Hi everyone!! My names Jennifer and I have been on the forum for a couple of weeks now. I picked up a 1978 Ford F150 2wd the night we had that last snowstorm and now I'm planning on fixin her up. Don't know if I wanna go " ALL THE WAY" with the truck or not...really got it as a cheap hauling truck. I figured, for just under $1,000, if you can get a truck that is at least running so you can get it home to tinker with it, your doin good. This was more of a whim for me, going the late 70's route instead of getting a newer mid 80's truck and I hope I didn't mess up. I don't know if I have would go so far as restoration, but I DO wanna do the basics so she runs good. The guys on the main forum here have been mentioning that I should get hooked up with some people here locally to help me to not only learn about repair, but also get tips on working on this truck and doing IT RIGHT. I didn't know squat about trucks a couple of weeks ago, but I'm learnin fast.

Right now I took off the air cleaner and cleaned her up good in preparation for taking the carb off. The carb has an accelerator pump leak and it might be good to have the whole carb reburbed cause it's so old. I get the feeling this truck has been neglected for a bunch of years.

Anyway, HI everyone and look forward to chatting and learning....I'm in this, much to my astonishment, for the learning as well as have a decent running truck when I'm done. I think I might have been bit by the "old truck" bug

Jennifer

 

Here are some pics of my truck..at least what I have taken so far. She spent most of her life in Arizona.

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Side pic of the truck

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Front pic of truck

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Her big ol butt...

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Interior of the cab

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Front left wheel well has rust...one of only a few places that does on body

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Passenger cab corner and door has rust...this is the only other place with rust, other than the under carriage and one or two spots on the passenger side floor boards where it has rusted through
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Partial pic of engine...was taken to identify carb..look at the dirty air cleaner!!

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Air cleaner AFTER it's been scrubbed for 3 hours with steel wool and engine degreaser...not sure if I should keep this or use a newer after market air cleaner. I still need some parts if I keep the old one..it was missing all the tubing past the snorkel, plus the hot air tube....help???

Anyway...just had to post some pics...

Jennifer

 

Looks like a nice truck.

You can get these trucks fixed up pretty reasonably, and they are very easy to keep running good.

The air filter housing sure cleaned up good! You don't need the snorkle or extra stuff for it either. You can run it as is. Or you could just get an aftermarket style too.

 

Welcome to the MN chapter.

Nice truck. I love those old dent sides......

As Dave said, no need for the plastic tube after the snorkel, or the hot air tube. Many just choose to run an open filter element on these trucks anyway.

What engine does it have? Looks like a 351M/400 to me.

 

Welcome to the MN chapter Jennifer!

Looks like decent truck for its age. Yep ditto to what the other guys said about the air cleaner. Where are you located? Truck should be fairly easy to maintain and keep running once you have gone through and got it all running and working good.

 

Welcome to the MN chapter Jennifer.

 

Welcome Jennifer. Lots of good info and BS'ing here!

 

Welcome Jennifer!

The truck actually looks pretty good considering the age. I had a '78 that was way worse than that. The floor of the bed was pretty much swiss cheese.

 

Hi everyone, and thanks for the warm welcome!! Yep, this is a (351M??) engine...not sure what the "M" means, but I know its a 351. I got this from a guy off of craigslist here a couple of weeks ago. The really neat thing about it is I have almost EVERY repair receipt for this truck going all the way back to 1985 or so. The original owner was from Arizona and I have receipts proving this truck was in Arizona from around 1985 all the was to 1993 or so, and I'm assuming that this guy was the first owner and the truck first started her life there. The second owner had her (supposedly) up at the cabin here in Minnesota for about 10 years and was barely used, and my receipts tend to indicate that as the owner was a woman and there are only a couple of them that go from somewhere around 1995 all the way up to 2007. The final owner(the guy I bought this from), only had this truck for a couple of years and there are NO receipts for him, which also makes me tend to believe his story that it sat in his driveway and only got used a handful of times that he had it. The original miles on this truck(if I chronologically line up all the receipts with milieage on them) is about 153,000, and I believe those to be the original miles!!

It's so neat to have all the written history and read where the truck has been and how it lived it's life. The first owner MIGHT have been the owner of a repair place or dealer ship in Arizona, as his last name matches the name of a lot of the repair places that he took the truck to. I didn't know anything about trucks really when I bought this, other than how to check for the basics, and that I learned from buying and maintaining my car. I just thought the truck was fairly clean looking when I bought it and I LOVE the "straight off the farm' original brown paint on her. The interior is all original too and I love the way the bench seat looks.

Well, was gonna dig in her today, but it's raining, so I'll have to wait till tomorrow.

By the way, I'm located in the Twin Cities, east suburbs, Oakdale 55128 to be exact. I have to pull out the carb and send it to that carb shop off of white bear and Hwy 36 that everyone keeps telling me about, as there is an accelerator pump leak on the front of the carb.

I would love to talk shop with someone local here and learn more about trucks, so if anyone lives locally and feels like hanging out, just let me know.

Thanks!!

Jennifer

 

That is pretty cool you have all the receipts. There are quite a few guys from down your way. A couple of guys on here who have posted above manage and work at a repair shop in St. Louis Park, Dave(dlibson) and Mike(Ford79). It is called DT's Garage so get a hold of them and I am sure they could give you quote for working on some of that as well.

Be sure to stop in the bs thread as well and chat with everyone!

 

Welcome, and great looking truck Jennifer. It's rare to see air conditioning in that year truck. Nice!