Swapping the Engine in the '67 F250 Part 10

Ever since I got done with installing the new wiring harness and making all the dash and interior connections, which was documented in the Part 9, I have been chipping away at transforming the engine from a bare hulk to an operational motion provider. There have been some issues along the way, a few to-and-fros, several components have been installed and the re-installed two or even three times. What follows is a potted history of this process; the triumphs without the tears, so to speak.

I started with bolting on the parts I previously restored:

starter motor

headers

oil pressure sender, fuel pump and oil filter

power steering pump and fan belt

heater hoses and carburetor

This is later, after I installed a brand new Powermaster alternator and started working through the wiring connections in the engine compartment: 

The new master fuse box comes with the American Autowire harness:

A lot of the under-hood wiring was "roughed in" to start with, which will give me some flexibility regarding the final routing:

The NP435 transmission I am using does not have a neutral safety switch, so I just connected the incoming and outgoing NSS wires together for right now. I have a plan for how to modify this in the future. 

With all the basic connections made, I can re-install the battery....

....and test the lights and turn signals etc.

Next step: install new fuel lines and a fuel filter - there was no fuel filter in place when I got the truck which seems to be par for the course with this vehicle.

I ended up tossing the electronic ignition setup that came with the truck and installing an old school points-based distributor that came with the engine I got from Ninja; I re-used the ignition coil. 

Finally time to try and start the engine! I syphoned a couple of gallons of gas out of the Mustang and transferred it to the F250. I've had a lot of practice at doing this over the years and I managed to accomplish the task without getting a mouthful of gasoline!

After a bit of twiddling of the distributor I got the engine to fire up, and then I wound out the carburetor idle screw, so the engine runs rich but holds its own at idle. It was SUPER noisy running the engine straight out of the headers, so I had to abandon plans to work on the timing and turn to re-installing the exhaust. The photo below shows the section of the exhaust that I removed when I was painting the engine bay; the rear section is still on the truck:

Bolting the exhaust back in should have been easy, because it should have been done before the transmission went back. Oops! This problem was solved with a cutting wheel, a sheet of aluminum roof flashing and two (2) hose clamps. 

I got the idea from the previous owner who did the same at the other end of the exhaust (see below). Once the F250 is roadworthy, I'll be heading to the muffler shop for an upgrade to a dual exhaust. I'm not decided on mufflers or tips yet, but I'm considering getting Flowmaster 50s because they sound so good on the Mustang. 

At this time of writing, I still need to dial-in the timing and adjust the carburetor. The clutch might need some adjustment, and I have to figure out what to do with the steering. I also have to finalize the location of some parts of the new wiring harness. I plan to get a new set of plug wires because red doesn't look right with the blue/black/silver engine color scheme. This is how the engine bay looks at the time of writing:

And this is how the engine sounds: