You can sort of expect things like that when buying an old vehicle with who knows how many previous owners. I'm the 2nd owner of my 74' F-100 and it has 45k miles on it when I bought it and the truck was in great shape. I still had wiring, cleaning and various other things to take care of. Nature of the beast. Makes you laugh after a while.

 

i am the 5th owner, (found that out once i registered it,)

the previous owner did a mickey mouse resto back in the late 90s and into 2000, i got the truck back in September of 2007, its been in the garage ever since in frame off resto

lets just say i think he should be locked up, i have never seen such a mickey moused vehicle before, and its not stuff you can easily check,

i swear he had his hands on every bolt and fastener, and 9 times out of 10, one or more bolts fasteners did not match the rest, and the worst is yet to come,

he also spliced in extension cord? what a idiot, we started peeling the electrical tape off the harness, and started finding so many splices and breaks, its amazing the truck even ran,

we just pulled it all out, and luckily got a complete mint harness from another truck, so no worries,

now we start into the body work,,,,, lol lol lol what a joke, this guy had no clue what he was doing, he applied body fill way to thick in the box, let alone he cut the box wrong! he cut from the front of the box to the back wheels, to shorten a long box down to a short box, instead of cutting off the front of the box, then reattaching the front box wall, thus it would have looked factory, and way less body work, what a fool,

we knew the truck was work, but some of the hair brained stuff, makes you wonder about people, i mean safety concerns, and some of the most simple things seem out of his mental reach? man people are dumb, i hate when people start mickey mousing electrical wiring, i mean house extension cord? wth?

let alone all the other fastener and body work headaches, but thats what you run into after 30 years and 4 owners, and a previous owner doing a poor excuse of a resto, and of course now that its 90% its frame up resto, i have fixed it all, and replaced what ever needed it, at least its safe again,

-Brent

 

I am the second owner and got the truck with only 26,000 miles on it. Even in that short time the first owner (who was a farmer) hacked and slashed the wiring under the dash all to bits.

The funny part was all the romex house wiring he used to wire in a CB, extra dome light, a spotlight on the left door and a wierd glovebox light.

Josh

 

I have had several of the same problems but I can't complain to much since I got it from my dad.

 

Sure you can I blame my dad for stuff all the time, whether he did it or not!

 

I bought a 79 f250 4x4 from a "professional mechanic". The truck was sitting in the middle of a field where it had quit a year ago and he said he had done everything possible but it would not fire. He wanted $750 but I had a bad feeling about the old truck so I offered him $250 for it and after haggling a few min. he took it. I had it running in 5 min. Wires were hooked up wrong.

But when I was driving it home the clutch did not feel right, a funny vibration when you pushed in the pedal. I decided to pull the engine when I got home.
Pulled the engine and to my surprise it had a brand new clutch, pressure plate, throw out bearing and even a brand new flywheel. But no Pilot Bearing, The input shaft and clutch was just flopping. It could have blown up on the way home,just lucky I guess.
What a moron!!!!!

 

Lol fun stuff. I don't know the whole history of my truck, the guy I bought it from didn't even keep it licensed, he had it for a few years and just threw on a license plate whenever he needed to haul plywood or something. I suspect that it was part of a fleet at some point because I've seen another identical truck tooling around town with the exact same green paint.

But anyway let's see, someone obviously cared enough to restore the body once, a long time ago and they did a reasonably good job except for the fibreglass cab corner.

-The drive home revealed that although the rad looked good, someone had spilled coolant and left it long enough that the top tank seam rusted through. So I get home and find coolant spraying all over the engine bay. The lower rad hose looked like a dry river bed, I'm lucky it didn't dry up and blow away, then there's the thermostat that I can only assume was vintage 1978, it looked restrictive as hell. Replacing it did a world of good.

-The gas line was as bad as the rad, I noticed later by accident that it would gush gas on the pavement every few seconds while the truck was running.

-The exhaust system turned out to be some random junkyard crap that a 1 eyed monkey patched together, the stock y-pipe had been stepped DOWN to 2 inches with an ancient glasspack in the mix.

-The floorpans..well they were gone and replaced with what I can only guess were random body panels from other trucks screwed into place with the original rust still there.

-Took me a long time to notice that under all the dirt, the battery had the old Chrysler logo on it. So that's why it didn't crank so good...

-Only some of the interior lights work and to this day I'm not really sure why.

-The floor mat says Mazda on it.

-Someone swapped on a Holley 4180 but didn't set up the linkage right so the blades wouldn't fully open, a problem I've yet to fix.

-The truck came with the ugliest camper shell I've ever seen with a missing back door, held to the truck with C-clamps, and a punky sticker on the window that said "No Rules". That came off right away and promptly hung around my neck for 2 years while the landlord bitched at me to get it out of the yard.

Overall it's not really so bad, the truck is in pretty splendid condition, owing more to some owners than others I'd imagine. But let me tell you about this 77 I looked at while truck shopping:

The owner inherited it from his dad and proceeded to drive it to work until he was given a company truck. At that point he parked it snug next to his place in the trailer park and left it there for 5 years before trying to sell it. By the time I layed eyes on it it was actually SUNK into the asphalt. The guy had been using it as a makeshift dumpster here and there but nothing prepared me for what I saw in the cab. Apparently at some point the columm shifter had broken. Now there are dozens of donor trucks in every junkyard around here but our crafty hero decided to stab a jagged hole in the floor and rig up a piece of scrap iron to act as a floor shifter. I couldn't believe it. Needless to say I didn't buy that poor old hulk and some time later I saw it at a local junkyard being picked over. What a shame.

 

i was lucky with my s/c the worst the po did was use wood screws through the MINT door panel AND lariat upper insert to hold the panel back on man i hate that it seems to be a common thing [didnt know about replacement fastners] oiled the rear springs as they were sqeaking [both sides of the ubolts were so loose i could almost undo by hand] welded 2x2 tubing to the bottom of the bumper for rear slide in bumper/hitch/step for the 10 ft camper
bolt in ubolts would have being better as i had to grind/drill all the bottom rivets to remove bumper for paint

 

If you couldn't see the problems without taking things apart it's no fault of the buyer.

 

I saw most of the problems before I got my truck. I did not see the exhaust being so screwed up though, and that was in the plus column when I got it.

For me, getting this particular truck makes the most sense from an economic point of view. I got it cheap and I don't have to put money into it if I can't or don't want to. It's hard for me to justify a big monthly bill for something I don't use that much.

It's also fun to work on it and it's cool.

 

Worst I have found so far,

Hacked the support metal for the HVAC controls in the dash to mount a DIN CD player, and tapped the power off of the Cigarette lighter power wire. I can sort of understand as that power wire is a rather hefty gauge wire. But, None the less not right, at least it was fused.
Oh and he hacked up the Dash bezel for the Radio install.

The other was finding that the bolts that hold the cross piece on my tow hitch to the truck frame mounts were never installed. SO the square stock cross tube that came through the mount brakets was what held it on. I.E. about 1/8" of metal lip was holding it there.

I'll actually have pics of this stuff.

 

I bought my truck 6 months ago and didn't even get it home before it overheated...

Called the old owner up to ask him about it and come to find out that he knew about it and drove it that way in spite of it...

All the freeze plugs leaked...

Timing chain cover leaked...

Valve cover leaked (easiest fix on the motor to date)...

Accelerator pump leaked...

Front and rear pinion seals shot (truck drove for who knows how many years without fluid in them amazed they dont make any noise)...

Brake auto adjusters missing all four corners...

Toggle switch for windshield wipers...

Stove pipe auto choke compleatly removed and capped off at the carb... removed cap to fix it... and found out that there was a major vacume leak there...

No a single balancing whieght on any tire... and p.o. thought it had a vibration from loose tierod end (whitch wasn') almost half a pound of lead per tire and drives smooth down the road...

But damn did it run good... and even in that condition could pull a house off it's foundation...

More to come as more problems rear there ugly heads...

 

Oh I forgot the best part... when the previous owner put the new cam in the truck he installed the cam 180 degrees out... so when I put the new intake manafold on... putting the motor at what according to the timing marks was top dead center... it wouldn't run... took me three hours to figure it out... Later was fine tuning the timing... Had to put the timing light on plug 5 to get the timing indicators to show up...

 

Forgot you can't go back and edit later, I am used to that feature on other forums. Anyway onto the pics I said I would post. Also found a few other interesting things.

Worst I have found so far,

Hacked the support metal for the HVAC controls in the dash to mount a DIN CD player, and tapped the power off of the Cigarette lighter power wire. I can sort of understand as that power wire is a rather hefty gauge wire. But, None the less not right, at least it was fused.
Oh and he hacked up the Dash bezel for the Radio install.






Black bullit connector with Grey/Brown Stripe, don't know what that connected to, and the Yellow/Brown Stripe with the Butt crimp connector was what was used for the stereos Ignition lead, again don't know what circuit that is too.




Oh Drilled the door to put the speaker wire through. Would possibly have to do that for putting the door speakers but right there and two holes?






Oh and keeping the door cards on do you think those are factory drywall screws? Yup the upper front and rear corner of the door card. Yes the passenger side is done the same.





The other was finding that the bolts that hold the cross piece on my tow hitch to the truck frame mounts were never installed. SO the square stock cross tube that came through the mount brakets was what held it on. I.E. about 1/8" of metal lip was holding it there.




So I just got some grade 5 1/2" bolts with Nylocks on the back side. That could have been very bad if that fell off at freeways speeds, cause I had driven it without the bolts for about 6 Months after I bought the truck.

Oh yes I am a Pic*****.

 

i forgot the best part. the windshield wiper control arms were bent, looked like someone grabbed the windshield wipers and pulled bending the whole assembly on both sides. out of everything else this was probably the hardest and most time consuming fix.