Well hello yall...

New to this here forum and thought id introduce my self. My name is Zachary, yall can call me zak or watever you want id reckon. Im 17 years of age and currently a junior in high school.

I drive and own a 1981 Ford F-100 custom pickup and really do like it. Its my first vehicle and im sure glad it is. My father, friend, and i are all slowly fixing her up and here fairly soon should be lookin good. When i bought it, it had red front fenders and hood, and the cab and bed were dark green. (the orginal color) Well the body was in fairly good shape, but that has been our first major project on it atm. The body works getting very close and after another day or two of good hard work on it i will be thinking "Paint"!!!

Boy is body work dreadful haha. Anyhow i aint gunna talk yalls heads off so thanks for having me here and i hope to learn lots!!

Thanks, Zak!

 

Welcome, and I have to say that sounds good. I didnt know there was F-100`s made in the 80`s still but im no truck expert but I do have a 82 F-150 though stepside.

What kind of paint are you going to use? I would recomend staying away from enamel based. I sprayed my hood with that stuff and 3 months later the paint split and wrinkled up and showed the grey sealer I applied to the bare metal. Guy at the paint shop said the paint wasnt mixed properly on their part (the paint itself not the hardner to paint ratios) but I just stopped using it and looking at acrylic lacquer with a clear coat top coat to protect it.

But I just thought I would let you know about that paint so if it does crack like mine dont go blaiming yourself cause that is caused by the pigment paint not being mixed right by the paint shop.

 

Yep shes a good ol f-100. I believe 82 is the first year they introduced the f-150? (correct me if im wrong)

Thanks alot for the advice on paint, and i will take that into thought. My family and i know a few people who do paint jobs around here so we should be able to get paint straightened out. But im still trying to figure out if i should paint it my self or send it to a guy here in town.

Hes gunna do the whole truck for around 500-600 $$. He does a good job and hes a family friend so hes giving me a deal. He just told me to get all the body work done and come and talk to him!

Again thanks for the advice!!

 

Hi and welcome to the site. No, F150's have been around since 1975. They used the 150 to get around the emmisions at the time. They ran with both the 100 and 150 for a few years, then dropped the 100 I believe in 82.

 

On the paint if you have the equipment you can do it yourself.

Here are some photos of the paint I have been doing on my current project. Mind you its a car and its not a ford but still painting a car is painting a car.

This is the body to bumper filler panel. This was painted with an Enamel based spray can. A local paint shop that supplys paint for paint shops mixed up the paint to the paint code.


Here is two photos of the firewall one before everything got re attached and the second is after.






Painting isnt hard and those two painted areas I did was done with spray cans. Thing is a spray can is great if its small areas like the firewall or the body to bumper panel. Now if your painting the exterior of the vehicle I say use a spray gun and preferably a HVLP one it. I used that on my truck hood and had zero over spray.

 

Welcome to FTE Zak!

 

Thanks for the warm welcoming yall....

Chaos thanks for clearing that up, i wasnt quite sure.

Rusty those parts you painted look awesome. I cant believe you did that with regular spray paint and it came out like that! Thanks for the advice also. Im gunna have to decide on what im gunna do for paint here real soon.

Pending on how my friends fender comes out after he paints it is gunna determine how i do my truck....

Thanks again everyone!

 

Yeah, welcome a board!!!!!!!!

 

Well it took alot of work to get those results. I ended up using a wire brush wheel and a corded drill and I stripped all pieces down to bare metal especially where the rust was. I then came back with this green chemical that is supposed to be sprayed then evenly spread around then allowed to dry 24 hours then just brush off the white powder and paint.

But the spray cans though they were not cheap they were $25 a can but in the area I was painting on the firewall it was easier to use a spray can than a bulky spray gun.

That is the most important thing to painting is the prep work. That green liquid I used (cant remember the name) it duplicates the factory metal treatment to prevent flash rusting and to keep the metal from rusting underneath.

But if you wanted to see some fancy work I could show you the engine that I got painted and ready to go into the vehicle after paint and body. But I know this is a ford forum and I dont want to spam non ford stuff here.

 

where abouts in Illinois do you live?

 

Rusty id love to see the engine and the details! please share...

Cjben, im Mid-illinois. Bout 45 minutes from Champaign.

 

well,that's a few hours from me,I am on the west side,on the MO/IL border in Quincy

 

Welcome to FTE.

I'm up on the west side of Chicago now, but originally from Quincy.

Good to see more folks from Illinois.

 

Welcome, Zak! Thanks for joining us here at FTE!

 

lol Sure thing, just be warned its not a ford engine though.

This is the most recent photo I got, test fitting the new aluminum repop valve covers. But havent attached them yet, want to get engine in first and prime the oil system before setting the valve train.





As far as the details on the engine goes the displacement is 293 CID, it has a vintage NOS street/strip camshaft, around 12:1 compression and when I got all the parts the speed shop told me bolting on a blower I would have 500 HP so considering the high compression and the low boost I would have to run I am figuring around 480 HP.

Now as far as the whole vehicle goes, I am restoring the car to factory new condition but with mild street machine styleing to it. I am shooting for recreating a 1960 - 1965 street machine basically that would have been seen cruising the streets for races. This is also the vehicle that has me saying no more modified engines cause its a pain to set everything up right.


Now here is a photo of the alternator I painted to duplicate the orignal factory aternator.



Only thing left on my list though is finding a air cleaner that looks right and wont hit the hood due to the highrise manifold.

Oh yea and the carb is a Holley Double pump 650CFM 4V carb that once I get everything together will be fine tuned with custom accelerator pump cams and such.