I'm restoring a 1955 Ford F-100 Pickup truck.
I will post pictures, videos and articles about my restoration as I go along.
This project was started in the Summer of 2017.
I wanted power steering, and the only way to do that was to move my 3 on the free to the floor.
This took me about 2 months of ordering the wrong parts, designing my own mounting brackets and then looking for shifter linkage on ebay that I could bend a little and fit into my layout.
I have a 1955 Ford F-100 with a 1969 Mustang 302 V8 and a 1966 Top loader 3-speed manual transmission also from a mustang.
I started with a kit for a Mustang, but the rods were too long and I couldn't change the shifter stick if it was too close to the seat, so don't do that. Just buy a Master Shift for a 3 speed and buy the parts you need to build your own custom setup. If I had used the Mustang kit my shifter would been under the seat. I had to move it up and forward about 4" with my custom bracket.
Here are my pictures to get an idea of how I did it. I had the guys at work cut it out of 1/2" aluminum plate for me on a waterjet after I designed it in AutoDesk Fusion 360. I will get around to posting the cad model soon if anyone wants to get one cut too. I reused the mounting plate that was made for this transmission as a spacer because I needed the shifter to be about 1/2" more to the left.
I used some skinny $3 rods from Home Depot to mockup what I needed for shifter linkage and then searched ebay for linkage that was close. They were easy to bend when I put them in a vice and slowly bent them by placing a a 4 foot iron pipe over the linkage and used that as bending leverage.
Mid Fifty has some great information about converting your 1955 Ford F-100 over to power steering without changing our the front axle. CPP is the company that makes the 400 series power steering gear box that works with the 1955-59 Chevy trucks & 1953-60 Ford Trucks. Other options include the Toyota gear box retrofit, but now that CPP makes a brand new box, that is the way most people are going.
I found a kit on ebay from Bro-Speed that was much like the Mid Fifty kit, but for about the same price included the Saginaw pump, so I went that route. At the time of writing, the kit was on sale for $557.99)
The Rag Joint with the long shaft is not for an aftermarket column like the ididit, so I exchanged that for a Rag Joint like they sell on midfifty.com
Here is a video going over my removal of the column, pitman arm, and gear box
I did have a few problems and here is my run down of solutions
The triangle flange is hard to get onto the pump. I had to tap around the gear as I tightened the bolts that connect it to the gear box.
The kit from Bro-Speed came with no instructions, so I downloaded the ones from CPP that are on the Mid Fifty website.
You will need a tapered drill bit to enlarge the hole for the gear to 1.5" and those are $157 on Amazon, or you can do like me and get a cheap metric reamer (aka Step Drill bit) that does 40mm for $15-30. (You should get some drill lube too)
The Rag Joint didn't fit the gears. (It had a flat spot on it) and I can't use the shaft with my aftermarket GM style steering wheel, so I did an exchange. This is what I sent Bro-Speed (ebay) and they sent out a replacement.
The spacers were too long. They go between the grear box flange and the frame. When installed, there was no room to install the nuts and the gear was not centered on the firewall hole, so I removed the spacers and used 2 thick fender washers to get a 1/4" gap and that worked great. I used a screw driver to keep a gap between the bottom of the hole and where the gear was while I tightened the bolts.
The saginaw pump had bolts on the back that were to short for the rear mounting bracket I found on ebay, so I had to use a front/back mount combo that was about $87 for my 1969 Ford Mustang 302 engine. The lower bolt shown going into the block is 5.5" long. I found that it was 1/4 too long because of gunk build up on the end of the bolt hole, so I had to cut off the last 1/4" of the 5.5" bolt. This was suggested in the directions that came with the bracket. (Could they not find 5-1/4" bolts?)
I had to buy 5 belts before I got the right one, and that was a Duralast 15430 from AutoZone. (43")
It was a tight fit, but the 15440 would have been too close to the lower radiator hose.
I will post more later as I finish this project, I'm waiting for the rag joint.
I will also be making a post about converting to a floor shifter. You must go with a floor shifter if you have a 3 on the tree like me.
Someone put a fiberglass hood on this truck a long time ago and never painted it or cut it correctly. I looked around the internet for pictures of how this should be done and this is what I ended up doing. The fender has to be cut so that the lower section can be bolted to the step and cab. I cut it with a Dremel with a diamond blade.
I have a bad feeling that getting these to all line up when I'm done with all the paint and body work will be a problem. They already don't fit up well as you can see from the gap above the tape.
This is the part I cut off and then I had to re-connect two pieces with fiberglass to make one part since the truck had part of it already cut off so they could close the hood.
I cleaned up the firewall on the truck, replaced some rusted out electronics and put in electronic ignition.
If something could get screwed up, I screwed it up. Here is how I fixed everything without having it towed to a repair shop.
My 55 Ford has a 302 out of a 68' Mustang. It also has a Top Loader 3 on the tree manual transmission.
Painted some stuff and got the heater ready to be installed with a new motor. The old motor was rotted out and was still 6 volt. My new heater is 6 volt too, so I added a resistor that will bring the 12v down to 6v.
Painted this black with some shaker can Rustoleum
Some before and after pictures Had to move horn relay to make room for heater (that was not installed when I got the truck) I can't seem to find replacement heaters anywhere. I guess no one makes reproductions?
While installing heater hoses (remember I said it came with no heater) I pulled out the distributor without marking it! Stupid! Took me 4 hours to get it back into the right place.
Then the fitting leaked and I had to pull it out again a week later and this time the rod fell into the oil pan, but i could still reach it! I took a plastic straw from a sports bottle and heated it up with boiling water and then used a screw driver that was the same diameter to stretch the straw to be the same size as the rod. Then I taped that to a long screw driver and lowered it over the rod and had to push hard to slide the rod into the straw, then I was able to pull it up and put it back in the right place. Then I pushed a long skinny screw driver down the straw to release the distributor rod where I needed it to be.
Now if you have screwed up the timing and its in the wrong spot (will not start or back fires) you can use a combination of a flashlight to look into spark plug hole number 1 while turning the crank to see when top dead center comes up. They should be close to your timing mark too. Be carefull that you don't mix up top dead center before spark and the exhaust stroke. You don't want the exhaust stroke.
The truck has a fiberglass hood. I painted the inside with the left over bedliner paint.
Hind site is 20/20 I should have just done one of two things to deal with this hammered truck bed: 1. Scrap it and buy a new bed 2. Paid LineX to spray the bed liner on for me. What I did was sand it a little and then rolled on the bed liner myself. It looks like shit. I think POR15 would have looked better. Whatever.. I'll live with it until I'm ready to replace the entire thing. I'm out of money for a new bed anyway. They are around $2K plus freight and you still need to put the wood floor in and paint it.
I started with removing the rear fenders (That part was not bad)
I took it off with the help of my son and then flipped it over (not too heavy) to sand and paint the lower parts on the inside
I Masked the outside before coating the inside and top rail with bedliner paint
The tailgate was also hammered and rusted on the inside (opposite of the picture) so it got covered. What you see will get painted red later.
Hmm.. I don't have a picture of it after the bed liner. I'll have to get that later.
Then I pulled it into the garage to remove the old paint and prime the outside with Epoxy primer Then it went in the backyard while I worked on the hood and cab
The Bed was the worst part of the truck, so I couldn't wait to tear into it.
I had to dissemble this all to get the bed off anyway. You can't paint the cab or bed with it attached to the frame.
The bolts go into the metal trim, then the wood and then into the frame in many places in the bed. May of those places along the edges had enough rust that the bolts would just spin. I had a hell of a time getting about 1/2 the bolts out while most of the ones in the middle or not attached to the frame were fine.
The air chisel worked great if you are cutting the heads off and are 90% of the way there. I tore up some of the edges with the air chisel pushing the bolts into the rust and making the hole into slots, so watch out for that.
After trying EVERYTHING, the best method for dealing with spinning bolts was to take my grinder and make a deep slot that I could get my biggest strait slot screw driver into. Then my son hit it with an impact wrench from under the bed. Hit everything with penetrating oil a day before you start. It's worth the 24hr wait. This hit it again before you start.
If I could start over, I would scrap the bed and get a new one. Instead I decided to just cover all the damage with roll on bed liner. See the next post.
