No, I never knew why the roof was raised until now. Shifting those trannys with the left arm through the steering wheel worked really well with the odd shape of that brownie shift lever.

The truck is fully retired. A lot of people ask, "What do you do with it?" and we tell them, ''Just like any classic 60's muscle car, we put it in a show here and there and take it out for Sunday afternoon drives in nice weather."

 

I saw what you said about the brownie shifter. Can you imagine trying to find one if it was missing?

 

When we bought the truck in 2007 the brownie shifter had been cut off and made shorter. One of the first salvage yards my brother visited in Washington had an old Super Duty with the OEM brownie shifter just laying on the cab floor. He bought it-good thing because in all of the salvage yards he and I rummaged through in the following years, we never saw another one.

 

I and a partner had 2 63 850's. They had the lower cabs. One truck had a 401 V8 with a 5 & 3. The other had the V6 200 Cummins. That is the one I drove mostly. It had too much torque for the Ujoints. Broke many of them. One time as I was coming out of the gravel pit the Ujoint at the power divider broke and the drive shaft spun freely and tore off an air line and I lost all the air in an instant. That was before spring brakes. I rolled back down the slight incline into the bank of the pit, luckily not hitting anything. The engine finally gave out and it would have cost too much to fix it so the truck was scrapped.
Later I had a 68 NT850 with the 534 and 5&4 transmission. I hauled pulpwood with that truck for 2 years then got a 74 LT9000 with an 8V-71 Detroit and the 16 speed Spicer transmission. This was actually a 4 speed main and 4 speed auxillary bolted together. The auxillary was air shifted.

FWD

 

The small construction firm I worked for was getting ready to move from a location in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming. One of the pieces of machinery to be moved was a 55 ton Cedar Rapids rock crusher. It was situated in a gravel pit with about a 20 yard steep pull coming out of the pit. The firm had an Autocar diesel semi-tractor which was normally used to pull the crusher but, it was at another site so the owner of the firm took one of the '63 850's with a 534 and 5 X 4 transmissions and backed underneath that crusher. I was thinking how overloaded that T850 was and wondering just what would might happen to a U-joint or whatever as he pulled that crusher out of the pit. No question that the truck was in 1st and 1st as he pulled it out of that pit and out of the pit it came. The sound of that 534 working was awesome as was the dust being kicked up by the exhaust from the dual exhausts. I will never forget that.

 

Yeh dont forget to unlock the tailgate I did on a new 64 T950 and went
15 feet straight up in the air needed loader ta pull me back down.
sam

 

That looks great! love to see some videos too! I recently found my grandpa's 65 T850 that I last saw 20 years ago, hope to make it look as good as yours someday.

 

Nicely done!

 

Very nice restoration! Are those the original wheels that bolt on? My 65 T850 has the clamp on split ring rims...maybe those were an option?

Here are a few pics of mine. It came from a fire department in west Yellowstone, Montana. As far as I can tell they retired it in 2001, as that was the newest insurance card I found in the glove box. I made the long drive home with it last week (Montana to Oklahoma). It took three days and $400 diesel to get home. The truck shows 18,700 miles, which I'm guessing is original being a fire truck, but I really don't know. At some point a company called maxim converted the truck to a Detroit 6V53 engine and 6 speed automatic for the fd.

 

Those were an option. We bought the truck from the original owner's son. Nice fire truck!

 

Dayton wheels were the "spoke" jobs, vs. Budd for the other.

My dad didn't like them, never said why. I think I understand now....

I think you can get tubeless rims for them that mount up to the spoke section. You'd have to search that out.

Discussion and the usually BSing:

Dayton or Budd? The eternal question. |

 

That's a really clean old FT-850, but it's more GM now than Ford! Can't say I would object to a 6V-53/Allison powertrain under any circumstances though.