the Dremel/DeWalts, an air compressor and an angle grinder at the same time. This is NOT an unusual set up. The breakers trip all the time. So I run the 12- and 14-gauge lines into different circuits in the house 1 Halogen worklight on a 40" stand since one side of the garage has no lighting Power/Air Tools DeWalt 18V Cordless Impact DeWalt 18V Cordless Drill Both of these rock! Come with extra batteries and chargers so you can swap 'em. Mine have been bulletproof. I went with the 18v ones because the smaller sizes didn't pack enough punch. Bosch Angle Grinders. Clunky but fine. Lowes had a box of 2 for $80 deal going Dremel MultiMax and Dremel cordless stylus. Very useful for jobs where precision matters or you need to get into smaller spaces and use smaller blades than the angle grinders. But NOT very hardy. If anyone else made decent ones, I'd buy em. 33 gallon Craftsman air compressor. 5 cfm. On sale for $300. Did a LOT of research on this. Used ones were either too expensive or the wrong size. Anything more than this required a 240V setup. 1 Eastwood powder coating kit. Lots of fun and saves money. $100-$150 1 IR lamp to cure the powder coat. USELESS. Use a toaster oven instead. 1 Sandblasting kit. $30 at Sears. So far it has cut HUGE amounts of time I used to spend cleaning/prepping/sanding items. 1 paint spray gun. Random Stuff, Specialty Tools and the like 1 pair Pep Boys spark plug pullers. USELESS. 1 magnetic pick-up tool with flexible neck and built-in LED light. $15 at Pep Boys. Awesome. 1 pair snap ring pliers. Very specific uses Safety helmet with face shield Safety goggles Welding helmet. No welder. No idea how this got here. Nitrile and cloth gloves from True Value. These are easily the best gloves I've used so far - and I've tried everything from the $20 "Mechanics Gloves" sold at Lowe's to the disposable vinyl gloves. $5 at True Value Shop creeper to roll and move around under the truck. Very useful. Mechanic's chair. I refused to buy one for the longest time. Finally gave in when my knees threatened to go on strike. MAN, what a difference. Virtually no knee/joint ache and, since it has a tray built into the base, much less time finding tools. Still a rip off in terms of price but a great thing. Couple of the cheapest 4-tier shelves I could find and a garden table used as a work surface. Actually, I think one of the 4-tier shelves a closet organizer. Whatever. Stuff stays on it for the most part. Couple of Craftsman tool carts on casters. Useful place to put the tools and, since they're open, you can see the stuff you need quickly instead of rifling through doors. Got scratch-and-dent versions for $50 apiece at Sears. Don't know why you'd buy new since it's gonna get kicked around anyway! Giant city-supplied trash can Several 6-packs of soda and a few snacks.

It's definitely annoying but not a total loss. The front brakes do 80% of the braking and modern drums are more powerful than the discs of the 70s and 80s. You could get ridiculously heavy-duty pads like EBC Yellowstuff and slotted rotors if braking performance is the issue. (Said by a guy who ruined the vacuum on his engine, but hey, at least I learnt from it. ) If it's cosmetic, then yeah no luck. You could paint the drums hot pink though!

Another option to get some of the rust off is sandblasting. I've just started experimenting with this and the results are pretty good so far. A "sandblaster kit" is $30 at Sears. It's just a small metal gun with a hose and an adapter. Hook it up to an air compressor at 90 psi and use your preferred medium. I've tried play sand (Home Depot $3.5/50 lbs), quikrete coarse sand (same price or thereabouts), glass beads (much more expensive at $35/50 lbs but very effective) and black beauty (basically coal slag; $15/100 lbs). It cuts HOURS off sanding/cleaning/finishing/whatever time and allows me to get into spots that would have been a real pain with an orbital or mouse sander. Unless you're going to be using it regularly, buying an air compressor may not be worth it. But you should be able to rent one fairly easily. Something with a BIG tank is almost a requirement for sandblasting. At 90 psi, the air drains fast. The refill rate (cubic feet/min) is important but unless you want the compressor running all the time, the tank size is critical. I use a 33 gallon tank but it may not be too expensive to get something even bigger if you're renting.

Your first problem was getting/keeping a Ford. Sell it, junk it, throw it away, whatever is necessary. Then get an R50. Sorry nothing useful to add.

Very nice! Have you considered leaving the splash shields off and just using a bedliner on the fenders instead ? I'm planning to do that since the splash shields are very flimsy and can interfere with the tires. Only section where I may leave it on is the windshield washer fluid... Or I may just remove that anyway since I Rain-X the windshield regularly and never really use the washer fluid...

Well, I pulled the trigger on that $110 hydraulic thing. Should be here by the end of the week. Decision made after I picked up the OME springs online.

Touchy touchy! Sometimes it's faster to ask than wade through 1,000 search pages because the keywords show up in everything from PoHo to member's rides. Not true in this case. Man, if this is what happens when one agrees with you. what happens when one doesn't ??? Get that nicotine gum!!!

Yeah, the thread showed Harbor Freight ones with much better clamps than the Sears Cr*pman ones. Having been burned (in this case, literally) with the 2-rod setup I'm very tempted to go with that $110 hydraulic one because its clamping system provides a little bit more room for error and there's a nice thick bar between the spring and the operator. Of course, the Troy 1-ton has a remote that allows you to stand away from everything. But its clamps can only go up to 7" od springs and it's $50 more expensive. I don't know whether I will need 10" od springs but I always need $50. http://www.amazon.com/Troy-ME4098-Hydrauli...r/dp/B000BMJX46

I thought B was being cranky until I ran the search. There are a billion posts on this answering pretty much every question. Seems to come up every year. Think I'm gonna try it in the cargo area first.

5 times. Didn't want it to blow apart. Fat lot of good that did me. Think I'm gonna go with that $110 hydraulic one. Will pay for itself on the first strut and I can always rent it out.

No way, man. The strut assembly was off the car and the compressors were only compressing 'em so you can get the strut out. I tried em a 2nd time after the first one blew apart, this time with a friend overseeing the process. We both agreed these things were unsafe. Here's how the process went. Check out the compressor this guy's using. I think that's a Troy 1-ton. http://www.bimmerboard.com/forums/posts/574720 Found that 2-ton thing for $110 on eBay... Considering I still have to do the rears on the car and am thinking about switching to OME springs for the Pathy (see my build thread) might be a good deal. I really don't want to pay $300-$400 to a local shop to do the whole thing...

The search didn't reveal anything dedicated to this so thought I'd post a new topic. What type of spring/strut compressor do you use or recommend ? I have tried the Sears Craftsman and the Autozone models. The Sears Craftsman failed and the assembly blew apart. I will be returning them and writing to the Consumer Safety Products Commission. The Autozone one only works if you don't have to install a strut INSIDE the spring or you use 2 of them. Kinda useless from my perspective. This is the Sears Craftsman one that failed on me. I have seen the same design all over the web. http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_0...ring+compressor After the failure and after seeing a much more robust hydraulic wall-mounted screw-type compressor at the local NTB, I'm beginning to wonder if the 2 rod design above can work safely and reliably. The hydraulic ones seem to run hundreds of dollars, though. The only vaguely affordable thing I found was this. Seems reasonable given that, around here, a suspension swap can run a few hundred bucks with no guarantee it'll be done right... http://www.jackstoolshed.com/index/page/pr...ring+Compressor Thoughts ? Ideas ? Recommendations ?

Yeah, I would suggest checking the bearings and all the rubber bushings/mounts.

You can cut the resonator off yourself very easily. However, you will want to extend a pipe out so all the exhaust gas isn't just venting underneath the rear seats. My exhaust replacement costs were $250. $90 for the flowmaster from Amazon. $160 for the shop to cut everything out, buy some new 2.25" tubing and a Y-pipe and weld it on. Had a heat shield rattle in one place. Bent the shield back in that area and have been fine since.

OMFG. The owner should be jailed for appalling taste.

Just replace the pulley and get some additional boost.

I dunno. Red has some pretty uh strong opinions about L&P. I think there IS a VG supercharger somewhere. Have to find it. Oh yes, wait a minute, NISSAN offered one.

Just get another Pathy, remove the rear seats and voila - you have an uber-Frontier with a factory bed cap! Much cheaper too! Good luck mate.

Is everything stock ? No aftermarket muffler/exhaust, air intake and so on ?

Total scam. Costs thousands. Tons of exclusions. Being pursued by various AGs and the Feds. I would post a slick Pezzy/MZ-style "ASK GOOGLE" tinyurl thing but I don't know how to.

I say forget all this exotic plenum shlenum stuff and get some toilet flanges and pvc pipe and make a true cold air intake! It's an interesting idea. Just would be towards the end of my list of performance-oriented mods rather than the beginning. I'd expect to get more verifiable bang-for-buck through things like a cold-air intake, freer-flowing exhaust etc.