JB’s 1971 F100 Custom

[jbeaver]

I bought my truck in the fall of 2010 from a friend of mine who lives in North Carolina. He was using it to haul garbage to the dump every once in a while and the rest of the time she was “living” in his yard without any kind of cover.

I originally made the trip, from Georgia, to buy another vehicle from him and fell in love with this F100 as soon as I saw it. After a little bit of negotiating we entered into an agreement for $800 and she was mine. Yahoooo! Several weeks later I flew to North Carolina and spent a couple of days attempting to make her road worthy. I changed the tranny fluid, installed a new water pump, did a basic tune-up, gave her a once over and believe it or not, drove her all the way home. The only two problems I had were the lower radiator hose came loose from the water pump and the rear main seal leaked like a sieve. I’m still amazed at the simplicity and dependability of these old trucks.

Yes folks, three years later and I’ve still only done some very minor things to the old girl such as light bulbs and license plate lights. I can think of a thousand excuses why I’m not further along with the restoration but it is what it is. If there are any good points to my procrastination those would be, (1) I’ve been able read and follow some of the awesome builds on this site and (2) I’ve collected a considerable amount of parts in the event I ever get around to restoring the truck.

My current plans are pretty basic: stop all of the leaks, get her to stop resonably short and make her run without stalling at a traffic light. Maybe one year I can actually start doing some upgrades and modifications, but for now we’ll try to keep it simple. I’ll do my best to document everything with photographs and maybe even a part number or two. Fordification is a fantastic site so hopefully I can make some worthy contibutions. Thanks.

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[sargentrs]

Congratulations! She looks solid.