[therabbittree]

More problems that I discovered and fixed, ha..
After a cold night when I first brought the truck home. I had a hard time starting it. I figured it was because of the lack of a grid heater etc. I plugged in the block heater and put a battery charger on it.. and finally got it to start. Well I saw some smoke from under the hood and popped it open. I noticed the smoke was from the serp belt.. . After shutting it down I discovered the coolant hoses were semi solid ha and the waterpump wasn't able to freely spin causing the serp belt to smoke.. argh .. Seems the mixture of antifreeze the previous owner had was pretty inadequate. I used a gardenhose attached to my home's hot water and back flushed the coolant system . I was lucky it didn't fully freeze and crack a block....ask me how i know about that. ( I had previously cracked a block in my '89 first gen about 10 years ago) I added new coolant and buttoned up everything. When i restarted the engine more coolant leaks. argh Fearing the worst i checked the black ha.. it was fine but i did find a ford Quick connect plastic heater hose connection that had cracked andpoped off..argh.
I decided to remove them and use hose clamps and regular hose. Of course in order to remove all of them with the Excursions rear heat etc, I had to remove the turbo to get more access room.

This was the start of the down ward spiral..ha..decided to fix all the problmes then..truck has been down since then etc.