So I've been a long time lurker, mostly because my truck projects were small, and later put on the back burner to build a race car. To start the story, my dad and I originally built the truck when I was 15. Living in MN it seemed like a good idea to have 4wd, so we swapped a 1979 F150 chassis and running gear underneath the 1950 body. It worked well, and was a blast to drive, but driving in the couple winters I did was a big mistake. It sat and started rusting as I went off to college, but moved with me out to Detroit. In Detroit I did a rebuild of the 351M up to a 408, but couldn't quite bite the bullet on starting a swap back to 2wd for more of a street truck. Below is a pic from its time in Michigan.



Upon moving back to the Twin Cities, I promptly had the rear driveshaft break while at a cruise night. Luckily I just pulled it, locked my hubs and drove home. Where it sat for a few more years until I could decide how to fix it. Putting in a new driveshaft was too simple, and I had the nagging idea for years to put it back to a cruiser and make it 2wd. This is also the point where a race car hijacked my plans, and mostly my time.



In the long run, I learned a lot building the car, and that helped the truck project. More to follow...

 

keep us update on the conversion from 4wd to a 2wd... Remember we need pics and more Pics

 

Here are a few more of the truck in 4wd mode. These are all roughly circa 2005.







Then in 2010 we began the teardown work in my dad's barn. Being an hour away slowed progress a bit as well. Having the one piece fiberglass front end made some of this work easier.



I ended up deciding to go the budget route, and tried the Crown Vic front end. It would fit the 79 frame, but would drive me to run modern high offset wheels. It was tough finding a front end to work with the 79 frame, and the 50 overall width. In hindsight, now, I maybe should have cut off the front frame and narrowed it. But we can get to that later. Here are some pics after we had a shop do the main install work of the front end and rear end. For the rear suspension I went with a Welder Series triangulated four link, and 99 Crown Vic 8.8 axle, with a 3.55 limited slip and disc brakes.













They did good work, but I wasn't happy with their solution for the rear mount of the lower control arm. It caused an interference with my headers. So we went to work redesigning it to use the stock Ford mount and free up space inside the frame. I also took this time to box the frame for stiffness, add the rear shock mount, then re-sandblast the frame to clean it up and re-paint it.






















The last is where it sat in the fall, before we trailer-ed it up to my garage. My first child was born in October, and I knew I'd never finish it if it was an hour away. I finally moved the race car out to another shop, so the truck is just outside in the garage. I've made some more progress since October, but need to get pics. As you can see, I ended up using a kit for QA1 shocks in the front, its from Naake suspension, made for the Mercury Marauder. I wanted the ability to set my ride height and have additional spring choices. I also went with some QA1 rear coil-overs and will have pics of that to come. The truck also has an adapted Tremec TKO 5 speed. I'm in the process of swapping to a hydroboost brakes as well, from an F-250. Also moving to an electric fan, from the Lincoln Mark VIII, and starting to think about adding AC for the humid MN summers.

 

nice looking re-do. nice before, will be a nice street machine when you are done. good work.

 

Hey Greg,
It looks great! That's a lot of chassis work. You started with a winterized 4x4 then worked your way back to a heavily modified street truck. Are you still planning to race it? What's that in the background lurking on your driveway?

Ben in Austin
1950 F1

 

Great story and good work. Keep us posted on the progress.

 

Thanks for the compliments guys. No real plan to race it. I toyed with the idea of doing some autocross stuff or something, but that's what the race car is for. This will probably stick to cruising.

In the background is my dad's 1970 Dodge Challenger, 440 six pack. Had to back it out of the way to get the truck out of the barn.

 

Is it done yet?
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How about now?

 

Looks good, where about in Detroit were you staying?

 

It looks like your front wheels actually fit inside the front fenders. Did you narrow the cross member at all?

 

MustangMike, I was in the Dearborn/Dearborn Heights area.

Nick, I didn't narrow the cross member at all, but its just barely inside the front fender. And that's using +45-50mm offset wheels, the stock CV steelies, which I think are 7.5" wide. Haven't found a good number for what the truck offset is. It limits my wheel choices quite a bit, and I think I'll have to run at least -0.5 deg of camber. Needless to say I'm glad they fit and my measurements worked out. The offset really limits my wheel choices though.

 

Been way too long since I gave an update. I had done some updates on the pro-touring.com forum, so I'm going to copy them over.

10-2016:
Apparently its been awhile since I've done an update. Oops. Made a lot of progress in the last year or so, but still not driving.

So this is who has been distracting me from working on the truck as much. It was supposed to be running before she was born, but now I'll be lucky if its running before her sister shows up. This is from almost a year ago.



Had to chip away at things, and first that got done was the brake lines, here's the rears when I finished them up.



The next two are when I got the new pulleys on. I really wanted serpentine, but thought the brackets on the March system were too futuristic. I thought about designing and making my own, but when I found this system by CVF racing, I decided to just get one done in the sake of time. Plus they'll let me get the parts I need to upgrade to AC.





I think I'm going back to a bench seat, to have room for kids, so I ditched the pull cable ebrake and decided to try a hydraulic one. I saw it first on a friend's Cobra kit car, and decided to try it. I'll probably hide it, I don't have a pic, but I have a pringles can rough fit to cover it. Not sure if I want to do a beer can and be more rat-rod. But I don't think I want to promote drinking and driving, so I'll probably do something else.



I had to switch back to stock exhaust manifolds, my long tubes wouldn't fit with the steering. I just couldn't figure out how to make it work. And stockers were a lot less costly then short tubes. So I made some new down tubes, with spots for cutouts, and added an x-pipe. With side exit, I could barely squeeze it all in before the mufflers. Not ideal, but whatever.









Then I got side tracked on a project with the valve covers. I wasn't super happy with the silver and got something on them, so I decided to strip them down and powder coat them black. Then I decided to do some electro-chemical etching, which turned out cool. But then it wasn't deep enough for the powder coat to work out right. So I had to strip them again, ugh. But painted worked better, its subtle, but I like it.

 

From 5-2019:
Still slow progress. No picture, but in reference to the last picture above, during bleeding, I realized that I plumbed my master cylinder wrong. I had the front brake port (rear on the master) going to the rear brake port on the bias block. So I had to flip those around. Being just a cruiser, I wish I would have used DOT5 to begin with. Some drips already ate through paint and will require some touch up on the calipers and the frame.

Didn't get done before #2 showed up. Now the truck is park jungle gym.



At some point I noticed my grill stuck out from the front end. My dad and I had originally gotten this fiberglass front end in the 90s, because the original fenders were so rusted. Something made me notice it stuck out, vs sitting flush, which bugged. But then in finally trying to fit a new stock bumper, instead of my 4x4 front bumper, that the tilt was going to cause the grill to hit. So along with looking more correct and fixing the aesthetic of the grill, I had to fix it let things tilt again. It turns out that the fiberglass was meant to mount the headlights into, and just mount the grill bars. So I modified it to work and look more stock.



















Finally got everything bled for the brakes, just get along with bleeding the power steering to find a leak at a drain back bung. Oops. Apparently I should have leak tested it after welding. Once I get that fixed, we should be ready for a road test, then a drive up to my dad's shop to put the bed back on. Which we started re-assembling up there.

 

6-15-19:
Making more progress. My goal of driving to the Back to the 50's car show in St. Paul, MN is rapidly approaching on June 21st. I'm glad I set the goal, I feel like its pushed me more to get out there and spend every 5 minutes I can find on projects. Truck finally saw daylight for the first time in 10 years. Power steering didn't work first time out, but apparently I flipped the spring and flow valve after reassembling with a new tank to fix my leaky welded bung. Oops.





Got the power steering fixed and drove it up to the shop to start putting the bed on.



A couple days later, got the fenders hung. Now to get the rest of the wood pieces in.

 

And here we sit now. Made the goal of driving in to the Back to the 50's car show at the MN state fairgrounds. And brought the family to start enjoying car shows together.







The weekend before the car show was Father's day weekend, and the girls went for a sleepover at Grandma and Grandpa's house. I utilized that time to get the bed wood in. Got it 90% in and finally realized at like 10:30pm that I needed to drop the gas tank to get the last two rows of bolts in. Ugh. Wish I'd have remembered that from disassembling it 8 years before...







My father in law came up the next day to help and be the extra set of hands needed to drop the tank. And we got it all buttoned up and the truck home and ready for the following weekend!





And now its time to start some projects that won't take the truck out of commission. I think I want to add a rear view camera to replace my rear view mirror, in hopes of helping with the ginormous blind spot the truck has. Loved the 5 speed trans for highway speeds, but winter might bring a hydraulic clutch swap. Winter will also bring the addition of AC and Sniper EFI. I've been gathering parts for the Sniper swap, but didn't think I could get it done before Back to the 50's, so that was delayed. Trying to decide on the AC unit, and how to mount it. I don't like how the 351/400M had the AC compressor on the driverside of the engine. Seems like a dumb place to put it for routing stuff. I might sell my pulley kit and switch to CVF's wraptor kit, which puts the alternator and PS on the driver side, and the AC on the passenger side. Then to figure out how to switch up the radio/gauges/switches for controls, and adding vents. I tried doing the 07-14 Tahoe 3rd row bench seat set up, but couldn't get it fit to my liking for legroom. So I'm back to the drawing board there and left my original swapped seats alone for now.