I thought I would finally start a build thread on my truck here on FTE. I started one a few years ago on Slick 60's but sadly that site is not what it once was so I will start a new one here. Some back story, about five years ago I decided I wanted a short bed four wheel drive. I was thinking either a slick, preferably a '66, or a late dentside, preferably a '77. I was leaning towards the '66, showed pictures of both to my son who picked the '66. So the search was on. Living in the land of snow and salt makes finding a 50 year old truck that is not rusted away kind of a challenge, and '66 short bed 4x4's aren't exactly plentiful to start with. Maybe I should have searched longer and tried to find one out West and had it hauled back East, but I didn't. I was not planning to restore it to original, I wanted power steering, automatic trans, disc bakes, things that did not come on a 66. So I decided to just build what I wanted, so I just needed a solid starting point. That ended up being a '66 F100 Camper Special. These pictures are from the fall of 2017, I had already had the truck for almost a year but had not done anything with it. It will take a while to get this thread up to date but need to start somewhere.

 

My plan is to do all of the work on this truck, I'm not paying anyone to to do anything, so if something isn't perfect or done correctly, it's all on me. Here is the day I brought it home, about a 16 hour drive round trip to Ohio. The trailer I was going to use to haul it home ended up being to small so I borrowed this truck from work. December 2016.

 

So in fall of 2017 I still hadn't totally sorted out what I was going to do with the drivetrain but I knew I wanted a short bed so I pulled the bed and began the shortening process. For '66 a long bed is 129" wheelbase, short bed is 115" wheelbase, so that means 14" needs to come off of the front of the bed. It also needs 6" removed from behind the wheel well to get the bed to the correct length. Lots of measuring, measuring again, and again, then cut and weld. All sounds pretty simple I guess. Here are pics of the process, maybe not all in correct order.

 

You're lucky to be able to do it yourself you would have a hard time to find someone to do a better job.

 

This is a great incentive for those young guy's to do things themselves rather than pay someone else to do it....

Thanks for sharing.

Hobo

 

Gotta say I always thought you should have started your thread over here....lol. Looking good. Nice job shortening the tool compartment, too. A true shortbed only had the front and rear stake pockets. Any plans to remove the middle pocket and fill the top edge? Or leave as is and make some people scratch their heads? I like the color of your truck...something familiar about that...haha!

 

I thought about taking out the center pocket but it makes the top rail stronger with them in there. I might also put side boards on it and the extra stake will hold the 6' board better. My dad had side boards on his '66 back when it was new and I had them on my '60 back when I was 18. I've heard them referred to a 6 pocket short beds. Here's the '60. This was a 2wd, 6 cyl, that I converted to 4x4 with a 460 and a C6.

 

So a little more on the back story and plan I'm working towards. My dad bought a new '66 F100 short bed, custom cab, 2wd and at the time I was five years old. I grew up with that truck around and to me that was what a pickup was. I drove it when I was in high school. Since then I've had probably about ten Ford pickups starting with the '60, a '62 short bed uni (the only slick), Rangers, F100, F150, F250, F350, every version of the Bronco. A pretty good selection of everything Ford offered over the years. The plan for this '66 is a truck that looks like a factory '66 4x4 but underneath power brakes and steering, discs brakes up front, automatic with overdrive, EFI, and air conditioning. For those that are not familiar with 4x4 slicks, the '66 F100 is the oddball. It had the solid axle front axle with coils springs that was used on all F100/F150/Broncos from 1966 up through 1979. It had the transfer case mounted to the transmission, no short drive shat in between. It used the the same wheelbases as the 2wd trucks, not 120" like other slick 4x4s, and it was the only slick 4x4 to use the styleside bed that came out in '64. I ended up buying a '78 F150 4x4 to use to convert my '66 to 4x4. I sold the 351M, gave away the C6, and scrapped pretty much everything else from the truck.
Here's the 352 in the '66, Sold it along with the automatic trans to a guy that was going to put it in his '56 pickup.

 

With bed modifications done and the engine sold it was time to move on to the frame. The front clip was disassembled and removed to make pulling the engine and trans easier. No pictures of that but here is the cab coming off.

 

No pictures of the '78 F150 but here is the front crossmember that was removed from it and needs to go into the '66 frame. This is before the remains of the '78frame were cut away. Plasma cutter and angle grinder made this go pretty quick. Prior to cutting anything I measured over and over and made a drawing of locations of everything to make sure everything would be lined up correctly when it went back together.

 

This set of pictures is shortening the frame, 14" removed behind the cab, welded, plated on the inside, and then boxed. Also the 2wd suspension and crossmember removed and the 4x4 crossmember from the '78 installed.

 

I think at this point I'm up to summer of 2018, sandblasted the frame and suspension parts, painted and reassembled.


I put the chassis in storage for the winter so I'd have room to work on the cab in my shop.

 

So even though this was a mostly rust free California truck, both cab corners and center cab support on the bottom needed to be replaced. For some reason I never took any pictures of this work but nothing out of the ordinary. The cab, and all sheet metal on this truck, was sandblasted inside and outside and sprayed in epoxy primer. All filler work was done over the epoxy and recoated in epoxy when completed before high build 2K primer to fill scratches. Here's the cab in primer.

 

Hard to remember the order of what was done when but I guess doesn't really matter. At some point I bought a '92 F150 4x4 with a rebuilt 302 and an AOD trans, plus a rusted out frame which made it a parts truck. Most of it went for scrap but the engine and trans are going into the '66. I didn't do any work to the engine or trans other than cleaning a little and painting. Transfer case is the NP205 from the '78.

Gas tank was modified to add a return line from the small surge tank on the frame and a vent line so I can run a non vented gas cap.


And one thing I did pay someone else to do, Bluetop rebuilt power steering box.

 

Some more misc pictures from when I was working on the chassis, steering, brakes, fuel system, etc. I probably had the cab on and off of the frame a dozen times.