1979 Ford F250 – Chad S.

Having grown up with my dad having a 1979 silver F250 that I drove to high school. I have always liked the 73-79 Dentside trucks. As an adult, I still had an affinity for Ford trucks. I was lucky enough to get a 1967 Bronco in 2016. As with all those trucks it needed some work. After a year of replacing panels, paint and body and mechanical work it was finally on the road. As time went on and the family grew and I was looking for my next project and needed something with a little more room and four doors. In 2022, I had been seeing the rise in popularity in the 60’s-70’s Ford crew cabs. I searched thru Facebook market place looking for a possible project. Most of the clean trucks were located on the West coast and sold very quickly. After a year, I had kind of lost hope of finding one close. But July 2023 one popped up on the Kansas/Oklahoma border only 3.5hrs from KC. Truck was in decent, original shape and minimal rust with only some damage to the front when the previous owner had driven off the road and into a fence. I hooked up the trailer and grabbed some cash and snagged it up as fast as I could. My dads’ truck was 2-wheel drive as was this crew cab but I have always like the 4×4 highboy look. So, I sourced some axles and steering components from a 2004 F350 and grafted those in. The original 460 was pretty tired, I was able to grab a complete rebuilt 400, C6, NP205 from a fella in Iowa that was doing a coyote swap on his ’78 Bronco. The interior needed redone so I headed down to LMC to pickup new foam and seat covers and carpet. I was not able to find aftermarket headliner so I made my own out of a cow hide. I wanted to keep the patina look so I straightened out the front fenders the best I could and ran with those for a few years always on the look out for a matching set of replacements. After 2 years of searching, I happened to catch Solomon from “Ford Era” on YouTube doing a tour of a salvage yard in Pella, Iowa and in the back ground for a split second I saw an extended cab that looked to be the same color. Two days later, my oldest son and I ran up there on a Friday to see if they would match. They were indeed the right color, so we snagged them just in time. Not 20 minutes later, a fella came in a purchased the whole rest of the truck for the extended cab for his project. I plan on keeping this truck forever and I am lucky to only be 15min from the LMC warehouse so can quickly get all the replacement parts I need.