'95 F-150 track ready street beast

[loudandproud]

Wow it's been a whirlwind of a couple weeks. I do about 9-10hrs at my day job then out to the shop for about 6hrs. I'm ready for some kind of vacation.

Ok so with the Pro Touring Truck Shootout quickly approaching I needed a trailer to make the 1760 mile tow each way. Turns out aluminum trailers are hard to find in-stock right now and backorders are about 16 weeks, but luckily I found a local place with 2 left. Due to the limited tow capacity of my RV I had to go as light as possible.



That meant I had the ability to now get there so the truck needed a few things to really be ready to compete. First up was the intake. When I first got it running I just shoved on a cone filter and moved onto other things. Well with the summer heat and now badass fan I needed to stop sucking in crazy hot air. So I made a quick CAI to help a bit.





Then I needed to tackle front air management. I believe with the position of the radiator and bumper that about 70% of the air coming through the bumper actually goes under truck since it will want to follow the path of least resistance. That should further assist everything working optimally at speed.

So I started off with my favorite template material, Ram Board.



After a couple long evenings of fitting and cutting I got the result I was looking for.



Then that made me want to help reduce the potential for debris to take out my radiator so I decided it would be smart to just make covers for all the bumper openings.



I think that is a massive improvement and only adds 3lbs. Win-win.

While I had the truck down for these items the steering arms starting nagging at my brain again. Even though the modifications I made way back have worked pretty well, I still haven't had much Ackermann and the outer heims are maxed during full droop. Unfortunately the ONE guy that used to make correct front-steer arms stopped 6yrs ago and absolutely refuses to make them or send me CNC files even if I pay. So I decided I would order the TRZ arms and see if I could mill them down and create Ackermann since theirs have dead zero.



Ah if only it were that easy. If you pay attention you can see it just kisses the barrel of my 18" wheels. So I started to cut them shorter and make it work, but spending $200 to them modify them when I could modify my steel arms for free got the better of me.

So this past Saturday my friend Tanner came by and helped A LOT with correcting the Camaro arms. Remember, these are the ridetech tall spindles. Looking back, there was probably better options, but they are all significantly more expensive. Now I definitely have Ackermann and it all clears with some room to spare. And yes, we were very careful when welding these. they are forged steel and I beveled 70% of the thickness before we welded them together. Tanner actually welded, ground down the weld about 1/3 of the way and made another pass. Then we let them very slowly cool. My mind will blow if these don't hold up.

Just to show that there was no porosity or anything like that, here are the arms just after I 120 grit flapper-wheeled them clean. I did not reduce the size of the arm at all, only ground the surface of the weld flush, just like before.




While those were cooling and then drying from paint I started back to operation: polish a turd. This truck was a daily beater for the old man (detailed more in the intro) so the clear coat is chipping badly and there is plenty of dents and dings. I'm not spending too much time perfecting those. Mainly popping out the big stuff and then painting. One area I've wanted to paint was the bed. I considered just using black paint, but it turns out you can get bedliner in a spray can. So I tried it.



I like it! Little tricky to spray and I highly doubt it would hold up to daily abuse, but for this it is perfect. Funny enough, half my class at PTTS doesn't even have a bed floor. I can still haul stuff while hauling ass.

Finally for this update, I got the DBW (drive by wire) conversion done. Andrew talked me into this about 3 months ago, but I've never taken the time to make a bracket and run the wiring. Took an afternoon to do, but I made the GM pedal bolt to the factory spot nice and rigid.



I will admit it's a little closer to the brake pedal than I intended, but it works well and heel-toe is stupid easy. Andrew worked his magic for idle and ramping. Seriously...if you run Holley EFI, hiring Andrew is VERY worth it. This truck starts, runs, and drives as good as any modern vehicle. Only I now have 520 gas guzzling horsepower on tap with room to grow.

Keep an eye out for the next update with a wrap and new wheel reveal!

This is sick. Im glad to see someone else spending so much time and money on one of these trucks. People look at me crazy when I tell them I'm building an OBS chevy lol, glad to see i have a ford cousin doing the same.

[Sbeck09]

This is sick. Im glad to see someone else spending so much time and money on one of these trucks. People look at me crazy when I tell them I'm building an OBS chevy lol, glad to see i have a ford cousin doing the same.

Thanks! It's a bit nauseating to realize how much time (about 1200hrs) and money is in a truck that someone wouldn't even give $3,000 for when stock. For me it has been about learning and experimenting. Plus I do love the wild looks I get when people ask me what's done and I start in on the massive list. It's hard for people to wrap their head around building a truck for this purpose and I've always been a fan of odd builds with real thought.

Yours has been fun to follow too, especially with the DCT developments. Building the frame yourself was a smart move. I would have saved about 200lbs off the truck and 3-5 months of build time if I had just built a frame from scratch. I think you'll have a sweet advantage over many of the OBS builds as a result.

The truck game is growing really fast these days and it feels cool to be a part of it. Now we are getting events like the Pro Touring Truck Shootout that cater the event and classes to what the trucks can do which should further shine a light on this realm.