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My F150 "build" thread


Shran

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Might as well have one of these... apart from actually obtaining the truck, I made a pretty significant step forward towards fixing it up today: I received two brand new box sides!

The back story on this truck: my grandpa bought it brand new from a dealer in Newcastle, WY. The dealer actually brought two of them up to where grandpa lived, basically identical trucks except one was 4 wheel drive and mine is 2 wheel. A guy down the street from him bought the 4x4 truck - pretty cool, they were even the same color scheme.

I remember riding around with my grandpa in this truck when I was a little kid. He always kept it in a carport and it was always clean and in good shape, apart from the million dents and dings inside the box from hauling firewood. My dad ended up with it in 2004 when grandpa got a new vehicle. Dad drove it for a few months, and then through a series of mistakes I made with other vehicles, I had it through my senior year of high school. It had 55,000 documented, original miles on it then and has just over 104k now. As a young adult, I was not as kind to it as I could have been and that resulted in one accident that was my fault, a lot of wear and tear and teenager repairs. The box was very rusty by around 2009 or so when I found a Cash for Clunkers truck in the junkyard and scored the box off of it. The outside is kinda "meh" and has been repaired poorly with patch panels, and it's painted red, but the inside is frickin mint, so I endured, planning on fixing the rust and repainting it blue/white at some point...well that's been 12 year ago now :ROFLMAO: I'm not in a hurry I guess.

Specs: currently has an EFI 5.0, T18 four speed manual, *had* a 9" rear end with 3.50 gears and open carrier but that has been replaced with a 3.50 limited slip in a different housing. My plan is to put a 427 stroker engine in it using one of two 95/96 5.8 roller blocks I have, and a ZF 5 speed that I also have. I would like to end up with an engine that makes 350-400hp and can be run on 87 octane... the reading I've been doing about this suggests that it's pretty easy to do that and it's a reliable setup. The 5.0 I have now is pretty snappy but I would really like more.

2006 era, post first accident, pre box swap:


2011ish, post box swap, also put a nice set of slotted mags and Cooper Cobras on it:


2015, second accident, NOT my fault, some asshat kid pulled out of a parking lot and hit it. Totalled, tossed a decent fender on it from the junkyard, continued to drive it.


As luck would have it, last year (2020) I found a damn near identical truck in a junkayrd in Pierre, SD and it had a VERY nice fender and stone guard that I scored but have not installed yet.
55732


So my purchase from today was a pair of box sides. These are quickly becoming unobtainium and I figured I had some disposable cash, and it was becoming a now or never thing. The passenger side is actually an OEM Ford part, the driver's side is a repop. I am aware that it's a single fuel door box skin - I am deleting my rear tank, it has fuel in it from probably 2006 and I don't care to clean it out or make it work ever again.
KIMG0014.JPG
 


Shran

Junk Collector
TRS Forum Moderator
Supporting Member
Article Contributor
V8 Engine Swap
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Joined
Mar 4, 2008
Messages
8,636
Reaction score
4,702
Points
113
Location
Rapid City SD
Engine Type
V8
Engine Size
5.0
Here are some other old school pics I found...

Probably very soon after I got it, still had the factory wheels and trim on it. My old '80 F100 stepside is on the left, had a love/hate relationship with that truck.


After wreck #1 (the one that was my fault.) My dad's '76 F250 is on the left, that was a real nice truck.


It took me a while to get a fender painted so I drove it through high school... we had a really wet spring in '05, I'm guessing, I remember the road being godawful muddy.



This was the repainted fender in 2006 or so. I painted it myself, I did a pretty dang good job too aside from the blue vinyl stripe missing. I used single stage rattle cans that the local parts store mixed for me. It matched incredibly well and held up nicely until that fender got hit again.


This one was actually right before the slotted mags. The tires I had on it in the pic directly above were way beyond shot and I had no money for new ones. I ran across this awful set of retreads and a set of wheels, got me by for a while.
 

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