The Project of a lifetime...

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I bought this truck way back in the summer of 1991. There is a rather Lame Story about why I wanted a 1955 Ford F100. Anyway, I looked around for a bit, and I found this one in Eden, North Carolina. My Friend Chuck and I drove up there to take a look at it and I rented a pickup and carried it to a storage shed a few days later. I paid $400 for it. It had already been mostly dissasembled, but I was sure I would be able to get it running well enought to drive it back to school that fall. I'm stupid.

Anyway, that didn't work out. The following summer I put a used 302 in the thing with the help of Larry Chavis. That took awhile. Then I was able to drive it around, which was an adventure. My friends and I drove it an hour away to Raleigh to pick up our Foosball table for instance. It really took some gumption to pilot this thing at that time. THe brakes were lousy, it had to be constantly wrestled to simply stay in a straight line (I actually sprained both fore arms) and it generally shook and shimmied all over. I did not drive it to Tallahassee that fall either.

So then in the Summer of 1993 (this is the third summer, if you're still with me), I returned to Larry's junk strewn shop to really do the deed to my humble truck. I hunted around the various classifieds and found a rebuilt BlueCrescent Ford 429 forsale 2 1/2 hours away in Charlotte. My friend Chuck and I spent a marathon night wiring and etc making the truck more long-distance roadworthy. That was by far the scariest driving experience I have ever had. It was a great engine though, so I bought it and hauled it back to Durham in the back of the truck.

Then I bought a cross member from a 1974 Mustang II from the salvage yard and had a guy come pick it up to have it stretched the requisite 4 inches. Yes, I know there are kits for this stuff, but remember, I'm stupid. I was saving money. There was some kind of huge misunderstanding and this guy ends up dropping the crossmember off along with a bill for $1600 (remember, it cost $100 from yard, kit costs $450). Well, I laughed and paid him $250. Anyway, back to Larry's shop. To make a long ordeal short, I took all the old stuff off - which wasn't easy, welded the new stuff on (with help from Howard Smith) and bolted the engine in place using a motor mount kit. That was how I spent my summer.

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