Brought it home about 3 years ago this summer for $1800 running and able to be tagged. Turns out we made a mistake by not pulling a valve cover before buying as the poor 390fe is all gummed up. It still runs way better than it should and has really good oil pressure, just smokes a little when you start it. To replace the 390, we have a 351w that's fairly built that we pulled from my granddad's 82 bronco. The bronco was meant to be his main project vehicle for several years, but trying to work through its gremlins and get it to pass inspection was going to cost too much money and effort.
At the moment we have the bed off to try and fit a gas tank under the bed.
The tank is the MTS 3019E HDPE tank for a 1972-1980 Scout II. We chose the tank since it fits well between the frame, we only have to move the crossmember about 6" back from its normal placement, we wanted a side fill so we don't have a filler in the middle of the bed, and because there's some documentation of it being done before.
This is how far back we pushed the crossmember, just beyond the spring hangers.
You'll also note my brother's 74 on jackstands to the right, that's from it losing a tire on the way to school. Ended up slightly denting the fender, cracking the brake shoes, and scratching the inside of the drum a little. Other than that, there is remarkably little damage from the incident in a 55mph zone, even though he had to drag it out of the middle of road into a gravel driveway afterwards. We'll get the drum surfaced and he'll reinstall brake bits this weekend.
These are the top straps that we made up for the tank.
These are bent from 1/8" steel and meant to be solid for the tank to push up against.
Picture of the tank against the torch cart.
Really not that big for a 19gal tank compared to the in-cab tank. I may use the same tank for my truck, but my install is a little more difficult since I'm running Holley Sniper TBI.
Turns out that shock mounts are painful
Oh well, wouldn't be any fun if I didn't get injured working on it.
Got the top straps and the crossmember mounted with Grade8 hardware, 3/8 for the crossmember and 7/16 for the straps.
Also notice that we have an extra 1/4 plate added into the forward crossmember since we notched it a little for clearance.
Probably not a lot getting done tomorrow since we need to go get the brake drum surfaced and get a grocery run in,
FE390PC