You are getting fixed before the intro to this video nice nice. This video is proudly supported by my friends at rock auto, more on that a little later on in the video, but welcome welcome back to legit street cars. In this video. We are fixing many things on this.

My 2002 true blue metallic ford, f-150 svt lightning. I think i said that all in the right order - and this is about - is legit of a street car or street truck my only truck as it comes. I've been using it for about a thousand miles without fixing really anything. If you guys saw the reveal video, it's got quite a few issues, a lot of its maintenance, but some of them some of them, really need to get fixed hang on.

Let me show you another one besides, this really annoying squeak, which i should have fixed a long time ago, hear that that is a bad shot. Okay, that is the hood. That's the hood! Shutting i didn't think those shocks were that weak. So that's the hood.

Shutting these are bad shocks, one bad shock in the rear. So in this video i'm going to take you problem by problem i'll show you the issue, we'll fix the issue and then i'll show you that it's fixed, it's a crazy concept, but i think you guys are gon na like it. So if you do make sure to hit that thumbs up and without further ado, let's get right to work. Okay, our first very visible issue would be the coolant on this truck, so the engine's, pretty cool, but we're gon na have a little tiny bit of pressure.

Left, don't ever open one of these with a hot engine, very, very dangerous it'll blow up in your face and burn you and you don't want to get burned by any coolant, but especially coolant. That looks like this. This is just nasty, so the maintenance on this truck is just a little baffling because the truck itself, the body, the undercarriage everything, is very, very nice, especially for one that's been around chicago, it's entire life. I know it's got new spark plugs.

It's got coils. We did the oil change last time and everything looks just really clean, but it's as if they never did a coolant flush. They never did a brake flush, it's very very odd, but uh. It is what it is.

So we want to flush this all out, and this is gon na get a little extreme, so i've already run a bottle of radiator flush through this and i've driven it a couple hundred miles with this. So at this point we're gon na drain. This fill it up again and flush it multiple times, and i may even replace this reservoir because i don't know if we'll ever get it clean and it just it makes such a nice truck look bad and we already completed the first step. You got to remove your cap, otherwise you're going to drain very, very little out so with that.

Let's raise this truck in the air and see what kind of drain we're dealing with okay. So here is our drain and i'm just going to reach in here and start turning this guy there we go nasty okay, so i know what you guys are thinking alex. You have a shop now, where are your big shop drains well they're on back order? I ordered some nice ones and they're on back order, and so i just went to autozone and bought this guy here i tried going to harbor freight, but their cheapo drains were on a shelf that they couldn't reach because something was in front of it. I don't know it was weird kind of got into a little bit of an argument.

They wouldn't sell me the floor model, it's against company policy anyway. So here we are thirty dollars for this guy right here. So i can drain some coolant, but yeah, as you can tell this stuff, is uh pretty dirty pretty dirty, but we're gon na get all of this out of here and then we're gon na refill it again and get it out of here again and i'm hoping That two flushes uh with the cleaner will be enough. Well, if there's one thing, that's nice about draining the coolant on the ground like that.

It's that we can get started on taking things apart up top, because i want to replace the thermostat i'm going to go ahead and assume it's the original thermostat, the truck doesn't overheat or anything, but for a few dollars. It's a good thing to replace and it's probably nasty considering how bad the coolant is and also we're gon na flush it with an open thermostat. So we know we're getting maximum flow. Okay, goodbye cheap version of a cold air intake yeah that big cone filter is definitely more of a hot air intake.

It just kind of sits here. The exhaust manifold is right there, so it's just sucking in hot air. It does make the blower sound cooler, but i do believe they sell a real cold air intake that either blocks this off or it's enclosed in a box, and then it gets its cold air from down below somewhere either way. For now, i think, i'm okay, i'm pretty happy with the performance of this truck at the moment, i'm not going too crazy, and speaking of that there is an excel coil.

That a lot of people have told me are garbage uh. This thing runs great though, so i'm going to leave them for now, and here is our thermostat. So let's get this clamp off here looks like we have a bracket. We need to remove as well can't wait to see how nasty this is.

This is something else. I'm talking about with this truck being kind of weirdly maintained, i mean i guess it's not that weird it just seems like they spent their money on performance. This thing has a pulley, a nice throttle body. Some exhaust work a tune, coils, maybe injectors.

This is the coolant for the intercooler system and it's like brand new now granted. This won't get nearly as dirty as the coolant that runs through the engine but uh anyway. I think this guy was just into going fast and that's about it. This blower belt's not bad, but i got a new one anyway, it's a little dry rotted.

We don't want any slip so we'll just get this out of the way. Now, okay and that'll make it easier for us to get this upper radiator hose out of the way yeah. There is a lot of orange stuff in there, not good. Oh all, right these guys are a little crusty breaking, though so far knock on thermostat housing.

Please don't break okay, that one wasn't bad at all weird okay moment of truth here on this thermostat get my housing off wow. Those are the longest housing bolts in the world. Look at that nasty, though oh man, this is brutal. Oh there we go.

There's our seal: well, it's definitely orange, but it's not as bad as i thought it wasn't overheating. This thing seems to be working okay, but here you go. Here's our old thermostat and i'm gon na try and put this back together without it. So we can run this fully open.

Just look at these bolts. Look at all this crud! We got ta get this off. Okay, just gon na go old school here with the wire brush. I have to bring over my bench grinder with the wire wheel on there or just get a new one for the shop and leave the one at the house, something else that i need to bring over a lot of stuff.

I bring over with this pickup truck. So we got ta fix it up: okay, so no thermostat, just gon na go ahead and install the seal, and now the housing snug these guys up all right now we're basically putting everything back together. I can leave that blower belt off, though that won't matter for this, and the clamp is on there. We go nice and tight and we'll just throw this back on, because it has the mass airflow sensor so it'll run properly.

Some cars won't run at all without it and for this flush, we're going to run a second bottle of this cleaner, all right and then we're just filling it up with normal water and we're gon na fill this all the way up, get the radiator, nice and Full, so it might take a couple gallons, depending on what kind of car you're working on this truck probably takes a lot. There goes one gallon and there is gallon number two. Here's our third gallon. Oh man, this thing might take three.

It's gon na be quite the flush here. Okay, it's gon na take three. It's probably gon na take more so let's get this thing outside a lot of this is gon na drain down and then we'll have to refill it but yeah. It's still looking really nasty and here's the nasty coolant on the ground got some cleanup to do, but before we go outside and work on the lightning and the heat i got ta show you guys my new table.

So many of you give me crap for working on stuff on the ground, so my friend steve came by and he helped me build this and he was definitely the brains of the operation. He's built quite a few of these, but i picked up the materials in the back of the lightning, so i'm definitely using it for pickup truck stuff, and this thing is an absolute beast. We built it in one night. It is two three quarter inch pieces of plywood glued together, it's three by eight.

I stained it in dark walnut. It is very, very sturdy, very strong and i'm going to add a stainless steel top and a vise as well. So now i have a table for all of my car parts, and these are some of the parts that are going on the lightning. And, of course, they came from my friends at rockauto.com and if you guys have not bought car parts on rockauto.com, you're missing out on a ton of savings and you're missing out on the coolest website for auto parts ever so.

This is like the internet 25 years ago. Instead of having a crazy fancy site with pop-ups coming and all sorts of madness, they just have a very basic easy to use site. This is what you want when you just simply want to buy some car parts. So 2002, we got f-150 in here we pick our engine supercharged everything's, already in very easy, we're ready to buy, and here check this out, pitman arm.

I got one of those for the truck. I went with the moog. That is the best one. They make some very good quality steering parts 34.79.

Let's see how much this is at the local, auto parts, so this is their in-house brand 60. The middle grade is 48 and the value craft is 38. This part is gon na last, you like a year or two at most, very very cheap parts, or you can get the best of the best for 34.79 and the best part is, if you guys go to rockauto.com or click on my link in the video description Box and use coupon code legit you're, going to save an additional five percent. So a big thanks to rockauto.com for continuing to support automotive content creators like myself now, let's go outside it's about a hundred degrees and uh continue to fix this lightning.

We got a lot to do so. I got it out here: idling we'll get it up to well as close to operating temperature as we can without a thermostat there's a possibility with it sitting here. It might not ever get up to operating temperature, but we'll let it run for a while get this engine nice and warm get this coolant circulating, make sure we don't have any leak here at the top of the radiator hose we're good. It's under pressure already a lightning with no blower.

It's so weird! There's that cleaner, it's foaming up on us! That's when you know it's working, it's cleaning! It's taking a bath in there, the engine's getting clean, the radiator, the heater core everything, especially when you're running two of these things through it. So if your cooling system isn't that dirty, you can just run this for about 10-15 minutes and then flush it out. But in my case i ran the first bottle for a couple hundred miles drain that out now we're on our second bottle. I've never had to go to three, but we might fill this back up with water and flush it one last time after this next flush.

I want to make sure this is all out of there all right, so it did end up taking about three gallons, and now it's been about 15 minutes. I've had the cap on i've been revving it up every once in a while, and i don't think it's going to get much warmer than that right there. Maybe it would, if i mean it's like 100 degrees outside right now, so i think at this point the cleaner in the water circulated through the engine enough, maybe i'll give it just another five minutes or so uh, and then i'm gon na go ahead and drain. This outside, oh yeah, look at that whoo nasty.

It should get better every time, so i'm just going to do these flushes outside and look at this. I think this is worse than the first time wow. This might take us like four flushes to get this clean. Okay, so while that one is draining, i'm gon na go ahead and replace the coolant tank here, because i don't think we're ever gon na get it super clean, and this is a cool truck and it should look nice under here, so a normal car.

I would spend a little bit of time cleaning it. We just call it a day, but i think this engine bay would look a lot better with it. It was only like 30 bucks. So why not? Okay, i got that guy off.

Okay, there we go yeah. Look at this we're never gon na make this look pretty it's all black on the inside and just nasty so goodbye. This is much better. It's missing! Another bolt that goes in here i'll have to go, find one pretty solid without it.

Oh man we're doing this again and it looks equally as bad. This is horrible. This is horrible. When is this going to start to look clear, i can't believe it three gallons each time this is gon na, be a lot of fun to recycle.

That's for sure. I got a five gallon bucket already filled up, and this thing, i think i don't know, maybe holds six gallons total something like that all right, so this is gon na, be our third bottle of coolant, radiator, flush and uh. This is what we found at the store: blue devil, not sponsored by any of these guys, just all they had so same deal. They want you to run it for about 10 minutes until it gets to operating temperature and then flush it out so come on.

Blue devil: let's do this, because this stuff is not looking any better, and this is our third bottle now of some kind of radiator flush, i'm running out of containers to put nasty water into this thing holds so much okay. This is with the blue devil. Maybe it's looking a little bit better. Now i don't know i don't know this is still pretty far off.

We're. Definitely gon na have to do this again. This is the longest colon flush i've ever done. Finally, we have clean water.

Oh this is great. This is great off camera. I've done this like a million times, but it's nice and clean now, no more orange stuff and i think i've gone through. I don't know about 20 gallons of water.

We have this here another one inside a couple: random, gallon containers. I filled up with this nastiness and we're finally getting nice clear water going through. So with that i am going to install our new thermostat, we'll fill it up with coolant. We have our new bottle here.

This is gon na, be sweet okay, so i'm gon na replace the belts as well, and it's going to be a lot easier to do that if we can get this fan out of here, there's probably a special tool for this, but i'm just going to jam A screwdriver in and hope for the best and okay that was really easy. Just loosened right up. Okay, there's that one so we'll spin. This fan and fan clutch off of the water pump.

I'd like to do an electric fan conversion on this. I think the engine would just sound so much better without this fan blowing. Okay, all right cool, that's out of the way all right. I don't think i'm gon na sneak that belt by we're gon na have to take this big bracket off.

That holds some of the pulleys for the supercharger belt. I think that's the only way to do this. Okay, so i'm taking this gigantic bracket off, so i can get to the inside belt. I got the uh the belt out, but there's no way we're getting that new one on and routed without being able to see so goodbye.

This is a ford truck. It's supposed to be easy to work on, but this is just everything is buried. Honestly, this isn't fun. This isn't fun.

Okay, so far, working on an ls truck is a million times easier than this. This belt took me like a half hour, at least so not fun, but that one's done all right. So now we have the block of pulleys and the blower tensioner that we can put back on go to your home there. You go all right, so you can see this blower belt.

It's got some cracks in it, so it's getting a little brittle. Definitely something we want to do right now and here's the new one, a gates, rpm belt, so this should hold up pretty well made in the usa all right this one is a tad easier, especially with the fan out of the way. Well, you win. Some! You lose some when you're ordering a belt with a truck that has a different supercharger pulley.

You got to keep that in mind, so i just ordered one for an o2 lightning. It is too short, so yeah we're going back with the old belt and i'll have to reorder it, but my mistake feeling kind of dumb all right. So it's time to install a thermostat just going to leave the hose on this time. New seal i've already cleaned up the housing and the bolts, so we're good.

There, click click, click, a couple, more clicks, click click and we are good new thermostat, all right. Okay, so we're back in the shop. Everything is put back together and we have nice clean coolant, so i'm gon na let this kind of bubble down. While we do all the other repairs and i'll have to top it up in a little bit.

So, let's move on, let me tell you: it is so nice to have an air conditioned shop and funny story. When i went to go look at this place, i had no idea it was air conditioned and after seeing it, i was like yeah. Okay, i'll take it like this is. This is great.

This is perfect, and then i came back the next day because the owner could come in and he was going to show me some stuff and he's like oh yeah. Let me show you how to turn on the air conditioning. I'm like you got to be kidding me. This has air conditioning he's like yeah, and it works really well, and it does guys it is so nice in here.

I don't keep it on all the time, because it's kind of expensive to cool the whole place down, but air conditioning phenomenal phenomenal thing to have in a garage. Let me tell you so it's an electric impact. I barely use the uh air hose anymore. For anything.

All right, let's see, are we gon na need the old mule kick? I don't think so. I don't think so. Yeah look at that. Just the old palm hit.

That's all you need here. I'm gon na take all these wheels up just make it easier to work on stuff, even though we don't really need them off for this this thing alive. Oh, that thing is alive, yeah, okay, all right, we got bugs. We got bugs um, we got bugs and these brakes are all pretty much brand new, which this thing is just weirdly maintained like the brakes and the hardware and everything is like brand spanking new.

It looks phenomenal, but they only replaced one shock. Let me show you, i don't know if this is the same one. Is this thing alive here we go. No, no! It's dead, it's dead.

That was the same thing that flew out, though, but a different one. That's his brother! Sorry little buddy! You didn't make it so the cause of the noise when i was bouncing up and down on the truck. Was this a bad shock? The bushing is completely gone. This looks very, very old and it needs to be replaced, but for some reason they just replaced the driver's side rear and the passenger side front, but they didn't replace the driver's side front.

Very very odd, and all of this rust looking stuff is just the rust water that was spewing out of the reservoir in the last video. This thing is actually in really good shape for being a chicago truck. The frame and the undercarriage are in excellent condition. So i much rather have this and replace a bunch of worn out shocks and do some maintenance than the other way around having a rotted out frame and whatnot.

That would be no good. The bones of this truck are solid. All right. Let's get these shocks going here, i sprayed these down with some peditraining oil yesterday, let's see all right so far, so good and guys i've been using these sonic tools now, for i don't know two months: they're awesome i'll leave you guys a link in a coupon Code 10 off down below the ratchets are so nice, so fine-toothed a lot of this stuff is made in germany.

It's just built really well. These guys are great. That thing isn't going anywhere now: yeah, i'm gon na. Take the nut off, never mind.

This is all stripped out and rusted, so just gon na go ahead and cut it off or cutting all right. That should do it don't burn me all right, good deal. Okay, there goes that all right cool! Okay. Now we just have the lower one and of course this guy is frozen, so we're going to clamp these guys on there and hope that we can spin the bolt out yep all right.

We got it that may have been why they didn't do this shock. They couldn't get it out very possible what we got it out hang on. I got to show you guys this, because it's happening right now, uh it's about 6. 30 at night.

It just started raining, look at all the water, that's coming into the shop, and it's all coming in right here see that it's like a stream, oh wow, and it's coming in over here too now. This is not cool! Oh wait! A minute! It's coming in over! Here the roof is leaking also oh jeez holy whoa. This is nuts look at this, i'm so sorry ta. This is gon na, be your first wash in like 18 months.

Wow stops getting flooded, that is for sure close all right. Okay, all right dealing with that problem is for another day, i'm just hoping the whole entire shop doesn't get flooded because it is creeping in. It is definitely creeping in well. I guess we have a pretty serious storm going on right now, but that is not going to stop me from completing this lightning.

We can worry about water, leaks and property damage. Another time we have parts to install bilsteins in this case, so i'm replacing all the shocks with some nice bilsteins. It's going to make this lightning handle even better. This thing handles really well for a pickup truck.

I'm super impressed so far. It's actually a lot of fun to drive all right now, it's time for me to pretend that i work out. Oh yeah, no problem! This is so easy. I should probably have the bolt ready yeah, let's get the bolt ready.

Where are you bolt? Okay? Here we go: okay, that's difficult! That is difficult. I don't work out. So i really need to. This is bad, ah just turned 37, but i feel i feel like i'm 25.

yeah. Okay, there we go piece of cake. The storm is getting worse. Water is definitely getting all the way in my shop.

This better stay. Okay, all right now we use the old punch trick to line this up perfectly, and then this will punch our punch right out. Look at that sweet goodbye, glove, okay, there's our nut! All right! New glove, let's see how long this guy lasts us, you guys have any recommendations for gloves that don't rip every two seconds leave them down below. I spent like 35 dollars on a box of these gloves and they're horrible, all right cool one down.

Oh yeah! This is beautiful. This side was already done, so this nut came right off. It's like brand new. They must have just replaced this guy.

Thank you. I'm gon na replace it again anyway, but it's nice. The hardware is coming off nice. Let's see, is it stuck in the sleeve, oh, very good, it's gon na come right out there we go it's all right.

What brand is this it's made in the usa but doesn't say anything on there, i'm sure it's not a bad shock, but we got bilsteins. All right, so i've got both of the rears complete and i got ta say these bilsteins always look so good. They have the color combination on point, and this is not looking so good. This water just keeps on creeping, and this storm is not giving up and we aren't giving up on fixing stuff on this lightning.

Actually, this is more of a maintenance item, but while we're back here, let's swap out some diff fluid okay. So this is the fill all right, good, we're not getting anything now. This differential does not have a drain plug. You actually have to remove the rear cover, it's sealed with an rtv, and then you have to clean this all up and put it back on.

It takes a little bit of time and it's unnecessary if this isn't leaking. So let me show you what i do so i use one of these guys. It's a little pneumatic, fluid extractor and you can get manual ones as well. If you don't have shop air and then you just take the hose - and you just snake it in here - okay, so we can get this guy to go all the way down into the bottom and then we're going to suck the fluid out there.

We go, and this is going to suck all the fluid out every last little bit of it. You can sink this line in it'll, get it all and then just keep an eye on this. If it gets too full it'll start to spit out there, but we'll let this go. Maybe it takes like 10 minutes or so, and we don't have to mess with that rear cover.

You want to know, what's fun spilling dip fluid all over the place. I was taking a little cap there off and i drop the bottle. One thing: that's kind of annoying when you have one of these little guys is you have to drain it out every few minutes, but anyway, here we go. This stuff was a little dirty, i must say, but we'll get some new fluid in there and the differential was working.

Good it'll definitely leave two stripes down the road. That's for sure. So the posi unit is functioning. I've got all the diff fluid sucked out, but before we start filling it back up, i'm gon na use a bottle of this amsoil slip lock.

So i was getting a little bit of chattering in parking lots and making tight turns from the rear end here, and that could mean that it's low on the additive, so maybe whoever swapped it out last didn't use any of this. The fluid i'm using does have some of the additive in there. So if it's been properly maintained, this isn't necessary, but it never hurts - and i like, using this pretty much in all performance cars that have a limited slip so i'll leave a link down below where you can get amsoil for 25 off and that's through me, i'm An amsoil dealer all right and then we'll just go ahead and squirt this in there yeah. I hope you guys can hear that sounds pretty good.

Okay, we're good there. These squeeze bottles are really nice, so i've already put a couple of these in there. This differential takes quite a bit of fluid okay, yeah whoa. It is coming out all right, all right, all right.

So then we just put the plug back in and we're done so you guys should definitely be doing your differential services at home. Some shops will charge a couple hundred dollars for this and you get it done for, like maybe 30 40 bucks in material at most, using the best stuff, using synthetic fluid and whatnot, and in some cases you don't even have to take off the rear cover. Okay, we're moving on to the front shocks. This is the old one.

Oh we're gon na have to cut this off too. Aren't we yeah this whole thing is just spinning. It's just a big ball of rust. Let's cut it off.

Okay, this one's a lot harder to get to kind of at a weird angle here, so i'm just trying to cut right through the nut, so we can just break the nut right off almost all right, okay, pretty much ground this down to nothing. This has to come now there we go: okay, goodbye, yeah, nice destruction right there. Oh, this is hot. Oh, this is hot all right, all right, okay, so that side took about 15 minutes to cut that off.

So, let's compare that to this side here where someone is nice enough to already replace this truck for me. So this hardware is so nice and easy. Look at that. I did it live.

That's it all right cool, and now we have the problem side, but i shouldn't have an issue with these. I've been soaking them for a little while all right. Okay, there we go. This one is gone, so these fronts are a lot easier and we're just gon na go ahead and slide this one up.

I just got ta muscle this guy and hold it stay there we go. Spin jack would be nice. I have one of those too. It's just out here, along with half of the other things i need to work on cars.

Okay, oh man, this one was horrible, just horrible suck it in okay. That's good! That's good! All! Right with these fronts, you can't just zip them down. You have to hold it with a t40, then you can turn the nut and tighten it down, and you don't have to go too crazy here and smush out all the rubber. That's about good right there.

It's not going anywhere trust me there. We go all right. So we have a new bilstein on the front right and on the front left, which means we are done with the shocks all right. So i just wanted to fill this up with some water.

I've been hearing it bubble down the whole time, we're doing our other repairs all right cool. This looks so much better, i'm so glad i replaced this reservoir for, like i don't know, 30 35 and we have flushed everything out and this truck never overheated or anything. So i don't expect to see any difference in cooling performance, but it's definitely nice to know we're up to date on maintenance with the coolant you know what, while we're in here, might as well give this mass airflow sensor a cleaning you guys have seen me do This on pretty much any new car that i buy, because it's so easy to do and it can prevent a failure or at least a check engine light coming on people replace mass airflow sensors all the time, and sometimes you can just clean them out. It's really easy just get yourself, some mass airflow sensor, cleaner and then you're just spraying.

It on make sure to get the little elements in here. That's about it, we'll let this guy dry and then put it right back all right guys. It's like three and a half hours later, and this will not let up at all. This is a really really bad storm wow, it's hard to see, but the tire on that 4runner is just completely underwater.

Oh man, i got a call from the house that the basement isn't flooding, but the sump pump isn't working. So i have to go back home right now and check on that and try and figure out. What's going on, and my wife told me that all the streets are flooded, the neighbors are probably getting water in their basement. I may get water in my basement, so i don't want to disable the truck anymore because i may need it for pickup truck type stuff.

So i'm going to go ahead and wrap this thing up, drive it back home and do what i got to do so in the next lightning video. We will finish the rest of the truck. It will be mechanically perfect, so i hope you guys really enjoyed this video if you did give it a big thumbs up share the video subscribe if you're new cross, your fingers, i don't have any water in my basement and, most importantly, have an awesome day i'll Catch all of you in the next video you.