1977 Ford F-100 Prerunner Is One Seriously High-Flying Thrill Machine
This amazing 1977 Ford F-100 prerunner is equally comfy on the street and highly capable off the pavement.
Over the past few years, prerunners – vehicles that were historically used to pre-run an off-road racecourse before the real thing began – have become incredibly popular road-legal weekend toys among enthusiasts. It’s easy to see the appeal of such a machine, of course, given the fact that they’re nearly as capable as a full-blown race truck, yet also tame enough to drive on the street. That certainly applies to this incredible 1977 Ford F-100 prerunner built by Rob of RJ Fabrication in Hesperia, California, which Shawn Davis from the YouTube channel AutotopiaLA recently got to experience firsthand.
As Rob reveals, this 1977 Ford F-100 prerunner build wasn’t completed using a bone stock pickup – rather, it had already been converted into an off-road racer by a company called Raceco. Rob’s buddy purchased it from them and proceeded to take it out one day, but unfortunately got a little too sideways and flipped it. Thus, the truck was in need of some repairs, so Rob obliged by making it even better than it was before.
Rob started that process by replacing two-thirds of the body and adding some extra bars to the truck’s existing roll cage to beef it up in case the owner repeated his unfortunate incident at some point in the future. He then added two spares in the bed before dropping in a 427 cubic-inch Dart-based V8 that’s essentially a punched-out 351 Windsor, which is topped off with a Holley Terminator fuel injection setup. Output is around 525 horsepower, which is enough.
That power flows to the wheels via a C6 automatic transmission and a trophy truck-style rear end with 5.43 gears. As one might imagine, the suspension of this vintage Ford received the most attention, and the parts list here is indeed impressive, with items such as Fox 4.0 bypass shocks and 3.0 coilovers, which given it an impressive 21 inches of front wheel travel and 28 inches of rear travel, while the whole thing rolls on massive 40-inch BFGoodrich tires.
Despite all of that hardcore stuff, this 1977 Ford F-100 cruises down the road quite nicely, but off the pavement, it’s an entirely different animal. Rob catches a little air with Davis in the passenger seat, and he walks away with a blown mind from this incredibly visceral machine, which proves why, exactly, prerunners are so popular these days.
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