FORDification

Well, I'll have to pull samples of ours off the shelf and measure, then measure the NOS versions I brought in to compare with, and if they don't match up then I'll have to source them. In many cases I've found we already sell them under a different number for a different application, so it'll just take a little detective work. If I can't find the correct ones here, then I'll have to look elsewhere. Unfortunately, it's not super-fast process. In some cases we'll provide samples to a third-party vendor who will then create a mold to make them. That obviously takes a little longer.

I can verify that the 41-1597 bumpers are not correct...they're definitely too small. I was able to track down the PNs for five different fuel tank doors as well as some NOS samples of each, and got them ordered. They just arrived a couple days ago...they're literally sitting on my desk as I type this...but I haven't had the chance to sit down and and measure each one to verify factory dimensions and do a test fit on a truck. I will try to do that this coming week.

Charles: I apologize for the incorrect part, this is the first I've heard about it. I can definitely look into it for you. Give me a couple days to go down this rabbit hole and I'll let you know what I find out.

The distributor boot pictured above from LMC will fit either the small cap or the large cap, but it IS actually sized for the large cap, and is OEM Ford stock straight from the Ford dealer, as these were original equipment on the 1986-1993 Mustang 5.0L. It fits very snug on the large cap, a little looser on the small cap. As noted in the catalog they'll fit distributor caps up to 5" in diameter. The bare big cap is 4-7/16" diameter, the small cap is 3-7/8" diameter.

Gary: thanks for thinking of me when this truck came up for sale. And thanks for making the drive over to help getting it loaded, it was good seeing you again. My son Trevor had recently decided that he wanted a cool older fix-up project, so I've been keeping my eyes open for something for him that was within his price range. This '63 wrongbed fit the bill perfectly. It was a good day....the truck loaded up easily and the trailer pulled smoothly for the 3 1/2 hour drive back home. :) Now it's likely going to sit until springtime before anything gets done with it, but then I'm betting he'll be spending all his spare time working on it. Here's a few more pics... The truck was originally a 3-on-the-tree, but an NP435 was swapped in at some point. Notice the nice custom shifter reshaping to clear the dash and radio. http://www.garysgaragemahal.com/uploads/6/5/8/7/65879365/laughing-25-x-25_orig.gif

Jeff: The bushings you need are Basic Part No. 2471 in the diagram Gary posted above. Here's the listing from the Master Parts Catalog which shows E0TZ-2471-A as the proper part: ...and here's that bushing available from LMC: As for the website...yeah, it's been a PIA for a lot of people for a long time, including myself. And while I don't have a definite timetable, I've been told that changes are coming "soon" that will alleviate having to enter a year/make/model before getting to a page. I guess we'll see.

Thanks for tagging me Gary! Kurt: I'm sorry about the fitment problems on that bed panel. I was going to go pull a sample off the shelf to inspect but it turns out that we don't have any at the moment. We do have a bunch on order, but there's no ETA. LMC has been selling 150/year of this patch panel since 2006 and this is literally the very first complaint we've ever received on it. But the pictures tell the tale for sure...as Gary stated, that's not useable. There's now a note on the part in the computer to not accept any further orders for this until we can correct the problem. I just went through this with the '67-'72 bed floor patch panels too. The ribs weren't matching in that case either, and I stopped the sales until we had the factory retool for a better replacement. That problem is now fixed, but now it sure looks like we have a similar problem with these '80-'96 panels. In this case, the fact that there's never been any other complaints on this seems to indicate something's recently changed at the factory. I'll definitely look into it.

I didn't realize they paid any attention. :) Well if Keith wants more info I'd be happy to provide. To be clear, what I'm doing with Rocky would have been impossible without LMC existing, and I've probably thrown $5k their way so I'm definitely glad to have a vendor available! I particularly like how their parts diagrams are clickable, which makes it easy to home in on the exact thing you need, especially when it comes to hardware. The main issues are with what are generally third party components. Seat heaters, dome light lenses, floor insulation and carpeting... All those things seem to be "not perfect, but better than nothing". I'm pretty data driven as you've all probably guessed, and I'd be happy to share specific details on any items that might be improved... "Have calipers will share" and all that... Thanks for tagging me Gary. I grabbed one of these lenses of the shelf today, as well as the dome light fixture from one of our trucks, and attempted to install the new lens. And while there have been many who say their lens fits great, the one I tried had some minor fitment issues, so I spent a few minutes studying it and came up with the following. First of all, it turns out that the lens edges were molded straight, when in fact the edge face should have been beveled just a bit, as pictured here in this comparison shot of the reproduction lens and an OEM lens. So I grabbed my baby Dremel and started beveling the sides just a little bit. Now...you only want to bevel the bottom edge of the lens, the part that contacts the dome light body....and only the middle area. Do not bevel the ends, as they fit fine. Here you can see how I used a cone stone to do the bevel. ...and in this shot, I've shaded the area that needs to be slightly beveled. Don't go all the way out to the outer face, nor out to the ends. And then finally, you might have to also do a very light sanding on the bottom face of the lip, along the same area in the middle, between the red arrows shown here. Just sand a little and test fit, and repeat, until it snaps into place with minimal effort. The tabs will lock the lens into place and it looks great. It actually took me longer to analyze why exactly it wasn't fitting correctly than it took to fix it. All told, the sanding maybe took me 3-4 minutes. Hope this helps. :)

It's kinda like I told Gary...over the past couple decades, through the three FORDification sites and various FORDification Facebook groups I've always done what was best for the trucks and the hobby as a whole. But now I have to also look at things from a slightly different additional angle, a professional angle I've never had to worry about before, so it'll be a bit of a balancing act to be effective at both. Ideally it can benefit both, while minimizing the risk of other vendors beating us to the punch in getting these parts reproduced. While in discussions with the personnel at LMC I was assured that they're really wanting to approach this market pretty aggressively, so I'm confident right now that they're going to follow through with expanding the list of available parts. We'll get it figured out.

Well, here's the thing...if we make a publicly-available post with a list of parts that need to be reproduced, other vendors are going to see that list too, and could possibly beat us to the punch. Granted, it's going to be a 3-4 weeks before I'm actually there working in an official capacity, but I'd sure like to not have to beat other vendors in a race to see who can come out with a part first. I'm in a new unique situation where I now need to consider, for example, the possible loss of resources by my future employer if someone else releases a new part first that we're currently working on. So while I don't have an immediate answer, I'm thinking that perhaps just making a post suggesting that folks contact me directly with suggestions of things to look into in the future. I'll have to give this some thought to come up with a way for you all to make suggestions in private. I hope you understand what I'm getting at here. When I first got word I was being considered for this position, I made a post in a couple Facebooks groups asking member's opinions on what should be reproduced, and I happen to know for a fact that at least one other aftermarket parts vendor (the owner of the company) was monitoring the thread for ideas for his own company. Now obviously I have no way of knowing what that vendor decided to do with the suggestions posted, but I'm going to have to assume he's using it to try to be the first source available for some of the parts suggested.

Oh, I'll definitely be here asking a lot of questions, because although I'm pretty knowledgeable about '60s-'70s Ford trucks, I'm a little weak in the '80s-up stuff....so it's time to expand those horizons a bit. I'm actually looking into getting a bullnose truck to start using as a daily driver too, which will help considerably towards that end.

You know how it is when you've got HUGE news that you want to share with everyone, but you can't tell anyone just yet? You know, you don't want to jinx it because it's still in the works, so you bite your tongue constantly until it's finally written in stone and you KNOW for sure it's going to happen? Well, I've got something I've been wanting to share with you all that's been in the works for about 6 weeks now and was just finalized yesterday with the signing of some documents...so I can finally let the cat out of bag. And here it is: I've been offered a position at LMC Truck, as the new head of the Ford Research & Development (R&D) team....and I've accepted the offer. I will be starting there full-time in about three weeks. Essentially, I'll be in charge of anything that has to do with Ford trucks and Broncos, and Ford-related products sold through LMC's catalogs. That's right...this isn't a joke. This is really happening! (For my friends and family who haven't heard of LMC Truck of Lenexa, Kansas, they're one of the nation's largest supplier of repair and restoration parts for Ford, Ch*vy and Dodge trucks, and they also have a British cars division.) LMC sees these classic Ford trucks as the next huge market and wanted someone there who knows them very well, to work on expanding available parts and filling holes in the aftermarket offerings. My official title will be 'Ford Parts Manager', and as the head of LMC's Ford R&D team I'll be mostly working to identify Ford truck repair/restoration products that aren't currently being sold through their catalogs and contacting companies to either supply them or manufacture them. We'll provide them with a sample, they'll provide a prototype which I'll inspect for quality and fitment, and if it passes inspections, then I'll OK it for further mass production to be stocked in their warehouses and listed in their future catalogs. And since I know some of you might be wondering, I do believe I'll have some say-so in the quality control of their existing products. That is, if I can find a better version of a product currently being sold by LMC and it's financially feasible to offer that product in the catalogs, then changes will be made to do so. I'll also be in charge of all eight of LMC's Ford truck catalogs, ensuring that everything is listed completely and correctly as to description, application, etc. This has been in the works since the beginning of March and I'd probably would have been making this announcement sooner, but the whole COVID19 thing put a stall on the process for a while. There have been numerous e-mails, phone conversations plus a face-to-face interview and tour of the LMC facilities several weeks ago...which lead to yesterday's formal job offer. Everything has been approved and I just sent off the final paperwork to finalize the deal. I've provided my current employer with my two weeks notice and will now spend the new few weeks getting packed up and ready to relocate to Lenexa, Kansas and renting a place to live. My family will stay here for the time being while we get our current acreage cleaned up and sold, and during this time I'll be making regular 4-hour trips between Kansas and our home in east-central Nebraska on the weekends to help out. Once the acreage is sold, my family will be joining me in Kansas. My wife is graduating this month with her Master's degree in Nursing Education, so relocating to the outskirts of Kansas City will make more opportunities available to her than she would here. There IS one thing that really sucks about this. I've spend the past few years slowly getting a shop put together by refurbishing a big 60x80 barn on my property. I finally got concrete poured last fall and got all my car/truck projects, tools and parts inside for the first time in years. This was supposed to be the summer I finally got to get back to work on those projects in that new shop, dammit! Looking at it realistically, it's probably going to be another year before we've found a place that we both like...she wants the house, I want the shop. But while it's a minor setback on those personal projects, it's a huge step up for both of us, so we're both very excited about the future and looking forward to this new adventure. It's definitely going to be an interesting chapter of our lives!

Yes, you are more than welcome to add me to the map, though I don't actually own one (yet). Thanks for the suggestions. I'm going to be spending some time doing some reading here and will keep that in mind. I'm going to wait on some of my newbie questions until I at least read what you've got here first, to prevent others from telling me to do so. ;) As for the transmission, I'm open to either a manual or standard, though if there were one of each side by side in equal condition for equal price, I'd probably choose the automatic. And I'm thinking I'd rather have a gas engine, not diesel. I'd also open to location. A few years ago when I was shopping for my '75 Supercab, I had a pretty specific list of features I wanted it to have, and looked for almost two years before I found that one on E-bay. It had everything I was looking for..well, except for the color, I was hoping for blue, but I decided to pull the trigger anyway and hope it grew on me. It has. It was located in Wisconsin, so my wife and kids and I made a mini-vacation out of driving up to get it and bringing it home. If it's within a state or two I'd be happy driving it. If it's halfway across the country, I'm not sure.

Keith - Beware the FOG. It is coming in on little cat feet. Flareside Owners Group. Thanks everyone. I'm just needing a daily commuter / general purpose vehicle. I'm currently leaning towards a 4WD Supercab styleside. I'll be doing some occasional towing with a 16-ft trailer with a truck project on the back, so I need to find out if the factory engine/transmission options will handle it. I'm less concerned with mileage as I am performance and reliability. Probably 98% of the time it'll unloaded and just be used for driving to work and back.

Hey all. I just joined up to start research on the bullnose-era trucks, and since I've known Gary for a while now and the guru that he is, I couldn't think of a better place to start. If you're at all interested in the earlier generations of Ford trucks, you've probably run into my FORDification websites and Facebook groups which cover the '60s-'70s trucks. Well, I might be in the market within the next few months for a new daily driver and I decided I'd look into adding a bullnose to the stable. Here are a few pics of what I've got now: This is my '67 F100 SWB and my latest acquisition, a '64 F100 LWB pictured in the newly-completed shop. This is my '68 F100 choptop project. It's currently pushed off to the side while I work on the other projects. My '75 F250 Supercab Ranger XLT Camper Special. It's fully loaded...460/C6 and a limited-slip Dana 60 w/ 3.54 gears. PS/PB, A/C, cruise control (the first year cruise was installed in Ford trucks), dual exhaust, dual tanks, bedside toolbox, swing-out spare tire carrier...it even came equipped with factory air horns. ============================== So while I'm pretty knowledgeable about Slicks, Bumpsides and Dentsides, I'm pretty clueless when it comes to Bullnose trucks and aim to correct that. I'm going to be asking a lot of questions, most of them the 'extreme newbie' variety, so please take it easy on me while soak it all in and research what's best for me.