Hey, y'all.....i was finally able to find a VIN plate on the firewall, passenger side of my old Ford F1. I believe it is a mid- to late 1949 or early 1950 because it has a floor shift. The hard-to-read VIN plate photo is attached. Is there a place to look up all the numbers, etc. from Ford Motor Company? All help is appreciated. Thanks.....Rodney

 

Rodney, welcome to FTE the best Ford truck forum on the World wide Web!

 

Thanks, abe. Well, my 1949/50, according to a chart that I found on the Internet, had a 6-cylinder engine and is a 1/2-Ton, which I knew. Someone started the project and did not finish it. They hardly got started before giving me and my friend two trucks. The other one was a '51 Ford F-1. Over the last 20+ years someone has stolen some of the easy-to-get-at parts, so I am starting from scratch. The 6-cylinder engine is gone but I have a tranny from the '51 Ford F-1. Hopefully I can find another 6 cylinder flathead, but I still have some of the hood chrome pieces and all of the door handles (inside and out), as well as the interior window cranks to replace. The previous owner also ditched the box and replaced it with a flatbed, which I will need to add a board floor and stainless steel strips. The body is in good shape, generally, but has some surface rust. Oh well, gotta get back to work on it. Thanks for the shout-out!

 

Correct on the 6-cyl being original. There is a long thread here: https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/4...n-cut-off.html
The resident expert believes based on all the members who have provided serial number data that a Sequence Number above 275,000 is the beginning of the '50's, so yours is most likely a '49. You can find a build date code on the firewall, if you post it we can decipher it.
Welcome to the forum!

 

Welcome to the forum, Rodney! What you have there is a 49 F1 originally equipped with the 226 6 cylinder engine. Nothing there you didn't already know, for sure. There's nothing more that FOMOCO can provide than that. I can tell you that the RIC at the end of your serial number is listed on the plate as the Branch code, which would be your assembly plant, Richmond, CA. IIRC, the changeover at Richmond from 49-50 was in the neighborhood of 280,000 (that number varied by plant), so your unit number of 229871 puts you squarely in the range of a 1949 model year truck.

Hope this helps. We all look forward to more pics and details of your truck!


Here's what a patent plate like yours would look like in better condition. This one just happens to be from the Kansas City branch. There was about a dozen truck production plants around the country and Canada at the time.

 

Thanks to y'all! This is a great forum with all of the replies I am getting. I wasn't too sure about the year, but I was sure about the 6-cylinder F-1 (1/2-ton). I am searching for a 6-cylnder 226 engine for it. I want to restore it to near factory condition, if that's possible. It is good to know that it is a 1949 vintage, though. The work has only just begun.....

 

Do you have a title or registration papers to put the truck in your name? I'm not sure how they handle those things in AZ. Papers should have had a year stated on them so you shouldn't have had to guess. If not, you may want to look into what that entails before dumping a bunch of money and time into your project, only to find out it can't be registered, or worse, stolen, which usually means confiscation. Just fyi.

 

There was no title or any kind of papers with it. It was originally a farm truck without title when the PO got it. That was the next thing to check on, but in AZ I should be able to get a new title after the MVD does a search on the VIN. But I am going to check it out first. Thanks for the reminder. It s best to be safe, not sorry.