My shed of a 1978 Ford F-150

Akagi · 25 Jul 2020 at 22:36

Please take the oval off the bonnet, its not meant to be there and it looks awful

I am actually pretty envious, I'd love an old american truck. Sadly though its not really practical to own one here. Once you import it its 6x as expensive if not more, no parts availability, wrong hand drive, expensive petrol, nah.

geekman · 25 Jul 2020 at 23:43

Acme said:
Please take the oval off the bonnet, its not meant to be there and it looks awful

I am actually pretty envious, I'd love an old american truck. Sadly though its not really practical to own one here. Once you import it its 6x as expensive if not more, no parts availability, wrong hand drive, expensive petrol, nah.

I will eventually, but it seems to be stuck on with some sort of bondo type material so I’ll leave it until I get it painted.

Personally, I’d happily own a modern one in the UK, but definitely not one like this.

Cyber-Mav · 26 Jul 2020 at 06:31

Yikes over 40 year old pickup. Is it tax and mot exempt?

Screenbeat · 26 Jul 2020 at 07:05

geekman said:
Needed a pickup for a building project and house move - found this for the equivalent of £1k and bought it. Already been offered more for it, but I fell in love with it on the drive home despite its many, many faults, so I’ve decided to fix it up. Expect many stupid questions as I’ve never owned an old car before and don’t really know how anything works. I’ve changed shocks, throttle bodies, sensors etc on modern cars so how hard can it be?

Good / working things:

Engine (recently rebuilt)
Transmission (all 3 speeds of it!)
LPG system with 100l tank (very much enjoyed paying 25ppl to fill it up on the way home)
Brakes
Door locks and ignition
Most gauges and lights
New radiator, battery and shocks
Power steering
Tailgate opens and locks fine
Solid, non rusty chassis, body and suspension

Non working things / damage:

Indicator stalk doesn’t do anything
Seat belts (it has the entire belt system on the door pillars but nothing to clip them into as it’s had the seats from a Silverado or something similar fitted)
Drivers door handle
Blower / radio assembly damaged and not working
No gear selector gauge
Steering wheel very off centre
Steering generally feels vague and misaligned
Steering wheel centre plastic missing
Dash top cracked
One door card missing (buying a good used one today for £4)
Some damage to front drivers side, indicator dislodged
Various dents and paint damage. Looks like it was originally dark green, so I’m probably going to repaint it eventually in the original colour, as well as sort out all the dents and bent chrome. I can get cosmetic work done very, very cheap through a family member, so I’m not concerned about that.

No doubt there’s more issues, but that’s all I found on the test drive and 1hr drive home.

Here’s some pictures - as you can see, it was bought from a rather “interesting” location, and I was quite relieved not to get robbed.

@Acme Sorry, you don’t have the biggest shed on OCUK anymore

Amazeballz!!

Stu999 · 26 Jul 2020 at 10:10

Cyber-Mav said:
Yikes over 40 year old pickup. Is it tax and mot exempt?

It's in 'Murica (or Mexico?) - they don't have MOTs. They do have some 'vehicle inspection' rules but these can be as lax as a check when transferring ownership. Depends on the state.

Blackhawk47 · 26 Jul 2020 at 12:32

Acme said:
Does the tailgate open, and close?

Reminds me of 1min in on this old Top Gear episode clip.

geekman · 26 Jul 2020 at 13:11

Cyber-Mav said:
Yikes over 40 year old pickup. Is it tax and mot exempt?

We don’t have MOTs here. Tax is £28 per year, insurance £65, costs about £25 for 100 litres of LPG. It’s about as cheap to run as you can get really. I’ve already started buying parts for it and nothing has cost over £10 so far.

Cyber-Mav · 26 Jul 2020 at 17:00

geekman said:
We don’t have MOTs here. Tax is £28 per year, insurance £65, costs about £25 for 100 litres of LPG. It’s about as cheap to run as you can get really. I’ve already started buying parts for it and nothing has cost over £10 so far.

Man thats the life. We need that system over here. Shocked there is no mot type thing

Temujin · 26 Jul 2020 at 17:23

Cyber-Mav said:
Man thats the life. We need that system over here. Shocked there is no mot type thing

Looking at some of the horrors on the road in the US, and possibly Mexico, there definitely should be some form of checks done on vehicles. Might even lower the amount of crashes/road injuries/fatalities

Cyber-Mav · 26 Jul 2020 at 17:26

Most of those crashes i see on youtube are due to rear wheel drive issues.

sigma · 26 Jul 2020 at 20:07

That first photograph looks like a computer game scene

Martynt74 · 28 Jul 2020 at 09:51

geekman said:
@Acme Sorry, you don’t have the biggest shed on OCUK anymore

Nope, he still does

Gibbo · 28 Jul 2020 at 11:09

Love F150's and this is awesome.

geekman · 28 Jul 2020 at 21:02

A few little jobs done (the kind of jobs I’m best at)

Front marker light wasn’t working

Think this might have been why......

New bulb and a lot of wire brushing later.

Fixed the only non working side marker too

The dash area was a complete mess - it had an old head unit with a missing facia buried inside, and the heater controls were all loose. I will be fitting a stereo at some point - it already has new speakers fitted, but I decided to tidy it up a bit in the meantime.

Before

After

Took it to get LPG a couple of days back and the door handle situation got even worse. Can you spot the problem?

Bought a used one at a breakers on the other side of town, and the door now opens and closes properly.

Here’s a final photo of it sitting in the rain next to its much younger brother. I didn’t think to check if the wipers work before I left the house - luckily they did!

I’m taking it on Thursday to a steering specialist who will check the entire system to see what the issue is. He suspects it’s the steering box, in which case he’ll be able to rebuild it for about £70. I’ll feel a lot better about driving it once that’s sorted.

vanpeebles · 28 Jul 2020 at 21:44

To be fair the steering is probably meant to be gash

InvaderGIR · 28 Jul 2020 at 21:47

Yeah, it's an old American vehicle with a steering box, it'll be awful as standard. You'd need to change it to rack and pinion if you want to have decent steering but I'm sure that involves a huge amount of work and plenty of other parts.

geekman · 28 Jul 2020 at 21:51

InvaderGIR said:
Yeah, it's an old American vehicle with a steering box, it'll be awful as standard. You'd need to change it to rack and pinion if you want to have decent steering but I'm sure that involves a huge amount of work and plenty of other parts.

I’m fully expecting it to be awful, but this is a lot worse than other similar trucks I’ve driven. I’m 99% sure something is wrong, but we’ll see. I definitely won’t be investing in changing to rack and pinion but I would like it to be a bit better than it is now.

vanpeebles · 28 Jul 2020 at 21:52

Don't forget when you braying it off bumpy roads and stuff, that's when the steering box comes into play.

geekman · 29 Jul 2020 at 02:20

vanpeebles said:
Don't forget when you braying it off bumpy roads and stuff, that's when the steering box comes into play.

It’s spent years on bumpy roads and nothing has been done to the steering in recent years at least. The suspension itself looks pretty good, albeit in need of a lot of grease.

Howard · 29 Jul 2020 at 08:19

That is awesome. Apart from the steering, what's it like to drive?

Also you've probably answered this somewhere before, but what brought you to Mexico, out of interest?