1962 F-100 Unibody Drag Truck

[KMcCullah]

Hi guys. Just a few months back I discovered this website. I've been serial lurking this build section ever since and thought I would share a cool truck build. This is a truck that my dad and I built together. We're a couple of hotrod redneck truck building mechanic types. Dad's been retired a few years now. For being 70 something, he still gets it done.

Below is a link to the build. I started this thread several years ago on the FE Power chat board. Hardcore FE guy here btw. Been building and racing them for decades.

http://fepower.net/simplemachinesforum/ ... 5268.0;all

Currently the engine is on the stand. We just finished up reinstalling the intake and freshening the bottom end. The intake went to Joe Craine's shop for porting. We're also planning a freshen up with the C6 tranny. It's gonna get some light weight parts while it's tore down.

[KMcCullah]

One of the things I realized about these trucks, at 120mph, there's a ton of air that comes out of the factory vents. I figure it must be something to do with the windshield angle. Anyhow, I figured it might be worth a few ponies if I could get all that air funneled down to the carburetor. So I tigged some 16ga aluminum together and made a Nascar style ram air box. Dad calls it an oversized Shopvac attachment. Lol

Edit: It's gonna be interesting to see how it works. I'm also going to weld in a 1/8npt bung so I can hook up a low pressure gauge. Maybe we'll see 1/2lb boost. I'm hoping for a situation where the truck leans out so much that I need to go up a step in jetting. I have a wideband A/F ratio meter on board to help with jetting.

[ThinLizzy13]

That is one cool ride, and a ton of work! Love the ”shop vac” intake.

[04sd]

Cool truck but we need more pictures.

[Gravemetal]

Welcome to the forum. That is a nice truck. We chatted on Sunday night in the chat room and now I understand the 3.5 mpg and the need for a gear venders OD

[KMcCullah]

Thanks for all the kind words guys. Will pass them along to dad.

Here's a little backstory on this truck. We started this build the summer of 2017. Shortly after dad finally retired. I had a killer FE sitting on the floor in the shop. And dad had an old red truck. So we put together a plan to build a quick slick. On 4/27/19 we pulled it out of the shop for it's first test drive. At the local drag strip.

This truck started out sitting in my dads boneyard for 10+ years. He found it in a local news paper ad I think. It had been in western CO for a long time. I found a '72 Grand Junction CO phone book under the seat. But the truck originally came from a dealership in northern Texas.

[KMcCullah]

We scratched our heads for a while on the rust issues. You'd think a truck that had spent the majority of it's life in a dry climate would be in great shape, right? Not this one.The front cab mounts were completely rotted. The bottom of the hinge pillars had huge holes rusted thru. The floor of cab was just as bad by the kick panels. The trans tunnel had been butchered to make way for a NP435 also.








What we ended up doing is using the floor and firewall out of a '64 3/4 ton Camper Special. This also gave us a taller tranny tunnel with a removable cover.
It has some rust too but it's way better than what we had with the red truck.








The pic below shows the line we layed out to cut across the floor. Just behind the foot wells. We measured till we were blue in the face. The height of the windshield opening had to be maintained. The height and width of the door frames had to be maintained. There was a lot to go wrong here. I had to put my beer down for a minute.



It took me an hour to cut it all out.



I was pleased to see some nice thick sheet metal to weld.



This is how much the floor fell after I clipped the post. The cab mounts were obviously gone.





I spent half a day fitting and welding.





With the major part of the rust issues dealt with, we finally got to a place where we could start in with locating our 504/C6 in the frame.

[KMcCullah]

Dad and I did quite a bit of discussing and planning before we started in with locating the engine and trans. We knew we were gonna put the engine in the center of the frame. Instead of keeping the FoMoCo offset towards the passenger side. It's like 3" And for traction, we knew we wanted the engine as close to the rear end as possible. We considered butchering the firewall to put the engine another 4" towards the rear end, but we decided this would have been a bunch of work, for not much gain really. Now if we could have set the engine back 18"-24" that would have made a difference. We decided it would be best to keep the factory sheet metal. And I really didn't want to sit right next to a howling FE. In the end we had at least a 1/2" clearance between the sheet metal and engine/C6. We set it down pretty low in the frame to make a nice straight shot to the rear end also.

[KMcCullah]

After all the fussin' cussin' and discussin' with the engine and trans, we set the body off of the frame so we could start our drag racing chassis. The stock frame is a pretty stout piece as is, heavy as hell for a F-100 sized pick up. So we didn't see any need to box the frame or add any stiffeners. I did clean up some of the factory welding around the front cross member. It had a thick plate welded to the top of it when the straight 6 was put in. I just remembered... that poor old I-6 we pulled out had the #6 rod hanging out of the passenger side of the block. Anyhow, while I was working on the front of the chassis, dad was busy on the back. He started in with making ladder bars for the rear end. He started with some mid 60's Chevy truck rear end link arms.

Edit: Can't get to pics right now. Internet must be bogged down with Amazon TP purchases...

Ok I was able to get to pics finally.





I shortened the shock mounts about 4". Those factory rivets are no joke!



We punched a bunch of holes in the axle webbing with a hole saw in the drill press. That darn web is 1/2" thick! We also made a couple of 2" riser blocks, which required some new U-bolts.

[KMcCullah]

The rear end is a page straight out of dads 1960's hot rodding book. The ladder bars used are from a mid 60's Chevy truck. They were cut down and modified exactly the way dad did it in the 60's. Welded directly to the axle housing. I was skeptical of this arrangement at first, but it proved to be an awesome set up. We had the rear axle in and out several times before we finally got it right.



We also softened up the rear leaf spring packs by removing the short leaves.





While we had the rear end out, and up on the stands, we added a back brace to it also. Given the axle tubes are 3/8 wall, I doubt it was necessary, but it looks good.







This is pretty much the same rear end set up that dad raced in the 60's. Under a '57 Fairlane.

[04sd]

Nice fab work

[04sd]

I went over to the FE board and read through your build. Awesome build and a great story.

[KMcCullah]

I went over to the FE board and read through your build. Awesome build and a great story.

Thanks for the kind words, Bill. It was a MUCH later in life, father-son project. Lol 50 something here and dad 70 something. It's never too late I suppose.