Project '85 F150

My dad just bought him and I a new 1985 F150 to fix up.

It had 140k miles on it when we met the seller. My dad drove the 4-speed manual around for a test drive and noticed a misfire. He came back to the original location and we opened the hood and noticed a spark plug wire was bouncing up and down on top of the spark plug.  We turned the truck off and told the seller we would come back to look at it if he replaced the spark plugs and spark plug wires. It turned out that the spark plugs weren't gapped correctly, and the spark plug wires are still a work in progress as I speak. The seller replaced the spark plugs and ordered a new pair of spark plug wires, which we haven't recieved yet... We bought the truck a day later and got the paperwork done and the new plates on.

The goal for this truck is to make a good driving and reliable truck for me to cruise around in, in high school.

So far, we have put a tachometer on the steering column, taken out the old speakers stuffed behind the bench seat and rewired the wires to the better speakers inside the door panel, riveted a piece of plastic over the hole where the old not-working tachometer was, and tinted the back window because, dang, can it get hot in that cab! We also cleaned the truck up- just the usual stuff. We have bought a high beam light to mount on the grill and a 8 ball to put on the shift knob. Hopefully that works out okay. We will get back to working on it after it comes out of the shop for a fix of a few leaks and a few other under-the-hood problems.

 I hope you can cope with me because this is my first truck, or car, I have ever worked on. If you have any questions about the truck, feel free to reply to me and ask. Below is a photo of the truck the first day we got it.

That a good looking truck you got there.
What motor & transmission dose the truck have?
Think you posted the trans was a 4 speed granny first gear or over drive 4th?

If you post up a picture of the cert label on the left door jamb we can de-code it what the truck left the factory with, not that still holds true after all the years.
Dave ----

Thanks.

It has a straight 6 engine and a 4 speed granny gear.

I would have sent you a picture, but as you know the truck is in the shop right now. I will send a picture here as soon as it gets back (if I remember ).

That is a fine looking truck, first truck or not.   Good luck to you and your dad and have fun with it.  Get it running reliably and safely, then do things as time and budget allow.  Main thing is keep it running while you work on it - no big impossible projects that bog you down.  

Yes, it really is a nice truck. Thank you.

I will be sure to keep that in mind as him and I work on it

rshemmy wrote

Thanks.

It has a straight 6 engine and a 4 speed granny gear.

I would have sent you a picture, but as you know the truck is in the shop right now. I will send a picture here as soon as it gets back (if I remember ).

Good combo as my truck has the same motor & transmission but is only a 4x2.

Being you have a 85 it would have a feed back carb & dist, system unless someone has swapped it over to non-feed back, not hard to do.

Also I believe your transmission would be a NP435 as I think thats what went in the later trucks.
The early ones got the BW T18, that what my truck had but was bad so swapped in the NP435.
The NP435 has a crazy bent stick

T18 is just an off set

There is also something about the PTO covers on the side of the trans and the shifter towers but I cant remember what they are ATM.
Dave ----

Thank you for the info. Your truck looks beautiful! When the truck gets back from the shop I will have to look into that. I do know that it has some type of computer system that the previous owner fiddled with.

It's been a while. Here's a photo from today, though. It snowed a little

It looks COLD!  But it looks good as well.