Hi folks, I am working on a 56 F100 cab. Started on the LH door on the weekend and noticed there is no hole for the lock and absolutely no evidence of there ever being one. There is a hole in the RH door though. This is a LHD cab I imported from the US around 3 years ago, so no local content need be considered.
Any clues?
thanks.

 

They didn't have them in those days. None of that foo foo **** back then, no sir!

Basically, the driver would lock the door from inside and then slide across and exit from the passenger side if needing to lock the truck for some strange reason.

 

The Custom Cab trucks (or deluxe cabs as they were called in 53 and 54) had the locks on the driver door.

 

The rationale for having only one outside lock on the passenger side was that many states had laws that prohibited a driver from exiting the vehicle on the road side. If the driver was only getting out on the curb side then there was a need for only one lock access on that side. They also felt that if the driver could not lock the truck from the road side of the vehicle then he would be forced to use the proper "curb" side door.

 

Charlie was dead on. I have an addition: I read (somewhere I don't recall where...perhaps HAMB) that the gentleman driver was supposed to exit the vehicle on his side and have his lady lock his door from the inside. Then said gentleman was supposed to go around and open the door for said lady then close and lock the passenger door behind them. How chivalrous!

 

+1. My 1956 F100 is a custom cab truck and it has locks on both doors.

 

Well thank you for the responses. Very interesting and entertaining.

 

You can add a lock if you want. A number of venders sell kits for both doors or both doors and the ignition. The kit I used from Mid-Fifty's came with a template for marking the door.

 

Thanks for the further info Jack.

 

good information! I was just wondering the same thing with mine

 

I heard the same explanation about laws prohibiting exiting on the street side. Odd that the Custom Cabs had locks then.

Maybe these fancy pants trucks were above the law? :-)

 

The good news here is your passenger side is our drivers side, and you should be able to find a LH "passenger" door local to you with the lock installed factory. Find one of those and you're good to go. If you find a big stash of them, you could set yourself up as an exporter of LH locking doors and make a fortune.

 

Not a lot of early F100 spares in this part of the world and we did not have the same laws. So I would need to find a custom cab door from your part of the world really.
Anyway, I will probably just leave it as it is and use remote locking.
Just happy to know the reasoning behind it all.
cheers.

 

This leads me to suspect that's why these old truck seats are so badly worn out, it all that butt sliding. lol

 

Really, how many of the original owners really locked their trucks back then? Especially if they lived in the country?