I Bought another Truck without Trying to

Don't grill me, it's not a bull! But it's close ;)

I've been doing a lot of dentside parting out latey and paying for my 79 I've been building, but a friend who I go in on a lot of this stuff with and myself tend to browse marketplace on my lunch break at work and send each other crazy Marketplace ads of things we want but would never actually pull the trigger on. For laughs one day we sent each other an ad of this 87 F150 floating around that had been on marketplace forever. I think the guy was asking like $1200 or something. Motor supposedly knocked, but whatever no big deal. My buddy messaged me saying "hey, I should like, super low ball this guy for the heck of it haha, offer him like 400 bucks lol". I replied "screw it, why not haha, see what happens". Well, I never heard back from my buddy that day.

The next morning about 10 or so I messaged him asking if he'd heard back from that guy. I get a message back almost immediately "Yeah, I'm loading it up right now"  LOL!! The guy took $400 for it. I guess he had a 70s project that took priority and needed it gone. Well, as luck had it, I was like well heck I'll give you that for it, so I bought it off my buddy that same hour! Haha.

So here we are. 1987 F150, 300-6, Tremec T170RTS 4 speed and 3.08s (YUCK), has a 4" RC lift with drop brackets and new balljoints.

The good news is that the frame and body overall are pretty solid. It's been beat, but I've had way, way rougher trucks. The bad is the motor is probably fried, and from the looks of it, the truck is going to be a complete and total electrical nightmare. The interior is pretty rough, someone threw a pair of buckets in it that are absolutely atrocious.

That being said, on the bright side of things, its got good bones to work with. I have 5 300s floating around, one low mileage one I plan on resealing and likely sticking in if I don't go 351/automatic route. The axles are getting regeared with a pair of 3.55 axles I have laying around, and I plan on removing that god awful flange/tophat hub design.

Fortunately as well, I have my old 95 that I wrecked still as a donor truck. I may try to get the EFI to work, but if all else fails I will totally rip everything out and slap a carburetor on it.

As far as other things, I found a brand new smoked bug sheild for it, I plan on doing the Australian headlight conversion with chrome stone cages on the head lights, replacing the front bumper, running boards and chrome rain visors, putting a chrome push bar on it, reinstalling my old roll bar and rear pipe bumper and putting on a brand new set of 35s that showed up today. I took the set of wagon wheels on it off and to work so I can clean and paint them and put my new chrome center caps in them. I think it'll be a fun little side gig to get my back into a truck while my 79 is down for while.

Looks real solid underneath for upstate NY!  

Congrats!  

Yes, congrat's!  For $400 you can't go wrong.  Quad shocks and solid over all.  That's a good buy.  

But Jim's gotta like it so he won't have the only '87 on here.  

I have a hunch it was probably a southern truck at one point or another. There is a decent size hole in the floor pan but not unfixable, especially as you guys know what I've dealt with in the past. For as cheap as I got it I probably won't sink an absolute ton of money into it since the body has some pretty good dents in it, but who knows, I've done crazier things. I may spray it with some implement paint to get it all one color again this summer. I figure even if I parted it out it was worth what I paid for it. It's only money right?

Looks like a good score for $400 to me Angelo. I quite like the Bricknose trucks.

I see you edited your Sig already.  

A cab floor is only $30 from Tabco.
I don't know how bad it really is, but I'd rock it for an afternoons work.

It's not awful, honestly I think a small piece of sheet metal would take care of it. I don't plan on driving it in the snow so I'm not too worried about rot.

Man, that thing BARELY fit on the little U-Haul trailer, didn't it?

You're already into more for tires than the truck, what could go wrong?

I've got those trailers figured out. 133" wheelbase is the absolute max you can get on them. Had my 79 on one more than a few times haha.

But yes the tires were twice as much as the whole truck lmao. We will see what happens. My friend happens to be out in Idaho and found me a nice push bar for her today. I gotta find a decent bumper and a argenr 87-88 grille now, then all I have left to get is the visors, and headlights, and Ill be happy.

You are going to have a good truck for not much money.  Well done, Angelo!  

I hope so! We will see with the engine situation though. Id like to get a decent battery in it so I can check out all the electrical, if its bad enough I might gut it all and throw a harness from a 79 in it. Lord knows I have enough parts to build a whole truck out of them.

Does anyone have a nice front bumper they'd be willing to sell? Preferably without the trim, but not too picky.

Also, I have push bars in those style for 78/79 bumpers, 80-86 and 87-91 years and the means to measure and reproduce them now, so that may be in the works...

Angelo Voltura wrote

It's not awful, honestly I think a small piece of sheet metal would take care of it. I don't plan on driving it in the snow so I'm not too worried about rot.

True story: A friend at work has an old Ranger with a Fred Flintstone hole in the floor [not too big]. I gave him a couple of my old and not too pretty license plates. He cut the rot, applied some sealant, drilled holes and pop riveted the tags in place several years ago and the repair is still holding!

In true fashion, I can't seem to leave anything alone. My friend took my wagon wheels and blasted them 5 times and acid bathed them, I guess they were really rough with lots of layers of paint. He's getting them ready for powdercoat, nice and thick like factory. I mounted up a tire before they went to paint, and I think this truck is going to look sharp with wagons on it.




I got the push bar shipped in from my buddy traveling out in Idaho. It's pretty decent, couple dings but should clean up well. It is about 2" narrower than the one on dads bull and has welded tubes. I have also aquired one for a 78/79 front end, and I want to make templates of all 3 so that people can have them again since they are not getting any easier to find.

The other thing on my mind is the motor. I've pretty much made up my mind that I'm going to carb the truck. What I haven't made up my mind on yet is what I want to do with the motor. Do I just get it running? Or do a swap since it's coming out anyway. I'm not super keen on having a stick in this thing...I was thinking about a Windsor swap.

But then something crossed my mind. I've got M stuff out the booty....How about we stuff a 400 in this thing? Only I need are V8 perches. I was also thinking about an E4OD with a deisel standalone controller, but my buddy does have a 4x4 C6 floating around. I have enough parts I could easily put together a 400 that would poop all over this 300 as far as power goes and still be satisfied with it. And besides....who the heck ever does that swap???


What you guys think about stuffing a 400 in this girl??

Angelo - Those wheels are going to look really good on the truck!

As for the engine, my question is what are you going to do with the truck?  If a daily driver the 300 would be quite adequate.  But if you are going for "fun", the 400 will be a whole lot more power.  And you know what people think of the 400, so it would be cool to show them up.  

Gary Lewis wrote

As for the engine, my question is what are you going to do with the truck?  If a daily driver the 300 would be quite adequate.  But if you are going for "fun", the 400 will be a whole lot more power.  And you know what people think of the 400, so it would be cool to show them up.  

It's a summer time driver, kind of like 79. Jump in and take it out whenever I feel like it. Might even become a summer daily. I loved my 300, but I need a little more power than that especially in this thing. I've got enough stuff laying around that I can make a reasonably powerful engine out of spare parts. I'd go Windsor route, but considering I have a handful of 400s already....

If I had that many parts for a 400 and for something different I would go 400.

Uncle had one in and older 70's 4x4 and I used it to pull the 2 car trailer with the cars loaded and the 8 foot bed also loaded with no problems.
Dave ----

FuzzFace2 wrote

If I had that many parts for a 400 and for something different I would go 400.

Uncle had one in and older 70's 4x4 and I used it to pull the 2 car trailer with the cars loaded and the 8 foot bed also loaded with no problems.
Dave ----

Thats kind of what I'm thinking. Does anyone know if the standard SBF perches are the ones they used on bullnose 400 powered trucks? I am pretty sure they are. Which would make this swap way easier.

Either way, small update. My wheels are almost done being blasted and powder coated. They do have some pitting but I dont think you'll see it too bad. There was 6+ layers of paint on some of them. My buddy told me he had to blast them 8 times and acid bathe them twice. This is where we are at with those. The close up is the worst wheel.




I spent some time cleaning up some surface rust on the push bar my buddy sent me. It turns out its "Grizzly" brand...never heard of them. Aluminum foil and warm water works amazing, definitely not using steel wool again.





I definitely need to spend more time with it but I am satisfied for what I got with the half hour I spent on it so far.

A while back I did manage to find a brand new smoked bug shield for this girl as well!



I did order 2 KC lights for it and I got the covers in, I chose black and yellow, as I think those will stand up nice against a white truck. I also got new clear headlight lenses (H6054) in in prep for my Australian headlight conversion and had a set of chrome stone guards floating around I'll be using.



If anyone has a plain 87 argent grille, I'd be interested in it.

No, the 351M/400 engines used different perches from the small-blocks.  Here's our spreadsheet from the page at Documentation/Exterior/Frames/Engine Perches, but the MPC info is there as well if you want to check:



But the wheels look good, and I don't think that corrosion will be all that visible.

Boy, did that push bar clean up!  Well done!  

Angelo Voltura wrote

I have a hunch it was probably a southern truck at one point or another. There is a decent size hole in the floor pan but not unfixable, especially as you guys know what I've dealt with in the past. For as cheap as I got it I probably won't sink an absolute ton of money into it since the body has some pretty good dents in it, but who knows, I've done crazier things. I may spray it with some implement paint to get it all one color again this summer. I figure even if I parted it out it was worth what I paid for it. It's only money right?

Look at the DSO on the door tag, then Google "ford dso xx", with xx being your region number.  It will tell you what region the truck was sold to.

Mine is 48 which equals the Detroit Region.

Why Google it?  Why not just look at Ford's documentation right here on the site: Documentation/Specifications/DSO Codes?