Hello!
Been a long time viewer and decided to finally make an account.
Little backstory:
Grew up in California, now live in Vegas. I've never worked on cars or trucks (barely knew how to change a tire and though spark plug changes where a big job). After I moved and got into an accident which totaled my previous car, I asked my dad if I could buy his truck from him. 1973 F100 (was his daily, that he got from some random dude). Needless to say had no idea what I was getting into. Temp gauge was all the way to the right, no radio/a/c. Radiator was throwing up and steam coming from the cap. So I started reading and slowly but surely ended up replacing the entire cooling system and threw an electric fan on. Temp was better but still flying far right. So back to google/Haynes manual, decided it was my head gaskets. Tore into the heads with the help of my buddy and took them to a machine shop, ended up being warped. After I got them resurfaced and installed new gaskets (which took me forever to get right) finally ran the truck and it was perfect! Never ran past 170ish. Couple of weeks later, engine stared shaking in drive, misfiring, burning coolant, oil started rising on my dipstick. Learned how to do a radiator compression test and checked compression on cylinders. And bam! Cylinder #2. So now I'm in the process of taking it apart, going to pull the engine/tranny and have them rebuilt. (I love this truck and want it to be my daily, so I'm going to have the machine shop rebuild the 302... I have a 5.7 in my 94 chevy that needs to be rebuilt so I'll practice on that one) Sometimes I get frustrated, but throughout all of this I've learned that I love working on this truck. If I could go back and do it again, I totally would. Still learning as I go, 6-7 months experience under my belt now and hoping to continue learning. Thanks everyone!

 

Welcome to the forum and hope you enjoy your time here. That looks like a great project truck to have fun with.

Rod