It was Ford blue, had a 351 Windsor motor, a three-on-the-tree manual transmission, and no frills. It belonged to my close friend Brent who had come up to Oregon from College in Oklahoma on a religious mission: to continue his pursuit of our Pastor’s oldest daughter Missy. For a little music to accompany this post you might like this.
At some point Brent decided I should learn to drive the Ford. The first thing I noticed was the astoundingly different driving experience compared with the Volvo. The clutch was so hard that if one held it in for long, ones leg would start to tremble, and the steering was more like remote control. Also the brakes were incredibly touchy, which made my first driving experience with it a bit touchy as well.
We were both heading to college in Oklahoma and I was invited to help Brent drive back with a truck and trailer load of Missy’s stuff. But first we needed to replace the rear main seal which was leaking oil like the Valdez.
We used a friend’s shop to fix it one warm spring evening. However we had forgotten to bring clothes to get grubby in and only had our nice clothes. Since we were alone we decided to just strip down to our skivvies. We got the seal replaced, as well as covering ourselves in oil and grime. But what we had not figured on was how were we going to keep the black goo off of our clothes when we put them back on? So we decided that we had to drive back in our skivvies as well. We got a few looks on the way home.
After a few camping trips going where no 2 wheel drive truck should go and some naked mountain biking (don’t ask) it was time to leave for Oklahoma. I had obtained a driving permit and we were all loaded up. Brent drove the first bit up to the Idaho border. There we made our dinner of beans and bread on the tailgate over an old Coleman stove next to the great Snake River canyon. I felt that there was nothing better in life than that (and I still think that by the way). We drove in shifts, never even considered staying in a hotel, or stopping for anything other that to fill up the tank or to empty our own.
We got a couple of cigars out and it was my turn to drive. It was not much different with the trailer and load than it was without it. Except that being a Ford with the Twin I Beam suspension front it wondered all over when full. The vague and overpowered steering didn’t help matters any either. But I learned to drive with one finger on the wheel hurtling through space and time at 11 miles per gallon.
We ran out of gas on our way through Wyoming. We were running low on gas and Brent was dozing in the passenger seat. I woke him enough to let him know that we were low and that there was no other gas stations until Laramie. Brent languidly assured me that all would be fine and fell back to sleep. Being the apprentice driver, I continued on. The needle got lower and lower until it was below the red line. As I crested a big long hill it sputtered and finally died. But as we coasted downhill around a bend, just at the bottom of the big grade, was a gas station! I coasted in to the pumps and Brent acted as if it was all meant to be.
We got into Oklahoma 48 hours from when we left Oregon. Old Blue never had a hiccup and I now considered myself to be a fully qualified driver.
The next time I was tasked to drive that F150 was for a trip up from Oklahoma, stopping in Kansas, South Dakota, Portland, and arriving in Salem Oregon. At Brent’s home in Rapid City South Dakota, we were to pick up an old teardrop trailer and take it to Portland for Brent’s dad to restore.
Old Blue was as dependable as one could ever hope an old truck to be, but it did have it’s quirks. Like losing all lighting intermittently, usually while coming down the Columbia River Gorge at night, or on a twisty dark passage of some sort. Didn’t slow us down. A young person’s eyes work better at night for a reason: to slightly improve the odds of surviving their stupidity.
And the transmission was a bit finicky. One of the first things I learned on her was that if you did things wrong in first gear, it would pop out of gear and grind. In which case one would have to crawl underneath the truck and mess with it to get it back right again. Through the course of driving Old Blue, I had gotten so used to this that I almost never let it pop out. However, on our way to Rapid City we had decided to stop in Mitchell. Brent insisted we see the Corn Palace (apparently a palace made entirely of corn). As we turned the corner to the Corn Palace, it suddenly popped out of gear and started grinding. It had never done that in second gear. So we crawled under it and got it back right, but now second gear was almost unusable. I only got to see a fleeting glimpse of the Corn Palace, boy was I disappointed.
From then on it was a pattern of, start in first, rev it all the way to near red line, jam it into third and lug it up to speed. Eventually we got used to driving it like that.
When we left Rapid City with the trailer we took off towards Wyoming. The ground was adrift in beautiful white snow, but the roads were well salted and plowed.
I was driving and we were coming downhill on a long sweeping curve towards Tall Grass Wyoming when I spotted a sign that said “Entering Wyoming Roads Unmaintained”(sic). As I was trying to comprehend that, we rounded the curve and just in front of us was the place where apparently the South Dakota snow plows stopped plowing and Wyoming began. It was literally a line in the road. On our side it was salted and plowed, on the Wyoming side it was several inches of sheet ice covered in snow. We were travelling at 70 mph and there was no time to slow down.
Brent said “don’t brake” but not knowing any better I was already on them. The trailer jackknifed and we went sideways. Brent held onto the dash and I steered with no effect. A huge wave of snow was raised on our leading side as we slid sideways down into the median at 70 mph. It was the trailer that seemed to keep us from rolling over as we went down the grassy snow covered bank and came to rest between the lanes in a shallow little valley.
As it turned out, the only damage was that the trailer tongue had been bent slightly and the teardrop trailer hatch had opened to let in a bunch of snow. We dug the snow out of the trailer and shut it back up. Brent drove it back up to the highway without a hitch and then he pulled over and got out, “drive” he said. I told him that there was no way I would drive again on those roads. He said “if you fall off the saddle, you gotta get back on and ride”. Brent also insisted we drive at at least 60mph. So for the rest of Wyoming it was listen and feel for wheel slip, let up gently on the gas, keep her strait, ease back on the gas. We made it to Portland and delivered the trailer without another incident.
I didn’t drive old Blue back as Brent was taking Missy back with him. But he told me latter that the transmission had popped out of third in Arizona in the middle of nowhere just when he was cresting a hill and as he rolled down the hill in neutral there was a little junk yard at the bottom. And as luck always had it for him there was a Ford three speed transmission waiting for him to install.
I never drove that truck again. But we did fill the heater vents with Limburger cheese when Brent got married to Missy. And eventually Brent’s brother in law bought the truck for his roofing business. Where as far as I know it served faithfully. I don’t know where the truck is now and I am afraid to ask. To anyone else, it might look like a junky old no frills Ford pickup. But to me and Brent it was a faithful companion over many miles and several formative years of our lives. I just hope that it’s still out there smelling like dirty socks and hauling more than it should for someone.
If you get one of these with the straight 300 six or the 302 the mileage will be the same. How do I know? My father had a ’95 F-150 with the Six which I borrowed on occasion after my divorce. My then wife and I had a ’92 with the “5.0”. I drove both and they got the same mileage, the 302 felt a little more peppier. Both trucks would haul anything and pull any trailer I could rent at U-Haul. Both got the same 19-20 mpg on the highway when not pulling a trailer.
I assume the pictures accompanying this article are not intended to be factually accurate as I noticed, maybe because I’m very familiar with the ’67 – ’72 Ford pickups, that the 3rd pic in this article is of a ’67 interior. It can only be a ’67 because of the inside door handle unique to that year only. The dashes are the same in the ’67 – ’72’s and then changed in ’73. I’ve owned a ’68 Ford F-250 for 27 years and have had a 360, a 429 and now a 300 6 in it. The 300 pulls just as hard as the 429, just not as fast.
As for Ford’s Twin I-Beam front suspension, I’ve driven mine for years and as long as you have an alignment person who halfway knows what they are doing, it is the best and toughest independent front suspension on a pickup. I asked the guy I always had line mine up why some people couldn’t do it right and he could. His reply was to set the toe-in at exactly 0*, not in or out even though some specks say it can vary a little. I never had any bad wear or poor handling issues either. There are hundreds of thousands of those pickups out there and in comparison,only a few complainers of their performance.
I will complain as to the headlight issue as I also own a ’79 Ford van and it always had issues even though I replaced the switch and dimmer switch and still had “lights out” issues. I fixed the situation by making my own wiring harness out of heavier gauge wire from the switch clear out to the headlights and never had a problem since. I believe these new Fords, (73 and newer) , used too small of wire.
When I rewired my ’52, I used the same gauge wire as the 6 volt system had used and figured the extra size accounted for brighter headlights I had always had, even when I had the old cloth/rubber/bare wires. Someone else had already changed it over to 12 volts prior to my acquiring it in ’78.
As to the shifting out of gear on the 3 spd. on the column, an Uncle of mine had a very rusty ’72 Ford and the cab mounts had rusted so much, the cab had settled and put too much pressure n the column. Sometimes in turning the wheel, and with no load on the gears, it would slip out of gear. A good old 4 spd. is a better combination and also a rust free body is preferable. A little preventative maintenance goes a long way in keeping a Pickup worry free, but then where would stories come from?
Don’t get me wrong, When it comes to trucks, I am a Ford guy. Recently thinking about that truck has made me want one. But as for looks, i really like the generation before, see CC above.
A friend’s dad bought a 78 or 79 F100 with the 6 and the column 3 speed. I remember that high-effort clutch. I also remember that with manual steering and a relatively small steering wheel, it was nasty to steer.
My brother in law had a 78 F-250 4×4. He is a farmer and used to enjoy mudbogging in the 80s. He bought a pos 70 Lincoln sedan with a single virtue: a rebuilt premium-gas 460. That truck provided a lot of fun and a lot of work (and used a lot of gas) for several years.
Those 73-79 Ford Trucks had a reputation of being able to take a lot of abuse, and were favored over the newer models for several years until the elements started to take their toll. I still see some of them on the road in the midwest, though they are usually pretty rusty.
“I assume the pictures accompanying this article are not intended to be factually accurate…”
I hope not. The shot of the two State Route markers is in New York State.
Wyoming, New York, presumably. Home of Brock Yates.
I’ve never actually been to Wyoming…New York…but I lived in the Buffalo area for many years. No other state uses that outline shape for their State Highway signs.
Sorry…hate to get picky with the nits…but…
Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK. Ford’s former UK subsidiaries Jaguar and Land Rover were sold to Tata Motors of India in March 2008. In 2010 Ford sold Volvo to Geely Automobile.Ford discontinued the Mercury brand after the 2011 model year. Ford introduced methods for large-scale manufacturing of cars and large-scale management of an industrial workforce using elaborately engineered manufacturing sequences typified by moving assembly lines. Henry Ford’s methods came to be known around the world as Fordism by 1914. Ford is the second largest automaker in the U.S. and the fifth-largest in the world based on annual vehicle sales in 2010.
After driving one of these- should be a piece of cake to drive anything.