Junkyard Gem: 1973 Ford F-100 Custom

The Ford F-Sequence has been the very best-advertising truck in The usa for some thing like eighteen,000 many years and the very best-advertising motor vehicle in The usa for about seventeen,990 many years (basically, the initially determine is 43 many years and we could argue forever about the latter variety based on hair-splitting variations between the F-150 and all the other F-Sequence models in contrast to their rivals). For the reason that operate vans continue to be beneficial for quite a few decades and the appearance of the F-a hundred and its F-150 successor didn’t adjust a complete good deal between the early seventies and middle nineteen nineties, it really is simple to forget outdated Ford pickup soon after outdated Ford pickup as I stroll the rows of my area motor vehicle graveyards. I have documented a number of of these vans around the many years, but the significance of the F-a hundred/F-150 warrants extra wrecking-yard historical past. Here’s a perfectly-worn 1973 F-a hundred in a Denver-area yard.

The develop tag displays that we’ve got a 1973 F-a hundred with two-barrel 360-cubic-inch V8, created at the San Jose assembly plant in California (now the web site of The Excellent Shopping mall). The original transmission was a Borg-Warner T-eighteen four-on-the-ground (cheapskate truck purchasers could continue to get a 3-on-the-tree at this time) and the differential had a 3.25:1 ratio (I use the earlier tense mainly because this truck has the search of a motor vehicle that has gone through loads of component-swapping around the decades, so this things may well have altered due to the fact 1973).

The F-a hundred continued as the entry-degree 50 percent-ton F-Sequence pickup all the way by 1983, but the F-150 appeared in the 1975 model 12 months as the “significant-responsibility” edition and inevitably grew to become the default commuter pickup for North The usa. Most junkyards go ahead and label F-100s as F-150s in their stock listings, so deeply has that designation come to be ingrained (even with the F-a hundred name— allegedly encouraged by the F-a hundred Tremendous Sabre airplane— courting again to 1953). “Custom” was the base trim degree in 1973 high-rollers went for the Ranger XLT versions.

This may not be the original 145-horsepower, 360-cubic-inch (five.nine-liter) FE-collection V8 engine that went into the engine compartment in Milpitas again in 1973, but it really is some member of the FE massive-block relatives, and the truck-only 360 is a great guess thanks to its undesirability in the eyes of velocity-crazed efficiency fanatics. I am a bit stunned that some 390 owner hadn’t grabbed the aftermarket tube headers by the time I got in this article. Possibly the swap fulfills have come to be glutted with these areas these days.

Furthermore, the granny-equipment-equipped four-velocity is just not in much demand from customers by your standard Mustang or Torino owner, although it really is really strong.

The mismatched camper shell and abundance of stickers tell the tale of a truck that expended its last many years as an un-killable utility beater.

The shift-knob hood release is a nice resolve for a frequent challenge on outdated cars.

I am not positive what is actually going on with this setup, but I feel it really is an armrest and industry-expedient door-release take care of created from supplies on hand.

How quite a few miles have been on it at the conclusion? I am guessing the last tally arrived to extra than 300,000.

Even out there with optional air conditioning!