1992 Ford F150-Jackson L.

I bought this truck on Veterans Day of 2013. My senior year of high school. I bought it for $400 and if I didn’t buy it, my friend was going to see that it died at a Day of Destruction race at the local race track. I grew up having OBS Fords around… I mean they really were not OBS yet. We had a 1986 F-250 Plow Truck and a 1989 F-150 when I started wanting to work on cars. Both of which had to be sold because my family moved. I made it a fact that I wanted a truck, and my parents Ford Excursion was not going to cut it. So with the $2000 of summer money I saved up I went car shopping. I first looked at a 5 Speed 2001 Saab 9-5 Wagon. Very cool, but would cost a lot of money to up keep and fix up. The second was a 1996 F150 that was in great condition, but was way overpriced. Then there was this grey 1992 f150. Red interior. 2wd automatic and an inline straight six. I saw it and loved it. It was rough but functional. I didn’t negotiate, I wanted it.
I brought it home, and my mother knew I was out looking for a truck, but my father had NO IDEA. Whoops! Big mistake. He hated it. He wanted me to buy a little Ford Ranger or Ford Focus. Also he didn’t like the fact it had a leaky gas tank and is smelled up the entire neighborhood.
I didn’t do much with it because I was playing hockey all winter, but when March came around I started tinkering with it. I knew I wanted to take the bed off and clean up the flaking metal on the frame. That took an entire weekend. We tried numerous breaker bars and finally cut the bolts out. We through the bed on a snow bank and set to work. I needed to replace the front bumper and my friend without me looking broke the headlight bezel off. So there I had to buy new headlights. That’s when it really started.
After I bought the headlights I wanted to fix the truck up correctly. My friend who helped me by the truck bought a 1996 F150 from New Hampshire with no Title. Worthless in Maine. So we pulled all the white body panels off it and stuck in on my truck. My dad came from work and thought I bought a new truck. I bought new fenders and patch panels and hired a friend to cut out the rust, and paint it. Not a bad deal for $1000. I was away at college at that point and I came home to a truck the actually looked nice.
We drove it around for a while and realized the engine overheats after a while and the transmission doesn’t shift into 1st. So we started looking at our options. We have a gorgeous truck with a terrible drivetrain. So what did we do? We bought a V8!!! I came home for spring break and my brother and I stuffed the truck in a barn and learned how to take out an engine. Learning the old school way of just doing it. Just me, my brother and a friend or two. We didn’t replace the transmission because the guy who we bought the engine from tried to scam us on the deal and say the transmission broke in half and he wanted the full price for the combo… we didn’t fall for it.
We got the 351w running nicely and I came home to find my brother had just ordered the new exhaust and ran it off the exhaust manifolds. I have never heard anything that loud in my life. We put a set of heartthrob glass packs and dumped it out like side pipes in front of the wheels.
We drove it like that for over a month and one day my brother was driving home and a wheel came off. Some idiot kid at the high school stole a tire wrench and thought it was funny to loosen the lugs on my truck. My brother was fine and the truck just needed new brakes. When it was loaded onto the tow truck I noticed the wheels were spinning when it was in park. That’s when I knew we needed to seriously look at replacing the transmission. We bought a 1996 f150 around the time of the engine swap and we were thinking about fixing that one up as our fishing truck, but I stepped on the back bumper and the bumper fell to the ground and took some of the frame with it. So we decided to take the 5 speed out and stuff that behind the 351w. It took about 4 weeks working after school and on weekends to get it in there. And man it is fun now!
The latest things we have done to the truck include a 4 inch lift upfront and a 2inch lift in the rear. Everyone thinks its 4×4 until they notice the fact there is not a locking hub in the front. We just put Tan Eddie Bauer Vinyl Seats from a Bronco in it and just put a new carpet it.
We love the truck. Not really sure what else to do to it. We may sell it, we may keep it. Not sure. We sort of want a 1980s style 4×4 or a Ranger. It’s hard to be in Maine with no 4 wheel drive. Either way, we are proud of what we can build. Don’t lose faith in the next generation of gear heads. We are alive and well!
-Jackson Larrabee (20) and Alex Larrabee (18)