March 19, 2025 - Morton, Illinois
2025 Truck Report (1990 F150)
Odometer on December 17, 2025: 204,816 miles.
This is 1322 miles since this time last year, and 92,067 miles
since July 24, 2010, when purchased.
Gas mileage was 16.6mpg - same as last year.
Service this year:
February 4 - March 18: Repaired detached rocker panel with these
purchased parts:
22-gauge galvanized sheet metal ($40.87),
26-gauge galvanized sheet metal ($40.12),
1/8-in zinc steel rivets ($8.55),
Rust-Oleum semi-gloss white paint ($7.64).
Added grounding wires from engine compartment to chassis to body to
cargo box using 14-gauge green stranded wire ($12.83).
Replaced missing seat rear panel push retainers ($4.91).
March 21: Replaced radio speakers ($28.81).
March 24: Repaired parking brake switch grounding.
May 28: Changed oil and oil filter ($47.40).
Greased ball joints and U-joints.
Early February is when I noticed that tail lights weren't working.
Looking for the cause of that led to the discovery of a more
troubling issue. The driver door rocker panel - the metal below
the door - was detached from the truck at the back, due to metal
rusting through! The front edge was still attached thanks to a
thin piece of metal. The back end would have been dragging on the
pavement except for the seat belt holding it up!
This seat belt attachment shouldn't be visible:
Time for some extensive sheet metal work! My brother-in-law has a
metal bending brake, which he brought over:
Using cardboard templates, I eventually had several pieces cut and
bent, ready for attaching:
Top side:
Underside:
Inside before and after:
With that done, I went back to troubleshooting the tail lights
issue. Turns out that problem was also due to corrosion. And I am
partially to blame. Years earlier I'd used my wire-piercing probes
on some of the wires, and apparently the needle point size holes I
made were big enough to let road salt get to the copper wires. I
should have sealed the holes back then!
Pieces of new wire, soldering, and heat shrink tubing fixed the
tail lights:
Wanting everything to work, I looked into why the radio was now
not playing. Turns out both speakers were bad. Replacement was
relatively easy and reasonably priced.
One last issue. I was getting no dash light indication when I'd
set the parking brake. Looking for that problem led me to the
parking brake indicator switch. I love the design of this switch -
it's so simple. The contact checked good. More checking with the
meter showed that the metal the switch mounts to wasn't grounded
well. Cleaning/tightening a ground wire connection in the engine
compartment fixed that.
Finally, the truck was back on the road, playing tunes and hauling cargo:
