1996 Ford F150 – Corey T.

My name is Corey Tucker, I’m 27 years old and this is my 1996 Ford F-150 XL. On September 23, 2022 hurricane Ian struck the southern part of state of Florida, severe flooding affected the area and I lost the truck I owned at the time. A few months later, I was searching Facebook Marketplace for a cheap A to B vehicle to get me by for a while. That’s when I found this 1996 F-150 XL for sale for $1,500 and I jumped on it immediately. Now, I wasn’t a Ford guy, but let’s be honest the OBS Ford body style is something everyone loved. The truck spent its life as a maintenance truck for the Pasco County School District in south Florida until it was sold at auction in 2019 with around 200,000 miles. This truck has the 302 5.0L EFI motor it and it was running rough, really rough. The previous owner unfortunately couldn’t afford the repairs and forfeited the vehicle to the mechanic. The mechanic wanted nothing to do with it and that’s where I come in. I looked over the truck and decided it was worth the $1,500. From there I started, it ran and drove, it was rough but it ran and drove. Turns out it was just a spark issue coming from one of the computers so I replaced that and I noticed 2 wires crossed on the distributor and swapped them around. Boom, the truck was running flawlessly but had minor issues, she ran a little hot and the directionals weren’t working and there was some slop in the front end. Well, an oil change, a radiator, ball joints, brake pads, flash module, wheel hubs, fuel pump, and a fuel filter later she was finally in good shape and treating me very well and that’s when I decided I wanted to fully restore this beast. I started by tinting the windows and replacing the dash bezels because they were cracked and falling apart. Then I replaced the headlight assemblies because they were fogged over and I figured I’d replace the taillight assemblies as well. Next, came the grill because that as well was dry rotted and cracked and broken so I figured I’d go with the chrome billet grill. Then I decided it was time for a paint job, I didn’t want anything fancy, I just wanted something that would look good so I went with a single stage machinery gray and it looks phenomenal. I’m far from done with this restoration, however, it has come a long way and all the work was done by myself and a few very good friends of mine that also love restoring old beat up trucks that everyone else just wants to throw away. I hope this story helps inspire other young men just like me to go out and do the same because young men like us are a dying bread when it comes to the restoration world.