First, big thanks to everybody here. I've seen some fantastic information, so this is obviously the place to be.

Second, by way of introduction - regular guy, Army veteran, happily married, no arrests or convictions, getting close to the big Five-O. I gave my son my '07 Explorer last fall, and was down at the Ford dealership looking at new trucks. Every imaginable gizmo and technowidget, and I was standing there feeling like a slave to technology. I don't have an ipod or MP3 Player, and sure didn't need a port on my truck to plug 'em in. I started having flashbacks to the golden days of the 1970s, when it seemed like my friends and I spent all our time working on cars with little more than a screwdriver and a wrench. So I told my wife that my midlife crisis wasn't going to be a new truck or sports car, but finding a truck to work on.

I wrote down some criteria. It had to be running. Never wrecked, if I could tell. Nothing digital, no chips. And un-messed with. I didn't want to have to unbuild someone else's mistakes, and I wanted to do as much work as I could myself.

In a matter of days I found an online listing. '81 Ford F100, manual, 121,000 miles, needs clutch, $950. He'd bought it from the original owner down the road two years prior, and hadn't done much with it. He was 140 miles away, and after a few phone chats we set off one gorgeous October Saturday to have a look.

Oh, it was love at first sight. He took me for a spin and showed me the ailing clutch, which missed half the time and required toeing up the pedal after each shift. I'd called around and gotten prices of $500 to $1100 for a new clutch, provided I couldn't do it myself. The engine was filthy but purred like a kitten. All original glass with nary a crack or chip. Lots of surface rust on the bed but no holes. He came down to $900, and with paperwork done we headed home on the back roads.

It took four hours to get 60 miles. Too many stops and small towns and hills, too many missed shifts. Two extended stops until I got him going again. Around that 60 mile mark, I finally hit a stretch where I could drop it into overdrive, and that was the end of the clutch. To make a long story short, turns out we were less than a mile from the best clutch man in the area. A passing Jeep pushed me down the road and into the parking lot, and a few days later clutch man called to ask if $376 was okay. (Yup!) Two weeks later we were back down there, and he made the last 80 miles home with nary a hiccup. My wife offered up Festus for a name, and it stuck immediately - maybe a little rough to look at, but a heart of gold.

I spent the next several days going over Festus, making lists, and getting parts. The more I got to know the truck, the more shocked and impressed I was that he made the drive - which speaks volumes about the inline 300.

So I'm jumping in here with both feet and lots of photos. I still have a few things on the punchlist. One thing about Festus - he's a farm fresh sample of stock rusty gold, and with several other F100s parked on FTE, I'll be happy to share whatever I can and take any photos anyone needs.

Here he is the day I got him home.

 

Welcome to the forum WilleyJoe. I hope you enjoy working on your new found truck. There are plenty of knowledgeable people here to answer any questions that you might have. And, we do love pictures here.

 

WJ - Welcome! Good intro. Good find of a truck. It should serve you well for a very long time. I look forward to hearing more of Festus but have to ask - does it limp?

 

Welcome!

I know what you're going through. I had a couple random electrical gremlins bother me with my 04 Dodge Ram and it was enough for me to start searching and to be honest with what I wanted. I wanted the simplicity of a bygone era. So I made a list and basically found the exact thing I was looking for.

Good score.

 

Thanks, brother. Here's a fine one - a country fried air filter, with the wad of hay that was sitting in the middle of it. I could see he had a fairly new oil filter, but this truck was used and not really cared for. The breather hose was packed solid with dirt and hay. I've spent countless hours scraping and cleaning goo and muck from places I never imagined goo and muck could reach.

I filled two 13-gallon trash bags with the stuff I dug out of the cab.

There were only a few minor modifications that had been made. A non-functioning electrical harness for a trailer had been plugged in in place of the right license plate light, and I found the original light rolled up under the bumper. A treated 2x10 was bolted to the front inside wall of the bed (purposed unknown). The radio had been replaced with a Sanyo cassette deck, that was wired up and plugged in to the cigarette lighter. A homemade wooden tool tray was bolted to the floor behind the seat (making a fun drive home, as the seat was as far forward as it could be, and I've got strangely long legs for a guy who's not that tall). The carburetor had been gooberized with a manual choke. And a 60-pound steel tow bar had been welded to the frame below the front bumper. About a month in I used my sawzall to remove the tow bar - took about ten minutes on each side, and the front end went up a good two or three inches.

 

Thanks fellas, it's good to be here. And I'm pleased to report that he doesn't limp. Still got a wee shimmy in the wheel that I'm hoping to correct when I do the tie rods next week.

 

First shot of the cab after I shoveled it out. Nasty tears in the seat (still on the punch list), and you can see the wires hanging out of the non-functional Sanyo radio, along with the wooden tray that was holding the seat forward. He's also got the alien chestburster effect over the missing dash speaker.

 

"Alien chest-burster". I like that and it is an apt description.

 

That first week I took care of the usual needs: oil change and Seafoam, spark plugs, PCV and grommet, wiper blades, replaced about half the bulbs, radiator flush, brake pedal pad, new keys, dimmer boot, positive battery cable, new terminal for negative cable, thermostat, water outlet (glad to read I'm not the only one hear who's cracked one of those outlets), upper radiator hose and clamps, and rearview mirror (kept the original, but it doesn't flip for night driving). The tranny and rear end fluids were so low I couldn't feel them (another testament to "Ford tough").

The weatherstripping atop the firewall was so dryrotted that when I put my hand on it, it crumbled. I was a bit surprised that a replacement was going to run about $40, so one of the very few non-stock things I've done was to buy a big roll of garage door rubber seal for about $6 at Home Depot. I matched up and drilled the holes, and it works just fine. I've read a few threads here about all the gunk inside these cowls, and with all the hay and dirt I've dug out of this truck, I was stunned to get a light inside the cowl and discover it's clean as a whistle. Go figure.

Note the manual choke cable - coming up next.

 

Five days in he left the garage for the first time - I noticed the battery was leaking and went for a combination test drive and battery purchase. He was running like a champ, and as I turned in to O'Reilly I heard a clunk and he died. Opened the hood and that manual choke cable had popped loose. I got it rigged up enough to get home with the new battery, and since I had planned to rebuild the carb, I dug in. Frankencarb doesn't aptly describe what the PO had done to this carburetor. If I had found marbles and a gerbil wheel in there, it wouldn't have surprised me. Festus said, "Can I just have a new carb, please?" and who was I to say no? Ordered a reman with electric choke from National Carburetor, $150 plus shipping; fortunately the connection to the alternator was still in place, tied off to the heater box. It arrived about 10 days later, and it was plug-&-play. He fired up on the first try. Back in action.

 

Wow, lots less rust than what my own 81 has.

Hey, Willey, go HERE and finish filling out your profile, this will let us see where you're at with each of your posts, OK?

 

Wow...you have the exact same interior I do ('80 F-150), right down to the tears in the seat! I almost went outside to make sure my truck was still there.

 

I always wondered what my interior would've looked like new (sorta). Your truck has different vinyl flooring than mine does. Mine is black rubber.

That's a good looking old truck, man. And, the 300 does best behind a 4 speed manual. Just wait until you discover what kind of parts you can get to soup up the old 300. That is, if you decide to go that route with your mid-life crisis.

I've always been partial to the F100's. Cool old pickup.

One thing I will recommend though, and I seen this at the auto parts place, look in the wd-40 section and they sell some stuff that you can spray on your motor to take off the grease, just follow the instructions on the bottle. I forgot what it's called though.

 

While waiting for the carb to arrive, I took a good look at the exhaust. From the cat back it was a goner. I chopped it out with my sawzall, leaving a few inches of pipe sticking off the back of the cat; very glad I did, because that pipe wasn't coming off there without a fight. I cut it back bit by bit with tin snips until I could peel it away, then went searching for a new exhaust. It took me a while, because as often happens, someone posts a wrong number on some catalog, and everyone copies it. The good thing is, I had the old exhaust to work from. All the replacement parts are from Walker. The muffler is #22155. The tailpipe is #45746 - it's the one with the hanger bracket welded on. The exhaust pipe (cat to muffler) is #42477. Two clamps #35408, and two clamps #35336. The heat shield is #35567, with two straps #35564. I got all this from Amazon for $156 with free shipping. I managed to recover the original heat shield and returned the new one. (By the way, if you've never had a tailpipe delivered, apparently they don't fit in boxes - they get labeled and the ends are padded.) It didn't take 20 minutes to get the new exhaust installed; but while I had the old one and the carb out, it was time to get a bit further into the engine.

 

Roger that, thanks, done!

LOL!

Actually that vinyl floor IS black, it just had 30 years of farm crap on it. I've gone through all kinds of cleaners and degreasers since October, more pics are coming.