Strap in lady’s and gentlemen this is going to be a long ride. Lots of pics and real time up dates. Hopefully no less than once per week updates.

got a close friend that was bit hard by the hot rod bug. He started with an S2000 and still has it but added a grand marquis with a fair bit of bolt ons for burnouts and hitting up the auto cross events at ford fest.

He has decided to jump into the deep end and go for a full truck restoration with a huge emphasis on modification. Hence the all caps in that part of the title.

here is the patient.


As of yesterday it had a 223 straight six and three on the tree. Manual drums. And remains an 8’ bed with as basic an interior as one would expect in a 65 year old truck.

Its future life will be used for light duty hauling of an occasional motorcycle. House work supplies. And of course hauling a$$.

Power train will consist of an 8.8 rear, TKX five speed and a Godzilla.

Suspension will be ready for apexes. It will get an S550 rear IRS and GT500 wheels with appropriately sized tires.

Stay tuned!

 

Here is some long winded background. About two years ago my friend started to like the idea of a hot rod truck to kill two birds with one stone. The desire for a simple and fun muscle car and the desire to replace his rusting Toyota Tacoma.

one year ago, after he had been searching half heartedly for a bit we decided to go to the 2024 f100 show in pigeon forge. Great idea as that allowed us to see first hand how engine swaps fit. What suspensions guys were going with and how they were making them work. Most importantly we could see most ford generations all in one spot so one could be confident in picking there favorite year truck.

Not long after that trip we made another trip to Ill. To pick up this 60.

The truck is surprisingly straight. Has a couple spots of rust that will get repaired but for the most part this truck is shockingly solid.

Roughly one year later we finally had time to tear into it. I had to get a couple projects completed on my end first.

 

This weekend we properly broke in my new lift.

Step one was to remove the original suspension so that we could get the new wheels under the truck to figure out ride height targets.
Also because we just wanted to see how awesome the new wheels would look!


We settled on this height which isn’t ultra low. Should work well on his crap Pittsburgh roads and still be low enough to keep cornering performance where we want it.
The frame is 13.5” from the ground at the front axle location and 15.5” at the rear.

For those that don’t want to look up gt500 wheel specs these are:
front. 20x11 with 305/35r20 tires. (28.2” tall)
rear. 20x11 wheels with 315/35r20 (28.7” tall)

For reference this is the old and new axle with tires. Just a little bit beefier.



we also set the subframe under the truck to check where its position was relative to the frame at desired ride height. And to see how crazy I was going to have to get with flares to make these steam rollers fit. Answers is just 2” flares should fit the tires pretty easily. And it seems there is a kit available to mount the IRS as a bolt in which will save a good bit of fabrication labor.

Also this isn’t just any s550 IRS. it is out of a gt350 so it has huge four piston brembos. Beefed up drive shafts. And the torsen 3.73 diff.

 

Good to see another S550 going in to a fridge. I wasn’t aware there was a kit for bolt in installation. Initially, I thought I’d use the factory subframe mounts. Until I got it mocked up and it sat to high for my liking. I ended up “frenching” it into the frame. Your experience may vary.

Ignore the front height, I haven’t lowered it yet.

 

Range industries makes a bolt in kit for the s550 rear and the crown Vic front.

I was going to weld it into the frame as you did but that would put the truck lower than planned. It seems the range industries set up is right about where we want the subframe. Though there pics online have their example riding pretty high.

 

you could just set the subframe in the wheels and roll it under the truck and lower ithe truck until you like the height. That’s basically what I did. I’m a little jealous of the bolt in kit. It’d be a lot easier than what I did. I may have wanted something lower than you are aiming for. Ideally, I’ll be bagging this thing and be able to raise it enough for the occasional rough road.

Im curious how they mount the shocks in that kit. I just checked, they are using a coil over.

 

Measured twice and the bolt in kit will not work for our target ride height.
I will be grafting the subframe into the frame of the truck.
Not A lot of progress this week. Still trying to finish up a previous paint job that just won’t go away.

Got the bed off the frame. So much easier with a lift than my old method with a giant engine hoist.


First I made sure to mark the “axle” centerline on the subframe before striping it down to nothing.


I will make more precise markings and measurement but this picture illustrates pretty close the amount of frame that needs removed to allow the subf to nest into it for proper ride height.

 

Slow progress when it is family vacation season. Started last week to graft in the subframe. It is close. Needs a little fine tuning with the grinder and files but this is basically it.


I need to make a run to metal superstore to get supplies to box the frame, make a front cross member to support the front of the subframe as well as a couple supports. And upper shock mount. There are so many ands on a project like this.

 

Finally got back to work on this project. Anyone else get less relaxed on vacations thinking of your project sitting stagnant?

got the final cuts to the frame completed. Made it to metal supermarkets to get supplies to start boxing in the frame and add a cross member as the front mounting location for the subframe.


I hope I don’t regret using my tailgate as a plasma cutting station. I’m sure the ceramic coating on my paint is plasma proof!

subframe is tacked in.

 

Made some shape for the shock mounts.


tacked those in. Bolted up the rear suspension. And made some very simple dog bone style lower arm mount for my adjustable ride height “shock”.


Here is a full width picture. definitely going to make the factory flairs a bit bigger.

 

Time to test fit the bed.

315s don’t quite clear. Go figure. Marked my cut line with a sharpie and got busy with the cutoff wheel. Before that I confirmed the wheels fit perfect in the center of the wheel wells.

this will be a more complicated flair than it appears here. But the start is just pulling the lip out. It will require a some twist as well. That is a problem for another day.
Had to check suspension travel and clearance to the inner wheel well. It has a good inch to 1.5” during full suspension travel.
At full compression the upper arm hits the French of the bed to inner wheel well. After trimming that the upper arm is close to the bed at the same moment the tire nearly hits the quarter panels up section. So this will be the limit of compression I have to feed back to the builder of the coil overs.
Have to admit. This low looks pretty sick.


if anyone cares to know the motion ratio of tire movement to shock travel is 1.66:1

 

Baby steps on the flairs. Hard to motivate myself to gear up and weld when it’s 90 and humid as a fish tank.
Here is an added detail picture I only verbally referenced above. Visible in this picture are the two cut outs I made to clear the upper arm on the IRS. One in the frame and one on the bed.

The flange on the bed was removed just up to the floor. So from inside the bed there is no indication of a relief cut on the pinch flange below.
I wanted to keep the factory lines of the factory wheel openings. As visible in previous update I cut along the factory flair. Here are a couple progress pics I got after running out of shielding gas. As you can see the radiuses from the original flair remain visible.


Hopefully they are not too boxy looking when done. But then again this is a Fridge!
One can see I added a log of cuts around the corners into the flanges. The reason was to allow me to pull the lower lip outward. I didn’t want the lower half of the flair angled in. The factory quarters do this already and the way I made the flairs makes this angle worse. I tried first with a shrinker and stretcher on the flanges but that was going no where. I finally gave up and just used the cut off wheel to decouple the flanges strategic places so I could twist things how I wanted. It worked. Or at least it is working so far.

 

Looks like a bit of time invested. Glad you know what it will look like in your head.

 

👍👍👍👍 excellent build, can’t wait to see the finished product. Keep up the good work

 

Flares look good tiresmoke!