My name is Eric. I have been a VW guy my whole life. I met my wife and of course her father about 14 years ago. I liked a lot of things about her, and just one of those things was the cool old truck behind their house, a 51 ford truck. My wife and her dad were going to build it together, you know, "someday". Unfortunately, he got sick and couldn't do any garage work. I told them that I would build it for them, they liked that idea. So I cut the trees out of the bed, and dragged it out of the 4 holes in the mud it was in. Got it home, and some life happened and it sat in my field for 10 years. Unfortunately in that time, he passed away. A few after that, I finally got into it. It's a rough truck, but 99% of it will be custom, so I guess that's not too bad of a thing. I bought a donor car, kind of an oddball, but it will work, a 79 Lincoln Mark V. It has a c6 trans, 9" rear end, disk brakes all around, power steering and brakes, and a 400 small block. Unfortunately it's a smog engine and a really tall ratio rear end, but I can work with it and fix these items.

The truck was really butchered, I think a torch and hammer was all the previous owner used. Here's some pictures of the rough stuff.

 

First thing I had to do was get all the pieces from the field to the garage area.

 

Stripped all the weird 4 link stuff off the rear end. Swapped the axle above the leafstack. Keep in mind this is all mockup for a while, no final build yet. I am going to have to step the frame up and around the axle, it is only like 2" from hitting.

 

Put the cab on. I love my hoist and I beam.

 

Engine mockup.

 

Testing for firewall and radiator clearance. I ended up cutting out a large piece of firewall, I will just push it back like 2", plenty of footroom. It was trashed anyway, a million holes to fix.

 

Started making motor mounts. The mounts bolted to the engine and trans have the rubber parts, so lucky me, I just have to do steel work. Took the carb off, put the magnetic base levels on, and leveled the carb. Then I decided the best way to level the truck was the bottom of the doors. I already lowered the back like 7", so to level it I tried taking off the front wheels and setting it directly on the floor. Still about an inch too high in the front, so I put the back on stands.

 

Next steps are to finish the motor mounts, then pull the cab back off and start finish building the chassis, including a custom double a arm front end. I looked into all of the mustang 2 and Jag and Crown Vic front ends and just decided to build my own with parts from my local race shop. It will be an adventure for sure.

 

Welcome to FTE, the best Ford Truck Forum on the world wide Web! Thanks for the pictures. Good luck on your build keep us posted.

The sheet metal looks pretty good after sitting outside all those years.

 

Welcome! Great pictures and looks like you know what you are doing. Nice to see another old Ford truck saved! Will be watching, thanks for posting.

 

Thanks, ya most of it is pretty nice, I've saved worse.

 

Thanks. I know this is a Ford site, but I thought I would share my other builds. As I said above I am a VW guy, I have a woods buggy, a street bug, and a drag bug. The drag car runs high 11's and low 12's depending on the track. I did all of the work, chassis, body, engine, trans, paint, all of it. And my 5 year old son and I just built a mini buggy for him this past summer. This Ford stuff is all new to me!

 

Welcome! You've done some good work on the Vdubs and buggies. Looks like you have a great start for the legacy build.

 

Looks like a nice build. Is that maple Grove you're racing at in those pictures?

 

Yes, that's the Grove.