Project Old Red II: 1948 Ford F1

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cobra_4

Member
Joined
Mar 31, 2014
Messages
13
I'm not going to copy and paste the original build thread from other sites, because honestly, I've been working on this thing since like 2007, and its still not done, but anyway, I'll hit the highlights of the back story, and skip all the "ideas" that never came to play. I'll be updating the thread very soon, I'm hauling it to my buddies shop hopefully next week to let him change out the tranny and a few other things to hopefully get it driveable and get me motivated again on it!.

The Backstory

I've had my 1948 F1 for around four years now(I wrote this in 2011 though:D). But the truck has been in the family since the 60's. My uncle owned the truck for many years until he passed away in 1976 due to a gun accident. He used to for his daily driver and to pull his dirt race car with. I have some pictures of that too I gotta get scanned. When he had it the truck had a 327 chevy with two four barrels in it. My dad got the truck when he died. The 327 was out of a vette and had some value to it so it was eventually taken out and sold. Then the truck was passed on to my cousin who put a fresh rebuilt 350 out of a 76 Vette into with a single four barrel. After this the truck sat in a barn for a long time. The paint that was on it became faded and cracked from sitting in not so favorable conditions. About ten years ago my dad got the truck back from him. He had it painted and some interior work done but they didnt do a very good job on it. The paint job wasn't great and it ended up being the wrong color. After that it sat in the shop until finally I was given ownership of the truck. The first thing I did was return the truck to its 60's original two four barrel glory. Then I sanded the crappy paint off and went with the rat rod flack black look. Everything else you see on the truck was as my uncle had it. He drove a truck so that is where the mack dog on the hood comes from. The original color is a kind of maroon painted to match my uncles beloved car his 1966 Pontiac 2+2. He bought it brand new. It has a four speed and a 421 engine and is a car that did its fair share of street racing during the day. That car is lovingly called by alll that know it and knew him "Old Red". Thus leading to the name "Old Red II". This is also where the pontiac tach comes into play on the hood of the truck.

Here is the truck when I got it from my dad, around 2006.
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This is the truck after about a years work, went back to 2x4's which the truck had on it back in the day, primered it, etc. etc.
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So sometime after these mods I pretty much stopped driving the truck, it just got to the point where the old steering was too dangerous. It sat in my basement from 2010 to fall of 2012. At which point I had pulled it out to start work on it. Shortly there after, I twisted the transmission up doing a smokey burnout. Here is the post I made in my other build threads shortly after that. Dated too to show how slack I've been[S

8-13-2012

All right, all right. Time to really get back on this!!! Plan is to have it ready to ride by next spring!!

Pulled her down to the shop last weekend and proceeded to hand grenade the automatic tranny getting the flat spots off the tires sooooooooo, 4 speed time!!

Here is the rest of the plan. This will cross out part of the original game plan!

While I'd like to make a 100,000 dollar street rod out of it I just can't afford it right now. So I am going to get it safe and road worthy and enjoy it as the rat rod/vintage look that it is. Here are some of the things to come/be addressed.

I have a better gear box to be installed
New shocks
Rebuild the suspension, tie rods, etc.
Redo the brakes, hopefully add disc to the front
Air conditioning
Aluminum radiator
Electric Fan
The wiring is a nightmare, gotta fix it, or redo it
Repaint er uh primer it
Loose the ugly wheels and add some more period correct steel wheels
Ditching the broke auto in favor of a 4-speed. The pedal is still in there, so why not??
Redoing at least part of the interior, gauges and what not

I'm sure there is more to come and much more that will come up as the project goes along! But the main key is by the start of the show season next year I want to be able to drive it wherever I want, and to drive it! Wanna finally get it done so I can drive the **** out of it!


Now, most of these plans are still true, in some form or another. I'll skip the next year of boring details, in which I collect a few parts, and work on a big vintage box I'm going to put in the bed, etc. etc. All of that stuff will just be re-brought back up anyway.

Here is how the truck looks today, I have some partially incomplete body work done.

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When done, this is the look I'm going for.
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And this is the last update I did on the thread, picked up my new instrument cluster at a swap meet last fall.[;)
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That's all for now! But look for this thread to blow up soon with new updates!
 

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