New familiy member - 1970 Ford F-250

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Joined
Jul 10, 2011
Messages
2,056
Reaction score
605
Location
Germany, Southwest, Black Forest
My Car
1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1 T5 Q-Code 4-Speed
Hi guys,

got a nice and solid truck around here for the wife and her little business:



Mostly original and complete. Has the original 360 FE with the C6, a F-250 with  long bed and some nice options but nothing wild. Has the important things like power brakes and power steering to drive it easy for the wife.

The transmission has to be rebuilt and some heres and theres like a new bench cover, window regulator knob, door key cylinders, a good overall service and some seals and gaskets ... But otherwise it had a good price, a finished German licensing, driving permission and approval, the right color for the wife and it is mostly rustfree.

A good and easy side-project and one to be driven soon next spingtime ::thumb:: 

Love those old trucks and ever wanted one. Now could convince the wife she need one, too :D

 
Great looking truck, love the color! Hope your wife is happy with it :)
Thanks!

Yes, it is some nice color - "Reef Aqua"

She is happy with it! 

As long as I do the technical work... ::thumb::

Cool. Looks like a nice clean truck.
Thanks! Yes, it is relatively clean with a nice and shiny paint, some signs of usage here and there but no rust bubbles, a good truck. Never seen such a nice bed from the underside with the original primer on and such a good frame. All original sheet metal, no bondo. Has had a nice and easy repaint a few years ago without cleaning it too much, again, no bondo. It is not long here in Germany, since middle of 2018, was in Arizona most of it's life, as a shop truck...

Not a concourse restored one like my Mustang one day but hey, it's a truck and it will be used (and loved) as one.

 
Great looking truck for sure.

A little fact about the F-250. When Ford was getting ready to switch from the square bodies to the new designs they ask the company I worked for if we would quote doing the run out of the model and service parts. So I got sent off to the Ford Woodhaven stamping plant to review the tooling while running and figure out if we could run the bed sides and tail gates.

When you run skin panels or outside panels that get painted you take the stamping into the Highlight room or Green room. Have lots of special lights and you wipe the draw lube off if any and spray on a light oil to highlight any defects. You also put on thin cotton gloves so you can feel the surface deviations. Sometimes you take a stone and stone the surface to look for small dents.

I noticed that the bed side we were looking at had loose metal or waves behind the rear wheel opening. I ask the stamping engineer that was with me if that was acceptable. He said, " yes it is this is for F-150 the loose metal will go away when you run the thicker F-250 metal". I replied to him and asked about the thicker metal? He said that the F-250 got I think 10% thicker metal than the F-150 got. So more to the F-250 than just suspension changes.

When you changed from one fuel tank to two it was very simple. There were some air actuated punches in the tooling you moved some levers on the dies and it changed the tooling over so you did not have to get in the press or take the die out.

BTW we did not get the work.

Once at the Barrett Jackson auction one of the announcers told a story about when he was buying a new Ford King Ranch Special F-250 the salesman told him it had thicker metal in the body so he went somewhere else to buy because he thought he had lied to him. LOL that salesman knew what he was talking about the Expert on TV did not know. It was the announcer that does lots of NASCAR can't remember his name. I tried to email him but could not find a place to.

Some of the later years in those trucks also got firewall and maybe floors that were layered to better soundproof them. You had a layer of steel a layer of plastic and another layer of steel. It was very tricky spot welding to get a good weld. You had to pulse the weld current to melt the plastic then send the weld current to complete the spot weld.

The company I worked for made all of the Ford truck and van grills out of aluminum. When they went to plastic we sent tooling to their repair parts supplier and got rid of the anodizing. We did galaxie and other models also, 66 chevelle grill tooling I scraped while working there.

Just some Ford trivia that most people never knew.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Tim, that is a great looking truck!  Whoever was using it for a shop truck must of really believed in taking care of their equipment. I've seen 2-3 year old  commercial vehicles absolutely beaten to death.

Overall the 360 engine is a good truck engine. It replaced the 352 engine in 1968 which is also when Ford added the 390 to the F series engine lineup. It is a dedicated truck only engine, so while it will not get the best gas mileage you have ever seen, it will pull just about anything you can hitch to it.

As rare as they are in that good of shape here, I bet it really catches a lot of attention there.

Well done!    ::thumb::

 
Great looking truck for sure.

A little fact about the F-250. When Ford was getting ready to switch from the square bodies to the new designs they ask the company I worked for if we would quote doing the run out of the model and service parts. So I got sent off to the Ford Woodhaven stamping plant to review the tooling while running and figure out if we could run the bed sides and tail gates.

When you run skin panels or outside panels that get painted you take the stamping into the Highlight room or Green room. Have lots of special lights and you wipe the draw lube off if any and spray on a light oil to highlight any defects. You also put on thin cotton gloves so you can feel the surface deviations. Sometimes you take a stone and stone the surface to look for small dents.

I noticed that the bed side we were looking at had loose metal or waves behind the rear wheel opening. I ask the stamping engineer that was with me if that was acceptable. He said, " yes it is this is for F-150 the loose metal will go away when you run the thicker F-250 metal". I replied to him and asked about the thicker metal? He said that the F-250 got I think 10% thicker metal than the F-150 got. So more to the F-250 than just suspension changes.

When you changed from one fuel tank to two it was very simple. There were some air actuated punches in the tooling you moved some levers on the dies and it changed the tooling over so you did not have to get in the press or take the die out.

BTW we did not get the work.

Once at the Barrett Jackson auction one of the announcers told a story about when he was buying a new Ford King Ranch Special F-250 the salesman told him it had thicker metal in the body so he went somewhere else to buy because he thought he had lied to him. LOL that salesman knew what he was talking about the Expert on TV did not know. It was the announcer that does lots of NASCAR can't remember his name. I tried to email him but could not find a place to.

Some of the later years in those trucks also got firewall and maybe floors that were layered to better soundproof them. You had a layer of steel a layer of plastic and another layer of steel. It was very tricky spot welding to get a good weld. You had to pulse the weld current to melt the plastic then send the weld current to complete the spot weld.

The company I worked for made all of the Ford truck and van grills out of aluminum. When they went to plastic we sent tooling to their repair parts supplier and got rid of the anodizing. We did galaxie and other models also, 66 chevelle grill tooling I scraped while working there.

Just some Ford trivia that most people never knew.
David,
thank you for always sharing your deep insights and knowledge of Ford car manufacturing. Especially the thicker sheet metal thing is very interesting!

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Tim, that is a great looking truck!  Whoever was using it for a shop truck must of really believed in taking care of their equipment. I've seen 2-3 year old  commercial vehicles absolutely beaten to death.

Overall the 360 engine is a good truck engine. It replaced the 352 engine in 1968 which is also when Ford added the 390 to the F series engine lineup. It is a dedicated truck only engine, so while it will not get the best gas mileage you have ever seen, it will pull just about anything you can hitch to it.

As rare as they are in that good of shape here, I bet it really catches a lot of attention there.

Well done!    ::thumb::
Thank you very much!

Yes, it seems that it was well taken care of in most of its time.

It is an overall very beautiful truck and it catches a lot of attention here. There are not many out there of them, especially with that color.

We love it and will take best care for it! We had luck to get such a fine example here!

Gesendet von meinem E6633 mit Tapatalk

 
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