1950 Ford F-1 project redo

So I've been a long time lurker, mostly because my truck projects were small, and later put on the back burner to build a race car. To start the story, my dad and I originally built the truck when I was 15. Living in MN it seemed like a good idea to have 4wd, so we swapped a 1979 F150 chassis and running gear underneath the 1950 body. It worked well, and was a blast to drive, but driving in the couple winters I did was a big mistake. It sat and started rusting as I went off to college, but moved with me out to Detroit. In Detroit I did a rebuild of the 351M up to a 408, but couldn't quite bite the bullet on starting a swap back to 2wd for more of a street truck. Below is a pic from its time in Michigan.

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Upon moving back to the Twin Cities, I promptly had the rear driveshaft break while at a cruise night. Luckily I just pulled it, locked my hubs and drove home. Where it sat for a few more years until I could decide how to fix it. Putting in a new driveshaft was too simple, and I had the nagging idea for years to put it back to a cruiser and make it 2wd. This is also the point where a race car hijacked my plans, and mostly my time.

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In the long run, I learned a lot building the car, and that helped the truck project. Here are a few more of the truck in 4wd mode. These are all roughly circa 2005.

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Then in 2010 we began the teardown work in my dad's barn. Being an hour away slowed progress a bit as well. Having the one piece fiberglass front end made some of this work easier.

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More to follow...

I ended up deciding to go the budget route, and tried the Crown Vic front end. It would fit the 79 frame, but would drive me to run modern high offset wheels. It was tough finding a front end to work with the 79 frame, and the 50 overall width. In hindsight, now, I maybe should have cut off the front frame and narrowed it. But we can get to that later. Here are some pics after we had a shop do the main install work of the front end and rear end. For the rear suspension I went with a Welder Series triangulated four link, and 99 Crown Vic 8.8 axle, with a 3.55 limited slip and disc brakes.

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They did good work, but I wasn't happy with their solution for the rear mount of the lower control arm. It caused an interference with my headers. So we went to work redesigning it to use the stock Ford mount and free up space inside the frame. I also took this time to box the frame for stiffness, add the rear shock mount, then re-sandblast the frame to clean it up and re-paint it.

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The last is where it sat in the fall, before we trailer-ed it up to my garage. My first child was born in October, and I knew I'd never finish it if it was an hour away. I finally moved the race car out to another shop, so the truck is just outside in the garage. I've made some more progress since October, but need to get pics. As you can see, I ended up using a kit for QA1 shocks in the front, its from Naake suspension, made for the Mercury Marauder. I wanted the ability to set my ride height and have additional spring choices. I also went with some QA1 rear coil-overs and will have pics of that to come. The truck also has an adapted Tremec TKO 5 speed. I'm in the process of swapping to a hydroboost brakes as well, from an F-250. Also moving to an electric fan, from the Lincoln Mark VIII, and starting to think about adding AC for the humid MN summers.

That's my favorite body style old ford truck. And it looks good as a 4x4. Street truck or autocross always looks good to. Keep posting and we like all the pictures that you can post. Keith

Very Nice!

Apparently its been awhile since I've done an update. Oops. Made a lot of progress in the last year or so, but still not driving.

So this is who has been distracting me from working on the truck as much. It was supposed to be running before she was born, but now I'll be lucky if its running before her sister shows up. This is from almost a year ago.

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Had to chip away at things, and first that got done was the brake lines, here's the rears when I finished them up.

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The next two are when I got the new pulleys on. I really wanted serpentine, but thought the brackets on the March system were too futuristic. I thought about designing and making my own, but when I found this system by CVF racing, I decided to just get one done in the sake of time. Plus they'll let me get the parts I need to upgrade to AC.

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I think I'm going back to a bench seat, to have room for kids, so I ditched the pull cable ebrake and decided to try a hydraulic one. I saw it first on a friend's Cobra kit car, and decided to try it. I'll probably hide it, I don't have a pic, but I have a pringles can rough fit to cover it. Not sure if I want to do a beer can and be more rat-rod. But I don't think I want to promote drinking and driving, so I'll probably do something else.

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I had to switch back to stock exhaust manifolds, my long tubes wouldn't fit with the steering. I just couldn't figure out how to make it work. And stockers were a lot less costly then short tubes. So I made some new down tubes, with spots for cutouts, and added an x-pipe. With side exit, I could barely squeeze it all in before the mufflers. Not ideal, but whatever.

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Made a custom shift lever for the TKO. I couldn't find one the dimensions I wanted, so I drew it up in CAD and had a buddies shop mill it out for me. I haven't decided if I'll polish it or just powder coat it black.

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Then I got side tracked on a project with the valve covers. I wasn't super happy with the silver and got something on them, so I decided to strip them down and powder coat them black. Then I decided to do some electro-chemical etching, which turned out cool. But then it wasn't deep enough for the powder coat to work out right. So I had to strip them again, ugh. But painted worked better, its subtle, but I like it.

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This shows where it sits now. Forgot to mention I also got the hydroboost brake booster installed. Had to do some modifications to get the pedal rod to work. Next up is running the lines for the hydroboost. And finish installing the valve covers, and finish adding oil. I got exited the day I finished the fuel lines and the electrical, and got it to fire. Reminded me I need to install the cut-outs too. Haha. Love the sound of open headers!

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You have a nice project here and your doing a great job!

Still slow progress. No picture, but in reference to the last picture above, during bleeding, I realized that I plumbed my master cylinder wrong. I had the front brake port (rear on the master) going to the rear brake port on the bias block. So I had to flip those around. Being just a cruiser, I wish I would have used DOT5 to begin with. Some drips already ate through paint and will require some touch up on the calipers and the frame.

Didn't get done before #2 showed up. Now the truck is park jungle gym.

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At some point I noticed my grill stuck out from the front end. My dad and I had originally gotten this fiberglass front end in the 90s, because the original fenders were so rusted. Something made me notice it stuck out, vs sitting flush, which bugged. But then in finally trying to fit a new stock bumper, instead of my 4x4 front bumper, that the tilt was going to cause the grill to hit. So along with looking more correct and fixing the aesthetic of the grill, I had to fix it let things tilt again. It turns out that the fiberglass was meant to mount the headlights into, and just mount the grill bars. So I modified it to work and look more stock.

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Finally got everything bled for the brakes, just get along with bleeding the power steering to find a leak at a drain back bung. Oops. Apparently I should have leak tested it after welding. :( Once I get that fixed, we should be ready for a road test, then a drive up to my dad's shop to put the bed back on. Which we started re-assembling up there.

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Making more progress. My goal of driving to the Back to the 50's car show in St. Paul, MN is rapidly approaching on June 21st. I'm glad I set the goal, I feel like its pushed me more to get out there and spend every 5 minutes I can find on projects. Truck finally saw daylight for the first time in 10 years. Power steering didn't work first time out, but apparently I flipped the spring and flow valve after reassembling with a new tank to fix my leaky welded bung. Oops.

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Got the power steering fixed and drove it up to the shop to start putting the bed on.

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A couple days later, got the fenders hung. Now to get the rest of the wood pieces in.

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Any updates?

Made my goal, and drove the truck to Back to the 50's. First time getting the truck there and first time driving it in almost 8 years. The chassis redo took way longer then I originally thought.

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This is right after the first day of the car show. Had to do a couple little fixes but nothing big.

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Drove it in the next day, found a better spot to drive in and park without having to ride the clutch and drive 2mph through the grounds. Got some swirl marks I need to work out.

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Even brought the kids out, so they can start seeing cars moving, rather then just playing in the truck on jack stands. Haha.

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Then I got the truck out to another local car show. It wasn't super big, but I surprisingly earned a 2nd place trophy.

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Currently the truck is back on jack stands, getting ready to drop the tank and swap in an efi pump and tank with some baffling. I'm hoping to get my new to me single plane intake manifold powder coated this week. Then I can get moving on the Sniper EFI install. I'm so ready to be done with carbs. Not sure if I'll get going on the AC install this year, or wait until winter. Might have more time this summer without car shows for the near future.

Sweet!

Decided to try a late 80s, early 90s F150 EFI tank instead of the fancier custom aluminum tank. Found this interesting link from another guy who had done it.
http://www.rowand.net/Shop/Cars/1979...EFIGasTank.htm

The fuel pump for those era engines were still relatively low fuel pressure, so I'm planning to swap in a high pressure Walbro pump for the old Ford pump. Got my tank drained and dropped last weekend, and the new tank arrived yesterday. So out with the old tank, which was new about 10 years ago, and in with the new. (And yes, I've got summer footwear going on in the garage, can't drop stuff on your toes when you're laying on your back)

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And this LED headband is seriously my current favorite tool. So handy when working under the truck.

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After starting my quarantine fun with sorting my jumbled mass of fasteners, and organizing them all. I moved into removing all my old ignition system from the truck. Hopefully I'll be able to sell the Crane distributor and ignition box.

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Since I'm doing the Holley Sniper EFI system, I decided to just go with all their components in hopes that it would avoid issues. So in goes the Hyperspark distributor. Its nice to be finally installing parts that I've been gathering for 2 years. I didn't want the EFI work to delay my goal last summer, so I put off the EFI install.

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Next up will be removing my intake manifold to on the reworked single plane manifold. From what I read the single plane worked better with the throttle body style injection, so I found an old Edelbrock single plane, since nobody makes them anymore. It had a lot of bumps and porosity, so I tried some powdercoat primer that's meant to fill and smooth parts. It worked pretty decent on the spots I got enough coverage. Apparently I needed a little more. Oh well. It'll be good enough, and at least the runners look pretty smooth. I should have gotten a before shot of the manifold. The carb mounting surface is cleaned off now, and ready for install.

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Awesome, love it!

Awesome truck!

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Originally Posted by WILWAXU

Awesome truck!

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Originally Posted by brckmrphy

That is one hell of a truck.

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Thanks guys! Got the intake on, and forgot to take pictures of the block off plates I made for the exhaust running through the intake. I need one more plug to show up. And I started replacing the water pump to put on the new CVF Racing wraptor belt system, to prep for AC.

Oh, and I got the fuel pump and pickup modified. I sold my 79 F150 tank, and got an 89. It had EFI, but the pump was low pressure compared to modern EFI. So I swapped the pump on the hanger. Just need to wire up the pump plug and its ready to go in.

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Did you get finished? I had missed your build somehow. Looks good.

Yes WFO, I did get it running, just finishing up some stuff. After pushing the truck outside in October to do a garage birthday for my daughter, and about dying pushing it back in, I made a push to get it running by the beginning of November for my 2nd daughters birthday party, which was going to need an empty garage too. Prior to this point, I had gotten the intake manifold and new pulley system on back in July.

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Now it was crunch time to get under and finish adding a fuel filter and return line. I wish I'd have run the return line before I put the body on. I also added a fuel pressure gauge where I changed from hard line to flexible line to the Sniper.

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Mounted up the Sniper ignition box, and got a new air cleaner. Holley drop base style for the Sniper didn't fit with my distributor, but I liked the bigger air filter so I got a different base. I also 3D printed a knob, which is now painted red to match the body, but apparently I don't have a picture on my phone.

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I like how the CVF wraptor pulley system worked out, and I have an idler in place of the AC compressor, until I get my AC system installed. The only bummer was the placement of the powersteering reservoir to the alternator is a bit tight. I went with the upgraded pump hydroboost brakes, and the cap wouldn't open. Of course I noticed this after install, so it had to be cut to get it off to even put fluid in the system. In the end, whatever, it works now.

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I'm currently trying to clean up the wiring now and get it loomed and protected. Next up will be interior upgrades. I'm working on a new radio insert to mount a touchscreen radio with Android auto. It'll also have integrated locations for the HVAC controls, rather then mounting them under the dash. I got a prototype 3D printed for fitment. Making a couple tweaks before the final 3D print and paint. I'm also working on fitment of the Holley 6.8" Pro digital dash. I need to order a vehicle speed sensor conversion for my Tremec trans, and finalize placement in the gauge hole. With my radio change I'm removing my existing fuel, oil pressure and water temp gauges, which the digital dash will replace.

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Thanks for reading. Other future updates include a new bench seat, rewiring the under dash panel, and relocating the battery to the bed for AC routing.