So this is my first post and I apologize for any technical information for I am no mechanic and make no claims to be so. I also apologize for it being very wordy. Anyway my first project was my dads old 76 f250 highboy 4x4. He has had the truck for 20+ years and I have loved it from the day he brought it home. After the motor got weak it was retired and put out to pasture and thus begins my very long story. So the look was on for more of the 73-79 fords for any potential parts that could be salvaged. That led to the discovery of the infamous "Booby" truck (due to the appropriately named calendar that hung from the rear view mirror.) It is a 73 f250 4x4 with a 390. As you can hopefully see from the photos (blue truck) it was a wreck and not worth salvaging the body, but the frame and motor were in top notch condition seeing as the motor had 5000 miles on a rebuild. It wasn't long before we came across another truck that had a near perfect body but no motor. g It is a 78 f150 Ranger xlt with 45,000 original miles. The truck is just plain beautiful. Thus begins the long ordeal of switching bodies.

 

As anyone who knows a little about these years, the frames were different widths going from the 73 highboy (roughly 34") to the 78 (roughly 37".) So I had all kinds of problems with the swap. But probably the first was getting the bodies off! The bed was easy due to two other brothers and the bed weighing only around 400lbs or so. So in a snap it was off. And with the help of our local locust tree it was a snap to winch up the cab and front clip. Though I will have to admit that it was just a barrel of monkeys to raise the front clip high enough to get it over the motor and then the shifter. The first problem that I can think of fixing was swapping the transmission tunnel over from the 4x4 (blue truck) to the 2wd white truck. The next problem was drilling out the rear cab mounts for 78.

 

Ya, I put a 2wd drive body on my highboy. I didn't think drilling out the cab was too bad. There are template holes on the underneath of the cab so I drilled straight up from under and then used the hole saw like you did. The bed was a bit tougher. There is template squares for narrow frame for the very rear 2 bolt to see where those would go. Kinda hard to see. The other bolts Need to be drilled out. Once you drill them out though, there will be hollow space. What I did was used some piping and slid it down the round holes I drilled and then welded them in to provide strength. Of course I could no use carriage bolts and had to just use regular hex head bolts.

Nice find with the white donor truck. You will have nice truck.

 

The next problem that needed addressed was the wiring. We were having problems with the 390 and upon closer inspection we determined that it was the distributor. This probably led to some overkill as we put a MSD distributor in her and did away with the notoriously troublesome brainbox. It was a bit interesting figuring out the wiring that used to go to the brainbox and adapting it to fit the MSD but three wires later and it was running with both the thermostat and oil temp working. I regrettably don't have any photos of this right now and will try to get some up in the next couple of weeks. The next problem was the gas tank or otherwise the lack there of. And like a stupid college student I decided to go cheap rather than right. that led me to this stupid thing that holds roughly around 19 gallons. It was easy to install after chopping out the cross member and then putting two new ones in. One out of the 78 donor truck (after chopping it down a bit) and a new one made out of 5" channel. Looks decent and went in easy but that was about as good as it got. It was a bit tall and was evident wasn't going to work after test fitting the bed. It also hand down low enough that it looked like my truck was trying to poop out something in the rear end.

 

That led to scrapping the tank and the decision to build one for the truck. This is where a shout out definitely has to go to my father who was a welder for 20+ years and kindly assisted me with the daunting task. We tried to make it almost identical to the ones in the 78-79 but a bit narrower. We cut out and reused both the sender hole/ and sender along with the filler necks. So for a final cost of under a $100 I think it is going to work great. Sadly haven't got it installed yet for a test run.

 

The last thing I can think of that I have done to the truck is installing the receiver hitch. It is an old salvaged one my dad had lying around the yard that came off a 87 f150 I think. After heating up and bending the sides a smidge it bolted right on and looks pretty decent. The last thing to talk about is the financials about the truck. After buying the "booby" truck for $500 and the white truck for $200 along with the new distributor and spark plugs/wires, gas tank, and receiver hitch. Between me and my dad we have around $1500 in the truck and I continue to look forward to restoring the truck. Future plans include some rust repair in the rear fenders. You can only see light speckling along the fender and that is ALL that is on the truck. After that, who knows maybe a paint job and then some better tires (though I kinda rock the old coop bi-plys and split rims)

 

Nice work. Damn, you bought that white donor for $200.... That's a score and a half.

 

Oh I forgot to mention what's going on with installing the bed. I decided that I didn't like the idea of drilling more holes through my bed to mount it so my dad came up with a unique idea. The bed needs a couple of thick shims to line up the body lines anyway so we decided to go ahead and make a plate that would fit between the bed and frame. We will simply drill two holes in it that will correspond with the holes in both the bed and frame and then tap them so that the bolts will screw into them. I know what you are thinking, won't work with the bed carriage bolts! But we will simply screw them on first and then the mount the bed and put the bed bolts in. Might be a trick to get them the right length to stop from hitting the bed. So trial and error here I come!!

 

Thanks Buck!! Ya the guy was moving and said that in two days he was going to fill her up with scrap and haul it to the scrapper!! That would have made me cry! He was actually happy to sell it for that price. It couldn't have gotten any better for me. And upon further inspection the 351M seems to be ok, not sure what he did but it turns freely and seems to have compression. Might get lucky!!

 

Finally got around to working on my truck some more! And thought this would be a good time to update what I was doing with the bed. These are the threaded plates that I was talking about.

It was pretty easy to thread the plates onto the carriage bolts in the bed before putting in onto the frame. If I couldn't get the plates to line up with the rib, then I just loosened it until I could pick up the carriage bolt and then rotate it 90 degrees until I got them as tight as possible while being lined up.

Then I simply grinded off the ends of the bolts to make it sit flush when sitting on the frame.
For some unknown reason I didn't take any pictures with it mounted but I will this weekend and get them up.

 

Great job on the truck! For a guy with "no" mechanical experience, you built a nice looking truck, and did it for not a lot of money