Ford F-150 SVT Lightning With Manual Swap Might Be the Perfect Performance Pickup
There are a small number of manual transmission-swapped second-gen Ford F-150 SVT Lightning pickups out there, but this might be the nicest.
It’s no secret that we Blue Oval fans love the Ford F-150 SVT Lightning, whether you’re talking about the first- or second-gen version of the performance pickup. However, the second-generation model has become incredibly popular to modify in recent years, and for good reason – it packs a serious punch already in the form of its supercharged 5.4-liter V8, and unlocking far more power is pretty easy to do. However, most of these trucks wind up on the drag strip – where automatic gearboxes reign these days – so we rarely ever seen manual swapped Ford F-150 SVT Lightning pickups like this one – built and owned by Tyler Garlock.
Garlock has owned his second-gen Ford F-150 SVT Lightning for quite a few years now, but just decided to give it new life with a Tremec T56 manual transmission from a 2004 Mustang Cobra recently, which was more than enough to make YouTuber Neomustangs eager to catch up with him at, well, Tremec’s headquarters recently.
Making this particular project come together wasn’t exactly straightforward, given the fact that the second-generation SVT Lightning wasn’t ever offered with a manual transmission from the factory. This required Garlock to put his engineering skills to the test and hit various parts bins, a process that began when he sourced a set of pedals from a V6-powered F-150, since those could be had with a manual back in this era, From there, he picked up a shifter from a 2005 Ram SRT10 and a 2007 Ram floor console to make it work, but the whole thing looks decidedly OEM, regardless.
Garlock did a masterful job of converting his Ford F-150 SVT Lightning to a more traditional type of performance machine, but this 109k-mile True Blue pickup is – as one might have guessed by now – not stock in the powertrain department, either. In fact, it utilizes a special adapter plate for its factory V8, which allows Garlock to run a blower from a 2007-2014 Shelby GT500 – a piece that Garlock designed and had cut himself.
The modified powertrain has been tuned as well, but that was done before the gearbox swap, so there’s obviously a check engine light illuminated. Regardless, as it sits, this is a pretty amazing build, and a testament to the skill that Garlock possesses – not to mention his vision. There are certainly another one or two manual-swapped SVT Lightnings out there in the world, but his may very well be the nicest we’ve seen yet, in fact.
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