Lean burn removal

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Flanman55 said:
The carb this truck is not a computer control carb, which doesnt make sense.
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Not at all surprised. They say that the version with wires hanging out exist but I've worked on lots of lean burn equipped vehicles and have only had 1 with the wired up carb, that was an 84, 5th Ave,
There was a point in the 80s where many cars got the wired up version but not trucks, otherwise I think it was a California type thing.
What you WILL find though is that a lean burn carb won't have the vacuum port that's needed for a vacuum advance pod so a different carb is needed for that.
 
Oh and it appears to me that someone has already turned that harness into a rats nest.
My 85 d150 was absolutely THE worst in that department when I first got it. I'm surprised it hadn't caught fire at some point before I got it and
so I felt that I had to take care of that issue.
Mine was hacked so bad that I went to the junkyard and got a different harness, and started with that instead. The one I got was from a 1 ton V8 truck so in essence the lean burn delete was already done, could have been simply plug n play, as I unhooked the wiring from the bulkhead and plugged in the replacement. But I went farther.

I did have to extend a few wires, not bad at all.
I did untaped the replacement harness and went thru every inch, I did find some spots where insulation was chipped, etc from sheer age and heat cycles... I fixed those, replaced a couple of sections of wire, while at it.
What I also did was to go back to the junkyard and got an underhood fuse box from a different vehicle and wired that in, deleting all of the fusible links at the same time.
I had a factory service manual spread out right along side of me the whole way.
I have somewhere a TSB from the Littelfuse company that tells of the development of "maxi fuses" and how they were developed specifically to replace fusible links/ and used that for much of my ambition for the modified harness that I created.
There are countless possibilities there but for my purposes as I walked the junkyard I settled on an underhood fuse box from a 90-92 ranger to incorporate into my truck. I wanted something small and compact with enough fuse holes for my needs. This application has I think 12 fuse slots, and depends on how fancy the truck you pick the box from can have anywhere from 8 to all 12 fuse slots "hot", while leaving some slots as "dummy blanks".
I looked til I found one with as many live fuse slots as I could. I have a few unused but that's ok as id rather have that than to not have enough. That gives me room in case I want to add things later.
I also added a 2nd, redundant 10 ga "hot" off the back of the alternator, thru one of the "extra" fuse slots and then straight to the battery. When you get into that harness you'll see why.
At the back of the valve cover, there's a black plug where the actual engine harness connects to the rest of the underhood harness, and all the potential juice from the alternator ran thru 1 blade type terminal, and then splits 4 ways about 1 ft from the battery into 4 fusible links which are much smaller gauge but power up most of the truck. I put each of those 4 on their own circuits, plus now have a direct line from the alt to the battery, besides. While it would be crazy overkill to do so it don't hurt to have "too big" of wire gauge from point a to point b, but you can definitely have "too small" .
I know this goes beyond what most are wanting to do to their vehicles but it's the best way (that I know of anyway) to eliminate alot of problems these trucks came to be known for over the years.
 
Ok I will Look at the relay and splice off the orange to the ballast resistor. Thats the second wire i have been looking for?
 
Well Guys, I appreciate all the help. I wired in the box and the ballast resistor. The Orange wire is my white wire (no orange could be found in the store) and used the 12V relay orange. to one side of the resistor.
12v hot and positive coil to the other side. The resistor gets really hot, is this normal?
Plus is charges at 15.1v now and before it was around 14.3v.

Any thoughts? Am I over thinking this stuff now? Just drive it, LOL.

Started right on the first turn of the key and smoothed out the idle even with a carb that wont work with the Vacuum advance...

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Resistors get HOT. they are cutting alternator voltage down to "around" 5-8 volts. So yeah, there's a lot goin on "THERE". 15v is too much for the charging system. If it does not drop down after it runs a while, something's up.
 
DSavage said:
Thanks! I thought I was losing my mind since those parts seemed correct to me based on my research. I appreciate your verification. You don't off hand know if you'd remove the voltage regulator do you? I saw someone say that but I don't see that in the slantsix.org article. article
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Can you take a picture of the lean burn equipment you have on your engine? You basically just going to wire in the new harness and put a distributor that actually has a curve in it. You can either patch into existing at the closet to the firewall and just uturn the old wiring back n under a harness clip with the new passing next to it..or cut the old out all together.

I'm late. Lol

@Flanman55 You don't have two ballast resistors going at the same time do you? Yeah the ballast gets hot and that's normal just like Rusty Rat Rod said. As for the alternator draw I believe you might have a grounding issue...make sure you have your voltage regulator grounded good. If you're unsure get a wire with an alligator clip on each end and hook it to the bolt at the voltage regulator to the engine block.
As for that bunch of wires you pulled your power from ..should be good enough coming off the alternator/main through gauge from battery starter switch. Hmm.. it could just coincidentally be the alternator is ehh .. but check that ground like I said. Good luck
 
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RustyRatRod said:
Resistors get HOT. they are cutting alternator voltage down to "around" 5-8 volts. So yeah, there's a lot goin on "THERE". 15v is too much for the charging system. If it does not drop down after it runs a while, something's up.
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Ok I will check the voltage again here in 5 minutes... and watch it.

MOPAROFFICIAL said:
Can you take a picture of the lean burn equipment you have on your engine? You basically just going to wire in the new harness and put a distributor that actually has a curve in it. You can either patch into existing at the closet to the firewall and just uturn the old wiring back n under a harness clip with the new passing next to it..or cut the old out all together.
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I have removed it already. The only wire i really used was the 12v hot from the harness that was soldered to 4 others and the alternator. I kept those wires. new wire from the relay and the harness that came with the HIREV 7500
 
MOPAROFFICIAL said:
@Flanman55 You don't have two ballast resistors going at the same time do you? Yeah the ballast gets hot and that's normal just like Rusty Rat Rod said. As for the alternator draw I believe you might have a grounding issue...make sure you have your voltage regulator grounded good. If you're unsure get a wire with an alligator clip on each end and hook it to the bolt at the voltage regulator to the engine block.
As for that bunch of wires you pulled your power from ..should be good enough coming off the alternator/main through gauge from battery starter switch. Hmm.. it could just coincidentally be the alternator is ehh .. but check that ground like I said. Good luck
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Thanks for the update. When I took the voltage regulator off i dremeled the area to clean it of paint I am going to clean the grounds now.

Thanks again.

I know this Isn't FOR D150's Only but you guys rock.
 
I wish there was a "for D/W series truck only" site(s)
But really what you're asking about does apply to more Chrysler products than Those or A bodies
(Actually I don't think there was a single A body with lean burn)
 
Ok Cleaned the three ground straps i could find plus dremeled them and the ares of contact clean. Started it up and the regulator is grounded.

Took it for a quick burn around the town came back and checked the voltage 14.98 to 15.03v.

What if I unhook the red wire from the Alternator and run a jumper to the battery, would that do anything different?
 
I'd leave that as is because of how it splits off into the different main circuits on the driver fender well, (a look at a wiring schematic for these trucks would explain what I mean better) so I'd leave what's there alone as is and run a redundant, 2nd cable (10 ga minimum) from the alternator to the battery but I would put a fuse of some kind into that new line.

I had another /6 powered truck before, and I had to swap engines in that one, as I pulled the old one the engine swung back as it disengaged from the trans, and the valve cover smacked the regulator. Damaged the connector within somehow and I had a "full tilt" charge situation after the replacement engine was in, I ended up having to replace the regulator pigtail to fix.
When testing the charging system on these they say to ground one if the regulator terminals, which in effect bypassed the regulator, and that's how mine acted with the pigtail bring bad. I have noticed a difference in achieved voltage wit different regulators mounted to an otherwise "same everything else" vehicle.
 
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