New guy with new build

[bearmtnmartin]

I have had my 1970 F100 4x4 for about 20 years. It was my daily driver up until 12 years ago and it has sat in a corner of the yard since then. I restored it about 15 years ago and made the mistake of trying to deal with the rust instead of starting with better body panels. Within a few years it was a rust bucket again and I took it off the road. Fast forward to now and I have three sons, oldest of which is 15. He wants my old Ford and I thought it would be a pretty fun Father Son project to redo it with him in time for his graduation in three years. Actually I have a fantasy of building each of my three kids a vehicle but he will be first.

So I have been hunting for a nice rust free bump for the last year or so. One popped up on Craigslist an hour from my house that actually looked not too bad in the photos. But I did not have high hopes because it is a Pacific North west truck and i figured it would be as rotten as mine. But it wasn't....

Turned out to be a straight and rust free XLT. With the bonus of factory air and a pretty nice interior. Seems a shame to rip it up for parts.









Few dents on the wheel wells and thats about it. Paid $400.00



So I thought I would try to post some build pics as we go. Its going to be a sort of stock restoration as far as the body goes, but I am going to throw in a newer bench seat, highliner headliner, and move the fuel tank out from behind the seat. Haven't decided on a driveline yet, but I thought about a 4BT or Isuzu TD, 300 six on propane (We live in BC where it is very available at 60 per cent the cost of gas), or possibly a KA24DE with the rest of the driveline from an Nissan Xterra. The Xterra actually weighs more than this truck would with that driveline and I get the benefits of modern EFI and 20 mpg. Thoughts welcome. Flames not so much. Thanks for reading!

[Uni Moe]

Are you going to keep the cool 8 track with the 3 band eq/booster???

[bearmtnmartin]

Haha don't think so!

[bearmtnmartin]

Spent a happy Sunday afternoon ripping old rusty apart. First thing was to scale it which would help me decide what to do for a powertrain.



With some junk in the back and half a tank of 15 year old fuel it comes in at 4800



That's probably around 4400 curb weight which is kind of porky for the four banger I wanted to use so now I am thinking about a v6 maybe. But I also have a line on a Powerstroke so maybe that is an option. Kind of heavy though.



Rusty bed from too many years of a plywood box liner.



The hated bed seam rust.




So four hours later the cab is pretty much ready to pull next weekend.

[bearmtnmartin]

So old Blue has a 360FE 4 speed which will not be going back in. there is no possible way to get acceptable mileage so my kid can afford to drive it. I have tossed around a lot of ideas for drive train options but I am having trouble settling on one. Ideally, I would drop in a matching set from fan to transfer case. I am shooting for 20 mpg minimum. my kid insists on a standard transmission so that will help the goal. Another requirement is electronic engine management, but maybe OBD1 for simplicity as electronics is not my strong point. Here is what I have considered thus far:

5.9 Cummins - way too heavy for a half ton.

4BT Cummins - smokey, vibrates, noisy, expensive, hard to find, does not really bolt up to anything that came out of a smaller vehicle

5.0 Ford - will not get the MPG in a 4000 pound truck?

300 six - same problem of not making the mpg target. It is very heavy as is the rest of the drive train

2.3 Lima Turbo - As heavy as a V8 and not that much better on fuel

Ford 4.0 V6 - I could take the whole package from a Ranger and drop it in. Mostly aluminum so it would cut the curb weight down considerably. Not sure about the electronics so how hard would that swap be?

Nissan KA24DE and the rest of the package from a Pathfinder - I have lots of experience with KA's and they make very good power and torque for a four cylinder. This would be an easy inexpensive swap, and would shave around 500 pounds off the curb weight of the truck. We also have the option of going turbo which might be fun. But the turbo would probably kill the economy and the NA motor would not exactly be a hot rod.

Thoughts and opinions welcome.

[Uni Moe]

Why not aftermarket EFI on a v8? or a 5.0 conversion with aftermarket wiring harness? You could easily get 20mpg.

[FOWLER]

I would advise against the 4.0l esp. the SOHC models just due to the fact that rebuilding them is more expensive than most think, power is ok but not great either. I just replaced the timing sets in one recently and that alone was 600.00 ( ford parts, aftermarket sets are disasters waiting to happen).
The 5.4 3v engine would be viable as my F250 gets 17mpg and weighs considerably more than 4k lbs, I would think 20mpg would be doable with a manual. Power is improved a good amount over 2v models.
Also the 4.6 3v is a low cost option as well since the Coyote engine is the go to engine now. Lots of parts support for the 3v engine and cost is reasonable. With either of those engines you want to go with 08 and later models since they do not have the "snap O-matic" spark plugs like the earlier versions.
For simplicity an EFI 5.8 is hard to beat but might not crest the 20mpg mark but could get close.
Since your not apparently adverse to brand swapping the LS platform is a strong candidate also, a 6.0 is a great engine with a ton of support as well.

[gasnoil]

That truck is a beauty with that blue paint and patina rust. It looks like it was a fully optioned truck back in the day. Can' t wait to see the progress.

By the way,don' t throw away that 8 track!!! It is way cool!

Cheers from the other end of Canada

[rumblin46]

5.0 from a stang or explorer. Stock HO cam, OD transmission and low 3's rear gear. Use the stock efi and be done. My dad has a 95 f150 with the Mazda manual trans and a 3.08 gear and gets 17 with nearly all stop and go driving. Aerodynamics play a much larger role for highway mpgs than weight. Just my opinion

[bearmtnmartin]

Actually I have decided on the driveline. It's too simple. We are going to use a Mercedes om617 diesel.

$400.00 adaptor and it will bolt right up. I'm looking for a donor right now but I am hoping to scrap the ford bits I am not using before I bring it home so my yard doesn't look like junkyard wars. But it's race season so we are doing the wrenching in between keeping two racecars on the track. Progress will be slow until this fall when we can concentrate on this project a little more.

[bearmtnmartin]

Thought it was time for an update. This is a winter only project as my shop time is taken up with race cars, dirt bikes and other fun stuff. I picked up for an OM617 a couple months back. It was freshly rebuilt by a Mercedes shop and then the car was totaled a couple of weeks later.



Finished stripping the old truck down to the frame





I have also picked up a donor for the rest of the driveline. Hopefully w will see some progress over the next few months.

[flyboy2610]

I take it that is the lucky young man who will get to inherit this truck?
Sweat equity. A great idea!

[bearmtnmartin]

My goal is to build a vehicle for each of my three boys, and he is the first. We are hoping he can drive it to his graduation in three years. The deal is that he pays 50 percent of the cash costs and does at least half the work. So far so good! He is pretty motivated and he already has a race car build under his belt.

[ahawks9er]

Cool project! Love the Benz diesel. Excited to see where this goes.

[bearmtnmartin]

So we found a driveline donor.....



1992 4.0 liter Ranger. The kids who owned it cut the cab off and thrashed it at the river until it threw a rod. Since it had no cab we slid it into the shop upside-down.




Got the frame back into the shop to measure things up.



So now I have a question. I think I am going to use the whole donor suspension and axles. It looks fairly simple to bolt the back on. I cut the old hangers off and I will bolt on the ones from the newer Ranger onto the old bump frame.

The front is going to be fairly straight forward as well. I am going to use the front crossmember from the two wheel drive we bought for body parts and fab up new brackets. But I need to widen the axle by three inches. It looks like I can just relocate the brackets farther apart and lengthen the driveshaft a bit. Or am I missing something?