My parents gave me $250 to buy my first car. I got a 52 f1 and had enough left to buy 2 new tires for it, then through high school it went from a straight 6 to a flathead to a 352 auto. Got it out of the paint shop 2 days before I left for college and had it all back together at about 10 pm the night before I left. Drove it a couple more years then ended up selling it in the 80s when I was broke. regretted it ever since but have always loved the F1s.

 

Now if it had been an automatic (Powerglide) you would have had only 2 gears . My first car was basically the same as yours except that it was a 1955 Ford tudor custom. It didn't have any wiring damage but it did have rust holes behind the front and rear wheels. I think we paid $125 for it. I worked all summer on it then my Dad sold it for $175 when I went back to school.

 

Automatics were a high priced extra cost option and highly unreliable, so most cars were "stick" (manual tranny). The first automatic I ever drove was my 3rd car: 1957 Dodge stationwagon. Push button shift on the dash. It was a handmedown family bus that I had rebuilt the engine in a couple years earlier (my father was partial to buying high mileage sludged up engines) when a rod bearing spun on the way back from a family vacation to DC. The tranny started to slip a lot. I was given a 57 Plymouth 3 speed stick with a blown up Hemi by a guy I knew who's wife wanted him to get it out of the yard. I put the 3 speed in the Dodge with a floor shift. At the time I had a habit of going out drinking at the college pub (legal age was 18, the college had a pub in the student union!) on Friday night and do some stoplight racing after. The 3 speed was good unless you hit a bump that unloaded the rear end under WOT, then when it suddenly hooked back up it would strip the teeth off first and/or the cluster gear! I kept a second spare tranny for it that I would rebuild during the week, and swap out Sat AM in time to go to work at the service station. My younger brother (12 at the time) and I got so good at it we could do it in 20 minutes in the driveway choreographed like a NASCAR pit stop.

 

That is why I mentioned PowerGlide. It was notoriously unreliable. My first Corvette, a '62 roadster, had that transmission behind a 327. In the 9 months that I had it before I shipped overseas it didn't fail but it never felt good (kinda like todays CVT transmissions) It had one heck of a passing gear though.

 

The early automatics were not very efficient, sucked up engine HP like a sponge, when they didn't have much to spare. They were also bulky and heavy.

 

My son's been putting in a lot of hours on his truck. This weekend we got the replacement bed box primed, did some straightening on the running boards and got it all put back together. He has continued on the body work, welded up all the holes from the cab lights and old mirrors and got most of the filler work done. He's decided to go with a maroon color on it, I think it's going to look amazing, he has done a great job so far.



Anyone got a decent tailgate available that won't break the bank?

 

Great work! Soon he will have it in color and know that his friends wont have anything like it...

 

I may have a decent tailgate. I'll have to check when I get home.