Went through the stickys and it looks like this swap idea may be the way to go. Have a 84 F150 regular cab with good running gear and an eat up cab/bed. SIL/daughter handed us the title for his old 86 regular cab. Nice faded blue body with a motor that swallowed water crossing a flooded creek. Truck has been sitting about 6 years. Also, the rear in the 86 was beginning to whine. Unknown how the electronics are doing in the 86, other than it was drug back to their house, plugs pulled and parked. No other effort was made to save it. 84 has a decent carbed 302, good trans and a good 9" in the back. I notice that the bolt patterns on the wheels are different - too bad about that. I would also give up having a spare 9" center for the race cars, but oh well. Anything special I should watch out for? This is a grand dad/grand son (he's 12) project. I kind of like the idea of having the chassis bare in the shop for a while to work out any issues with the running gear as it has been sitting for about 18 months. I can just see grandkid and his neighbor buds going nuts about building a A frame and lifting the cab/bed off the old 86.

DMV issues - haven't made that call yet.

 

You have the title for the 86, so it will become a 86. There may be a few problems with this though;

If the 84/good engine is a 302, and the 86 was a 302, the 86 was fuel injected. If you have to get this inspected and they look closely, it will have a 84 engine in a 86 and they may not pass it.

Also, I don't understand how the wheel patterns are different, unless one of them is a f250 and one is a f150. If that is the case, then it will be apparent to most people that the title will not be correct, if it says f250 and the truck has f150 running gear.

 

They are both F150s. I'll double check the wheel pattern. Could be that it's just the spare - needed to use the spare from the 86 to replace a bad tire on the 84 and the bolt pattern was different. Thought that weird but didn't pursue it further. We were moving across town and just needed to get the thing on the trailer. I bought a $10 15" tire for the 84 rim and got on with the program.

If the wheel pattern does match, that would help a lot as I could just roll the 9" under the 86 and that part would be done.

Good point on the inspection - I'll ask one of the shop owners in the car club what the state would be looking for.

I'd just put the short block in the 86 but the fact that it's been wet to some unknown extent (inside cab and frame are all good, no apparent water damage) and been sitting so long might lead to extended troubleshooting and a lot of extra expense - injectors, maybe a computer, etc. Then again, it might not be that big a deal as the motor might have just pulled in water and stalled. As far as I know, they pulled it out right away. It was the night of a big storm and there was a county vehicle at the low water crossing. SIL stopped and was waved on with a "no problem, not that deep" - well, guess what.

Thanks for the ideas.

 

Yes, the wheel patterns are the same. The only truck that had a different pattern was some of the early 80's f100's.

I would definitely try the engine. See if you can turn it with a wrench. If it got water in it, and they didn't get it out, it may have rusted the bores of the engine and it would then be stuck, though you can sometimes un-stick them by pulling the plugs, and putting some sort of penetrating fluid in the cylinders and letting it sit for a few days, and then try working it back and forth. Sometimes a few doses and a few days of wiggling it will break it free.

 

Haven't had much time to mess with this, but apparently I have one of those F100s. 84 wheel pattern is 4 1/2 on 5, 86 is 5 on 5.