Here are a few photos of a 1966 T850 which my brother and I restored. It has a 534 engine and 5 X 4 transmissions. The bed is a 16' dump. We bought it from the original owner in 2007.

 

Absolutely love it!

Please post pics of the before as well as the restoration pics.

 

Thank you. The old beast was pretty straight when we bought it.


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WOW! Looks great, looks the way it did back in '66. I appreciate you keeping the lock ring wheels, they look so much beefier, they match the character of the truck perfectly.

 

Absolutely beautiful looks like you two did a great job. You put a lot of time and effort into this truck. Great pictures.

 

Thank you for your compliments. The biggest job was splitting the frame rails to deal to deal with rust.

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Some factory specs on a T 850

 

Thank you, triple frame. Those are the gear boxes and ratios the truck has.

 

That's a beautiful rig, your effort shows. The T-series are one tough looking truck, the side profile especially.

I like the brownie shifter, it's making me dizzy though! There's hardly a single straight part to it!

Did you rebuild the 534? I've always liked those engines, but I suspect it'll drain that 120 gallon tank in no time!

Sam

 

Thank you for your comments. No, we haven't rebuilt the 534 that is in the truck but, we have another 534 at a machine shop for a complete rebuild as I write this. We bought the truck from the original owner in 2007. For the first 12 years it was used as a semi-tractor on the owner's potato farm. it was then converted to use as the flatbed dump it currently is. It wasn't used from 1998 until 2007 when we purchased it.

It was originally a 477. That engine was replaced with the current Ford Authorized Remanufactured 534 which is in it. (The owner gave us the warranty and the shop invoice for the engine replacement.)The chassis has approx. 400k miles on it and the engine somewhere around 300k.

I drove a 1963 T850 with a 534 and 5 X 4 transmissions during the summers of 1968-69 on road construction-the first summer as a 10yd dump truck and the next as a semi-tractor pulling a 20yd bellydump trailer. Those trucks were incredibly tough. The sound of a 534 working hard is just great.
They were hard on fuel but when gas could be bought wholesale for around 20 cents per gallon it didn't matter much.

As for the brownie gearshift lever-it is unique to Ford Super Duty trucks of that era.

 

Nothing beats the sound of an old engine doing some work, all the old Ford V8's have a real nice sound to them.

There's a late 60's T-series truck over here that I've had my eye on for quite a while, it hasn't moved in years though. Money and space are a bit short too. Maybe someday!

Sam

 

Sam, I hope that late 60's truck is in your future. Ever since driving that T850 in the 60's it passed through mind it would be fun to own one but, I never really thought seriously about it-that is, until in the middle night in July, 2007, on a whim I did a search for a Ford T850 and this one popped up on Craigslist. I called my brother the next day and asked if he'd be interested in a joint project. He said yes and here we are. By the way, the truck came from Ridgefield, WA. Harlan

 

Great looking truck - you should be proud to drive that around!

D

 

Oh boy I got a lot of miles under my belt in those. Kings of the highway,
they'd blow the doors off anything. Nobody cared using a 100 gals a day
at 28-30 cents a gal. Once you master speed shifting them through the
sterring wheel with two hands- good by Macks. Do you know the story
how the roof got like that. Most came or was ordered with Bostrom
seats and you was smackin your head into the roof. so with enough
bitchen from the big big operators they finnally raised the roof.

 

will you be using on the farm or retiring it to shows?