Hi everybody, this is a little late in coming (about a year and a half into work haha), but I'm in sort of the final haul of the project right now and I both need a little motivation, and want to document everything I've done, so here we go, my truck:

I bought a 79 F150 4X4 made of the body of one truck, the chassis of another, and the engine and trans of a 3rd in March 2009. The body was originally from a 300 6 standard 4X4 truck, beyond that I don't know much. The frame was very clean, the engine ran strong and reliably, trans was good. It had alot of little electrical gremlins, but nothing associated with running, the body was roughish, holes in the floor, bed was swiss cheese, other than that just wheel wells and normal stuff. I took on problems as they came up, and haven't finished that task yet....

Brake line burst unloading from trailor, replaced
got all the lights working
fixed the horn
replaced leaking valve cover gaskets
new brake pressure sensor (didn't fix leak)
cleaned and sealed proportioning valve (fixed leak)
passed inspection!... because I know the guy.... the ball joints were clunky
took the bed off and wire wheeled both sides, fixed all the rust, tons of welding, reinforced it all, coated every inch of underside, bed back on
same process with the almost broken in half hood.... was beginning to see what I had gotten into
patched the floor
went through the cab inside, everything down to bare metal, seat apart, cleaned everything finally
coated cab floor
drivers wheel and tire came off on the road, spent a while fixing fender, brake rotor, and other stuff from that
welded rear spring hangers back together
custom built true dual exhaust
did the common mild 400 mods (4 bbl carb, intake, cam, springs, timing, headers) with pretty impressive results
blew out my transmission
rebuilt it way up and cleaned and checked Tcase
went through the whole front end in one shot, ball joints, axle seals, wheel bearings, new heavy springs to level the truck, fixed my locking hubs
welded the tailgate back together and put in a roll on bedliner
did big bodywork on both doors
passed inspection again, on the second try, lights still giving me problems
engine overheated and blew up so I tore it out, and took the opportunity for a whole bunch of other repairs
did the steering box
disassembled almost the entire truck a section at a time and cleaned the frame and body
did some sealing
did the whole interior to almost finished state
put on a visor
did a couple months of fairly quiet research on engines, was all set to rebuild mine when an opportunity came up and I bought one

PRESENT TIME, finally, and I'm in the process right now of finally puting an engine back in, and getting her back out on the road! I put the engine mounts back on and set the steering back up tonight, and I'll be taking it from here in later posts.

I'm building the truck as a daily driver, very capable of being a truck and being a long trip cruiser, and at the same time, something that I can have fun in, and maaaaybe show off a little with haha. I have made every repair or change as custom as possible, and want to continue that, to end up with a suprisingly practical and capable truck, that looks like nothing else.

I will hopefully have some pictures soon, but for right now, this thread is pretty much just to keep me on track, give me something to own up to maybe, to make sure I push right to the end!

Hope you enjoy it, AleX

 

Cant wait to see it.

 

Ten days later:

I've been very busy, been away most of both weekends, but I'm so close to having this thing on the road now I can taste it. It's been cold here, and I've only had nights to work, and the truck's outside, but the rain and snow have held off so far so I've been pushing!

The engine I bought is a rebuilt 400, now 408, with flat top pistons, Cleveland 4V closed chamber heads, and a full roller setup. It has a 2V intake adapter plate, and will eventually have a 2V intake. The large valves of the 4V heads will allow the chambers to fill as fast as any setup out there, and the 2V intake runners will allow the fuel to atomize and mix at normal truck RPM's. It is currently set up with a single plane 4V manifold though, and is blue.

I spent a few days on here, planning, sizing up my options, and checking every external thing I could on the engine. I didn't go into it at all though because it was all totally built and sealed and I wanted to drop it in and test it without taking the time to build it all how I wanted it (which will be much easier with it out anyway), since it had never been run since the rebuild. I then spent a night prepping the engine bay, final cleaning, puting mounts back in, geting the tools out, took the converter out so I could just free spin the engine.

I spent two days setting up then trying to start the engine on the ground, but when I realized that I needed to hook it up to the ignition moduel and all, I decided to drop it in the truck to test. I unset up the whole engine. I also FINALLY conclusively sealed my C6 pan!

Then, another day I rolled the truck out of the garage so I could set up my A frame (an old 4X4 swingset) and lift the engine in, dragged that up from the backyard, set it up over the engine/pallet, lifted them, put them on wheels, rolled them in front of my truck, moved the A frame back over the engine, lifted it, took the front wheels off the truck and jacked the back up 2 feet so the oil pan could juuust clear the radiator support, shifted the A frame over the engine bay, and lowered the engine in.

Mounted the engine after one second try (the trans had one alignment pin left in it, and the block had both in it).
put on starter
put on carb
installed extender and brass gear on dist
put on dist
wired everything up
hooked up to truck fuel line and gas tank
did not hook up cooling or gauges, just a 2 second test to show myself it ran
tried starting, jumping solenoid and contacting starter wire, little brother in cab with key, no luck, but got backfires
next day
realized i had the firing order (and so plugs) correct, but that the rotor goes counterclockwise, not clockwise, reversed it
kept dropping in the dist at each of 8 positions, better luck than the day before, but still no run
on the 5th position a piece of gasket in the engine caught on fire and dropped out the manifold (didn't end up being a problem, but the little flame got me to jump under and check) and in the light from the little flame, I saw a huuuuge pool of gas, my old fuel line had finally given up the fight, so I went in for the night and waited for it to evaporate
next day, went out, dropped the dist in in the remaining 3 positions, and on the 3rd and final chance I had, ROAR!
a little ether and a spin of the dist to get the timing roughly on and it stayed running, for the 1 second I gave it, and it ran SMOOOOOOOTH!
spent today figuring out/getting oil pressure stuff, temp stuff, electrical finishing, engine paint (lime green, and black), and hooking up the engine to the cooling system

Tomorrow I'm going to do the break in run, now that I have metering equipment and a cooling system.

The plan then is to pop it out, paint it, swap intakes, then drop it in, and set it up for real. I'm hoping to have all that done by Thanksgiving, and maybe drive it to my relatives, although all it will have by then is turndowns.......

I'm going to keep up with this, hopefully.... AleX