Ontario Canada was the factory that produced all of the early Crews. All were essentially "hand made" and there really wasn't any deep, dark, or mysterious secret as to how they were made. By the way, my 1970 F-250 Highboy is this same way also. You will find this is the case with all of the "Bumps" and with all of the "Dents" which are Crew Cabs. That means all were "hand-made" until production of them ceased in 1979. I will explain how to tell about the "hand-made" portion in a few moments, but first, here's what was required to make one.

Two cabs were used, with the back of one and the front part of the other. It appears there was a "special" roof panel made and this was attached to the top of the cab after the modifications were completed so there was a one piece roof installed. The front part of the rear doors were literally "cut-off" from the vent window forward and the front edge was modified and used to complete the front edge of the doors after welding and shaping. The interior door panel was cut off on the front portion so it would now fit against the door with its front edge matching the doors front edge. Here is one of the "chintzy" things you will find. They tack welded a small piece of angle iron on the front edge of the rear door to make a slot for the door panel to slide into as they had cut off the front edge with the screw holes. The door panel front edge just "floats" inside the groove made with the angle iron. The rest of the screws on the top, bottom and back edge are fastened to the door to hold the panel in place. If you hear a faint rattle, simply tap the angle iron with a small hammer and "tighten" it against the door panel when it's in place.

Now, here's where it gets fun! The window crank on the front doors is close to the front edge of the door. This part was cut off on the rear doors so there wasn't a place anymore for the window crank. By taking a passenger side door window regulator and turning it around backwards and then installing it into the Driver's side rear door, the window crank became usable and now was located to the rear edge of the rear door and worked perfectly! Then using a window regulator from the Driver's side door, installing it backward in the passenger side rear door, it worked perfectly too, and the crank again was now positioned close to the rear edge of the door. The passenger door glass was used in the passenger side rear door and the driver's side glass was then used in the driver's side rear door. Drilling a new hole for the window crank's stub shaft in the interior door panel was all that was necessary to complete the rear doors. Kinda "chintzy" in my opinion but very workable even though the workmanship leaves quite a bit to be desired when you actually look over one of these rear doors.

The rear door inside handle for opening remained the same, but they did not enclose it with an arm rest as was the case with the front door. Instead, they used a plastic window frame type looking piece from the inside of a standard van's inside door handle to finish it off.

Because of the removal of the vent window from the rear door, the subsequent removal of some of the floor and roof to make it match resulted in the loss of considerable foot room, in my opinion, and the rear passengers get the feeling they are up against the front seat. When production of Crew Cabs was started again in the mid 80's, the new Crews of that era were built with more foot room and that has continued ever since their re-introduction. Seats were easy as the only modification to the front seat was a little upholstery added to enclose the back of the seat for appearance sake. The rear seat was simply mounted in with stationary brackets and became non-adjustable, although both seats are capable of being tilted forward to stow stuff around the gas tank in the rear and who knows what function the tilting front seat now serves?

As you can see, the only real "new" piece of sheet metal needed was the one piece longer roof. Wiring was simply "spliced" with an extension piece where required and the truck received cosmetic sheet metal finishing and painting.

Oh yes, I nearly forgot! The rear door sills are nothing more than front door sills that have been cut off, (shortened) to finish the floor to the door opening.

For those of you that are interested in just what this cost, well the full retail price for the "Crew Cab Option" in the 1970 model year was $773.00 as indicated by the Original Invoice from my 1970 Crew Cab Highboy. To us who bought these in those days, it was a "Hell of a Price!" Another reason for the low numbers of production. With "good wages" being about $120 a week, this was a fortune in those times!

As you can see, there was considerable "hand work" involved in the making of the crew cabs. The rear doors are the real item of "scarcity" and anyone finding one or a set of rear doors for any of these early crews if in good useable condition finds a part that will generally be salable at a fairly good price! Although you could make a new one from a regular door, it is a great deal of work and would be quite expensive, but NOT impossible to do if you really needed one!

When you get the opportunity, if interested, take the time to really check out the rear doors of these trucks. Hard to believe they are so simple, yet functional. The other thing I find of interest is the poor quality of workmanship you will find present in some doors when compared to each other even or to others on other trucks. It is very apparent there was good and bad rear door fabricators at the Ontario plant. Good thing the front doors were mass produced and made so well, otherwise without a good door to start with, some of the rear doors might have fell off before the trucks were sold. Oh, that also reminds me, the regular hinges from the front doors were used on the rear doors also. Hope those of you that took the time to read all this found it interesting. Didn't mean to bore you folks for quite this long!

 

Hey MotorDog,
Thanks a bunch for the great tutorial on how make a crew cab out of 2 standard cabs. There's enough info for anyone who can weld, measure accurately and has the ambition to make their own Crew Cab. WAY COOL! anybody near Las Vegas got an extra cab they want to part with?
Thanks Again,
Gene

 

Are the crewcab beds (styleside & flareside) different from regular cab? I know there is a big difference between the 6 1/2' flareside beds and the 8' flareside beds. And why the .7" difference between the 4x2 and 4x4 wheelbase?

 

Hahaha, I think I've asked that three or four times and still haven't gotten an answer

It's fine by me though, I'm learning a whole lot of other things too!



And I've decided, I wrote that guy's number down and I'm going to call him on November 1st. If the truck is still there, I'll go to look (with my eyes, not my cash) and hopefully discover that it would be a project far beyond the scope of my imagination. That way, at least I can say I've seen a bumpside crew in person

 

Here is all I know about the Styleside and Flareside beds compared to the Regular beds from non crew cab trucks. I have both a '69 F-350 2wd Crew Cab and a 1970 F-250 4x4 High Boy Crew Cab. Both trucks have Styleside Beds. But, the 1970 4x4 is a "short bed" which is 6 1/2 ft. in length. Yes, it is the same as a Regular Truck bed as it was replaced with a "mint" bed about three years ago when completing an off frame restoration. There was no difference that was found between the original and the replacement bed. Regarding the '69 F-350 2wd Crew Cab, it is an 8 ft. styleside bed and as far as I can see and tell, it is exactly the same as the bed on my '70 CS F-250 2wd with a styleside 8 ft. bed. As to differences in the Flareside beds, I have no knowledge about that and don't have any to look at myself to see any differences. Sort of wish I did. But I do know that there wasn't any difference in the advertised wheel bases of the Crew Cabs in the Ford literature of the late 60's and early 70's regarding the Crew Cab trucks. It was advertised that you could have the Crew Cabs with either a Styleside or a Flareside bed, or if you preferred, no bed at all so you could add your own custom bed. The F-350 2wd came with a 165.5 inch WB and the F-250 2wd came with a 149 inch WB while the F-250 4x4 was almost 3/4 of an inch shorter at 148.3 inches. Unknown where they lose that length and I have no explanation for it between the 2wd and the 4wd. I suppose this is the difference being referred to in length. There wasn't any 4x4's made that were F-350's, at least in 1969 and 1970, (Years I know about personally), but you could have the F-350 with Dual Rear Wheels but it would be without a factory bed and would be rated at 10,000 gvw instead of 8,000 gvw with single rear tires. Man, it might be fun to put some duals on the rear of a styleside and mold on some nice fenders....... ! It would begin to be as wide as it is long.....Hahahahah!!

 

You can see the difference between an F250 8' bed and an F250 6 1/2' bed. Besides the obvious length difference the 8' bed is quite a bit higher.

 

Looks like most of the difference is between the back of the cab and the front edge of the rear wheels.............. I think what we are forgetting here is that ALL F-250's came with only a 6 1/2 ft. bed. No 8 ft. beds were fitted to the F-250 Crew Cabs. It was only on the F-350's that you got an 8 ft. bed. So, it would be something to do with the placement of the axels in the 4wd versus the 2 wd. At least that would be my guess as to where that .7" went to. What's your guess?

 

Las Vegas? lol i just moved from there last year, the pick-a-part yards there are gold mines, i found a near perfect '73 crew cab there, and yanked the body to replace my rusty one. i also found another two wich donated their cabs to build my '78 4 door bronco. all in all i snagged 3 crew bodies from one pick-a part yard. i dont see why you wouldnt find an earlier one there at some point, but you have to look every week, because they change inventory constantly, i bet that place has eaten up tens of thousands of 57-79 ford trucks over the past 15 years.

 

.7 of an inch, maybe it's got something to do with driveshaft length? Are the front and rear driveshafts common to other trucks or are they a one off?

 

I have a 70 2wd that after a tire blowout tore up the bed my dad cut the rails and added 2ft and built a flatbed. He also put adapters on it to make it look like a dually. Mine came with a 360 and dual tanks. The only thing that I cant figure out is when I found the truck I immediately crapcanned the flatbed and shortened the rails right back where my dad had cut them replaced the bed with a 67 box (best one I could find) that fit the rails and bolt holes perfect, but the axle sat 2-3" too far to the rear. In order to line up the axle in the fenderwell I moved the axle forward to fit center. There aren't very many 67-72 crewcabs on the east coast and poeple didn't believe me that it was originally a shortbed cause the axle was farther back, but a long bed would have been more than 2-3". Why would my axle have been different for the other box when the rail went perfectly back where it was originally like a puzzle piece. The fact that they were hand made makes me wonder if there were some odd *****. Some pix I've seen of others have more space between the cab and bed.

 

Mine also has factory disc front end. Was this common for the 70 crews? I want to convert it to 4wd with late model 8/170mm axles to run the new 20" wheels from the King Ranch trucks. Does anyone need front disc beams from an F250? This is what it looked like with the 20s I had originally.

 

I'm almost positive that the 4X4's were all shortbox's (6 foot beds). I've never seen one but some tell me you could get a longbed 4X2. No crewcab specific bed that I know of. My 76 is a four door shortbox and my buddy has a 72 4X4 Crew (with '01 Powerstroke 6-speed)which is also a shortbox. I would make a lowball offer on the truck, if it's not a rustbucket you will not get hurt. If it was here in Cali I would go get it right now.

 

Definately not a rustbucket. The only rust is silver dollar size spots on bottom corners of rear doors and some in the bed floor as usual. At least on the east coast.

 

Are you talking about your '70 or the '67 being looked at by the original poster?

 

If it's a shortbox crew it'll be a 6 1/2' bed not a 6' bed. Are you sure it's an F-250 not an F-350? What is the wheel base? Compare with what is posted above. Post your vin if you've got it. I'm sure that all crewcabs were ordered as cab & chassis and then built up from there. Read the previous posts, there are pictures of longbed 4x2's and lots of discussion about shortbeds and longbeds.
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