Hi. Well I finally got something to replace my old battered Bronco.
Picked up a really nice 87 F-150 (351 w/ carb) extended cab long bed.
It is a nice truck, straight, solid, and runs great. But it is pretty boring looking.
Does anyone have a similar truck that they have tricked out at all?
I would love to get some ideas. If you have photos, please shoot me a link or post them. Looking forward to seeing what everyone has done.

-=Shrug=-

 

You need some vtec stickers.

 

I saw that JCWhitney is having a clearance on Aluminum X racer wings that mount to the tailgate. Supposed to give sweet down force when you are cornering- I think it has +/- 12 Degrees of adjustment and came with a free cup holder. How sweet is that?

 

How bout some rims? I could never understand why those tuner idiots would put such heavy rims on a car that makes as much power as my 3-wheeler. To each is own i guess.

 

You are talking about the same crowd that puts $2k in performance mods on a tuner and only picks up 25% HP increase if they are lucky.

 

I really like the imports with the exhaust that sounds like a highly modified Briggs and Straton....LOL....

You would figure that after all of the mods. and $10K later They still sound like $-h-i-t-

Anyway on to the question at hand ..do what ever you feel is good for you...everyone has lifts and rims and tires lightbars ect....How about the good ole classic look????/
Keep it stock and in good shape...

 

You know they actually like that sound. I do not really knock the tuners much, they build what they like. Everyone has different tastes.

My father-in-law builds old roadsters, t-buckets, shorty pickups, etc. I generally go for the bigger full bodied 50's and 60's cars. To each his own.

I think with the tuners it is really all about looks, not power.

I have a beat up old 65 Chevy C10 pickup that I am restoring. Got a stock 350 (freshly rebuilt), Edelbrock intake, Holley 750, Hooker headers blowing through a pair of turbo mufflers, and with the stock 4.11's in the rear.

Overall I have about 2 grand invested (including the price of the truck). There is not a tuner in the county that can even touch it off the line.

Anyway, getting back to the F-150, I like the idea of putting some lift on it (not too much though, just a few inches). Maybe som bigger rims and tires, brush guard, light bar, etc. Make it a real beast! Two bad it is not 4WD!

I get it back from the shop Monday (having the A/C repaired) then I will take some before pictures of it.

 

Let's see some pictures!

2.5" lift + some 32" tires with some custom rims for a start?

 

those imports with the exhaust does not sound like a briggs and straton it sounds like a bunch of bees traped in a coffecan. I had a 1979 chevy scottsdale that i traded a guy a six pack for and i only had 6 out of the 8 pistons working and i still smoked those Hondas. I mean smoked you could not see behind me when i took off because of all of the smoke.

 

Tuning is not about appearance. Nothing wrong with appearance modifications, Lord knows I do it. However, from websters:
All cars as you know are manufactured (in whole and in part) to tolerances, which vary from vehicle to vehicle. The original "Tuning" was done in true stock car racing, where the vehicle had to contain 100% factory components. This is before Chevy, Ford and Mopar came up with "factory" racing parts and "factory" racing cars like the "Boss 429" and the Plymouth "Superbird". The manpower involved in hand filing intakes, heads, modifying exhaust and so on, was incredible.

Nowadays, there are enough "formula" aftermarket parts to "tune" something, however that's really only part of it. The folks with Tweecer, Diablo, EEC Editor, PromEdit, and 50 other things, know what true tuning is these days. The technology has changed, but tuning is still the same. You want your car faster, you want it to corner better, and you want it to stop quicker. You want all four wheels on the ground all the time (at least for street/track tuning).

I am absolutely not knocking air dams, wings, fancy striping, lifted 2wd trucks and all the other "tuner poser" things out there, as I'd be lying if I didn't admit I've done it myself over the years. Heck, back in high school I had an ***-lifted GTO with axle snubbers that looked absolutely tricked out, glass packs, the works, and before I got into engines and such, you'd open the hood and find a wimpy six cylinder. But it looked fast. This was "old school" posing

What bothers me is a lot of the younger crowd gets into the "pozer" thing, spending tons of dollars on worthless parts. Worthless in the sense that the cars often are the same performance wise, or in many cases, worse. Have you ever driven a Honda Accord with a 2" drop *and* 1" of sidewall all around? Absolutely useless on the quality of streets we have around here yet I see so many of them banging their exhaust systems on even the smallest irregularities of the local streets here.

Recent case in point. I was picking up coffee one night last week as I do almost every day, from a Quik-Chek (7-11, kroegers, wawa type place), and in the parking lot was a young kid with a Civic, with the hood up, and a crowd of equally young kids peering in. I glanced over the railing and immediately figured out what they were gawking at - his brand new turbo kit. He was loudly bragging how fast his car is and how it can smoke Mustangs no problem. I went inside, got my coffee, came back out and hollared over the railing, "So, you can beat mustangs, huh?"
He replied "yeah, definately".
"How about big ugly crewcabs?"
(this got me a puzzled look, so I pointed at my idling crewcab a few spots away, with the pulley squeek and various other audible defects, like my 300K mile valve tap).
"Yeah, I'll race ya".

So, I get into my crewcab, he pulls out behind me, we turn the corner and stop at the next light, which was green. Windows down, I hollared "count to three". He did. On three, both of us whined then shifted, whined then shifted, whined then shifted. I backed off so he could catch up, and we did the obligatory "pull over and talk" thing. He wanted to see what's under the hood. He was baffled, because even though he saw a V8, he did have a clue that my truck weighed two or three times what his civic weighs. We talked about forced induction a bit, and I give him credit for asking good questions. REALLY good questions.

And it's sad, because he quietly mentioned he paid $5500 for the kit, including "professional" installation by a local "tunerz" shop. Sadly, they installed a polished full size T04 turbo, which is about twice the usable size for a bone stock 1.6L Honda engine. But I saw that when I peered over the railing on the way in. He bought himself a $5500 cork.

I wasn't 100% sure I'd win, but I was pretty confident after peering over the railing, and knowing what my gearing is, and where my sweet spot is on the tach. If his turbo was more appropriate, I'd have just enjoyed my coffee on the way home, rather than spilling it all over the place as I did.

Again, I'm not knocking appearance mods. Just saying, they are appearance mods - not tuning by definition.

 

Well lets' face it. These young'uns really have no concept of real power.

I used to have a 1970 Oldsmobile Delta 88. Light blue with a black vinyl top. kids with these riceburners used to laugh all the time if I gave a few revs at a redlight. It would trun green, and I would be gone. A few minutes later the kid would pull up like he had just seen a miracle.

I would pop the hood, show him my 455, w/two Holley 450s sitting on a cross-ram manifold, my custom milled headers from "Headers by Ed" and then I would say, "so, you still think it is my grandma's car?"

The F-150 I just got alread has headers, an Edelbrock TorkerII manifold, and Edelbrock carb. Couple that with my 3.55 gears, and I think I will take a few kids down a few notches. Same with my 65 Chevy truck.

Still a few good races left in this "old man"

You know there have always been these guys who have bought performance parts just for looks. A guy in my high school (lo these 22 years ago) had a 6-71 blower on his 73 Malibu Classic w/ a 350. Everything else on the car was bone stock. All he managed to do was drop his mileage in half. But he looked good doing it

I have had a good number of seriously ugly cars, because the extra cash always goes to real performance first. Starting at the cam and working my way up. But hey, to each his own.

That kid with the $5500.00 turbo you mentioned will have many years to consider the folley of his ways as he slowly pays off his credit card bills!

 

frederic I would have paid money to see that. Hopefuly he learned from the after race conversation that a bigger turbo is not always better.

 

I used to say that all the time. And for years, I appeared to be correct. A summer or two ago, I was proven wrong. There was an unobtrusive, dull colored (but spiffy clean) 4-door honda accord zipping around the neighborhood, and followed me onto the highway (probably out of coincidence). He casually drived along side me, and we both went for it hard. I pulled ahead a little, he pulled along side me. This repeated until we hit an obscene, insane speed. Then he shot away leaving me in the dust. I don't mean strained to pull away, I mean shot away. I had to think about that one for a while... the speed limiter on my CV is not the usual 115ish. It's quite a bit higher. Yet he pulled away like it was nothing. AND stuck to the road like glue. Dispite the added handling that CVPI's have, I was a bit loose on the road at that point, uncomfortably so.

I wish he did the traditional "pull over" because I would have really enjoyed seeing the inner workings of that machine. I was fooled by my own bigotry AND by how "normal" and "quiet" his car seemed.

To me that's tuning

And why my crewcab is getting a twin turbo 500cid stroker, once I have some more wrench time.

Ssshhhhhh. Same here, don't tell my wife.