Hey guys, recently I had a friend offer me a 1966 F-100 long bed with the 240 L6 and 3 on the tree. His grandfather had used as a farm truck up until about five years ago and it has been sitting for the past three years. I've been looking for a project so I jumped on the deal and I should have it delivered to my house sometime later this week.

I've spent the last week or so reading through these forums and I must say, there is a massive amount of information to be had here and from the hundreds of threads I've looked at between this and the Inline 6 forum, everyone seems really friendly -- which usually isn't the case at the other automotive forums I visit.

Anyways, I have a few questions to get started. I am not overly worried about keeping everything original, my main goal is to turn this into a functional and road worthy work truck for hauling things and pulling a trailer up to 3500lbs.

1) The long bed on the truck needs to be replaced. A small diameter tree fell on one bedside and it banged it up pretty bad. I've called a couple local junk yards and no one has any 66 F-100's with a long bed, so are there any other years that will bolt up and match the lines of the truck fairly well?

2) With the 240 L6 and 3 spd manual (my friend thinks it might have some kind of OD, not sure) will I be able to pull a 3500lb trailer at a reasonable speed? If it can do between 55 and 60 mph, that's fine because I'll never be towing it further than 50 miles away from home. If not, what transmissions should I look into (manual only, please) and what trucks can they be found in.

3) Lastly, I read a lot about swapping in a front suspension from a later model truck for disc brakes while surfing through the forums. I plan on doing this as one of the first major upgrades to my truck. I was wondering, has anyone swapped in a rear axle with discs for 4 wheel disc brakes? I know a few guys who have Cherokees and they've swapped in Ford 8.8's from late model Explorers for rear disc brakes. Are there any axles that would swap in under my '66 without too much hassle? Would this be a worthwhile upgrade?

Anyways, sorry for writing a book. Thanks in advance for any help!

 

Hi Nick, Welcome to FTE The best truck show on the net.

May I suggest that you drive the truck a while and get to know it a little. You could change your mind and want a V8 and auto. The 64-66 long bed has the same body lines.

Start looking for a 73-79 donor truck for your upgrade parts. The I-6 would be offered in all of those years. FE V8 offered from 73-76 351M 77-79.

Power steering and the 3 spd column are harder to find. Most go to auto trannys to keep column shifting or you may have to go to a floor shifter.

Take your time and don't rush into anything, you will be happier in the end.

John

 

Thanks for the quick reply John!

Unfortunately I wont be able to drive the truck around for a while to decide what I want to do to it. It is currently not titled (farm vehicle) and the brakes are pretty much shot. Since I don't have a lot of money on hand to just dump into the project, I want to work on making it road worthy by upgrading one thing at a time as I get the money before I have to title it and insure it.

When I am looking for a donor truck, I assume that it also has to be a 2wd truck?

 

As John says, disc brakes are a good starter upgrade for your truck since you have to do them anyway. Search around in here for tips or maybe Ddavid will come along and give you the link to his upgrade page. in simple terms you just swap out the front I beams and suspension (or just spindles, your choice) from a newer truck with disc brakes.
Welcome and have fun.

RF

 

Welcome Nick,

As a former inliner myself, there are a lot of plus and minuses with owning them. My truck had a 240 in it, like yours with 3 on tree and drum brakes, when I got it. It was shot, so I stuck a rebuilt 300 in its place. Same motor but more HP and loads of torque. But I soon found this site and others, and upgraded yet again to a big block V8. One thing led to another and I then upgraded to power disk brakes, power steering and C6 tranny (auto).

The V8 upgrade is fairly easy, with some study. So given what John said above, a donor 73-79 is a great way to upgrade to all these goodies.

Bottom line is think about what you really want to do with the truck, then plan your build and build your plan. Varying one way or another will frustrate and cost you. Don't ask me how I know.

Good Luck and let us know how it goes.

 

What about the overdrive thing you mentioned? What is making your friend say it has overdrive? If it does you are lucky as far having a darn good transmission that will save you $$ in fuel mileage. I have read that they can have some pitfalls in hauling and trailer situations. Particularly in hilly situations. You basically have to learn a how to use the truck differently than any other truck. NEVER LEAVE IT IN ANY OTHER GEAR BUT REVERSE ON AN INCLINE OR ANYWHERE FOR THAT MATTER. THESE TRUCKS ONLY HOLD IN REVERSE. ALL OTHER GEARS ARE NEUTRAL!!!!

Do you have a handle/cable to the left of your steering wheel? Do you have solenoids on your transmission? How about an electrical switch rigged to be tripped by flooring your gas pedal?

 

Nick, I suspect you can have your brakes working for less than a hundred bucks. Your can start by puttering around on the truck feeling it out. You may find with a little tinkering the ol truck can be road worthy, but maybe not for high speed driving.

I can promise you that driving it for a bit, while developing a plan as is a far better way. Once you figure the direction that you want to go in and you buy a donor that has the setup that you want, you can rebuild the engine & tranny from the donor, and not have to stop using your truck.

Make a 2-5 year plan, you will be miles ahead in the end.

John

 

Hi Nick!

As was stated, the 64-66 uses the same bed. Others will fit, but none will look right. Luckily, long beds aren't as desirable as short beds so you've got a better shot at locating one.
My infamous disc brake swap page can be accessed by clicking this link. Any half ton 4x2 up through 1979 is a suitable donor.
As for the six, the Ford I-6's are good engines. If you wanted a simple replacement, a 300 ci six is a bolt-in and will give you torque numbers very similar to a lot of V-8s (and in towing, it's all about torque, not HP). The six won't throw you back in your seat, but neither does the stock V-8 offered in 1966 (352 "FE", same family as the 360/390). Switching to an FE is pretty easy. Going to another engine family (small block, big block 460) is a different ball game entirely, and I don't suggest that until you really decide what you want to do with the truck or if you may be happy with the six.
The column shift is clunky and slow, but nothing wrong with 'em. It does severely limit your trans choices unless you want to cut a hole and move the shifter to the floor. I'm not a fan of automatics so I tolerate mine.
If you truck does have an overdrive unit, that's fairly rare. They are nice to have, but the concensus of some is that they aren't the sturdiest and the parts to fix them are NLA. If it has overdrive it should have a handle under the dash to engage/disengage it.
These are great trucks; reliably, easy to work on, and the parts are generally cheap. The worst thing about them is rust, so you'll want to check out your truck in that regard before buying expensive other stuff for it. No sense working on a hopeless case.
This forum is a great resource and has a great search function, so be sure to look around a bit. We're here to help!