1977 Ford F-250 – Nathan Shaw

My dad purchased this 1977 Ford F250 4×4 in 2012 from a one owner family. The truck was originally from Colorado, it was a stock truck with exception of an extended front bumper with an old Belleview winch on it. My dad drove the truck for a couple of years and worked mostly on mechanical stuff, he rebuilt the cylinder heads, did a valve job and some other normal mechanical repairs but for the most part the truck was very solid.

I had a 1951 ford car that my dad kind of liked, when I turned 16 and got my license my dad traded me the ’77 F-250 for the old 51 ford car. I drove the truck for almost 2 years before we started restoring it. My girlfriend and I wanted to have the truck fixed up in time for our high school proms, it was my junior prom and my girlfriend’s senior prom (different schools).

I work with my dad restoring cars in our shop, most of our work is for customers and we normally don’t have time to do work for ourselves. But in March 2015 we had a spot open up in the shop and we tore into the truck and gave it everything we had for 40 days straight.

I stripped the truck down completely, removing all trim, bumpers, glass, interior, everything. I cut the bed sides off the truck which were replaced with new LMC bed sides and outer wheel houses. We got new windshield, windshield gasket, all of the door seals, window felts, glass channel seals, pretty much full interior, side mirrors were changed to 1/2 ton style, the list goes on and on and it was all purchased from LMC.

I sanded the entire truck down to bare metal myself, I helped my dad fit the new bedsides on the truck bed which was removed from the truck, we worked together on body work. Everybody helped on this project, my mom refinished the original truck seat with the correct LMC seat kit, my little 11 year old brother helped, my older sister helped, my girlfriend Corinn helped, we all scrambled for 40 days. We used base coat clear coat which was wet sanded and buffed, we were still doing the final buffing on the paint the night before prom but we made it in time. The truck is stock ride height, 351M with 4 spd trans, divorced transfer case, 4.10 gears, D60 rear, D44 HD disc brakes up front, power steering, power brakes. The paint is a very slick black, Inside the bed we did a spray in bedliner, we added LMC OEM style wheel arch moldings, we did so much it’s hard to list it all. The tires are 35″ on 16″ aluminum wheels. Dual 2.5″ exhaust through thrush glass packs.

The truck was a big hit at the 2 different high schools it went to for both of our proms.

LMC was great to work with, thanks LMC for getting us everything we needed fast enough to keep up with the pace of our project. Me and my dad like building trucks, we have about 5 other vintage trucks waiting for their turn, when we get a chance to restore them we will be turning to LMC again for all of our needs.