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Thursday, December 15, 2016

New Ride...

Well new for me anyway. It's a '96 Ford F-150. I'd been driving the '84 Ford F-250 for almost twenty years now and while it still ran fine, the heavy duty suspension made for a hard ride and the big V-8 was a gas hog. Since I'd sold the trailer a few years ago, there was no longer a need for a heavy duty hauler. The new ride's a straight 6, 5 speed manual, the last year they used that motor, so it should be better on gas.

Was originally looking for a similar set up in a Dodge Dakota, but they went to an aluminum head for their motors a while back, which don't do well in the extreme cold. It was really hard to find an older iron head one in Fairbanks that wasn't a total beater. Besides, would have had to build new boxes for hauling dogs, since it has a smaller bed. So the Ford means a lot less work. It was apparently well maintained by the second owner, who had it for 18 years. As my neighbor Bert said, it's way too nice a truck for me.

4 comments:

  1. It looks really clean. Around here a '96 would be rotted out from salt.

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  2. The DOT doesn't use much salt here, it's too cold most of the time for it to be effective at melting. But they do mix in a little in the spring and fall when it's warmer, so the '84 is starting to get some rust spots. But not like the midwest. I drove some rigs back in the day that had more holes than metal.

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  3. The Dodge I run at work is so rusty that the cab has settled enough to screw up the shift linkage. We bought a new cab from down south but there never seems to be a good time to do the swap.

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  4. Know what you mean. My first car was a '58 Plymouth. One day when I hopped in, the seat collapsed. The brackets on the drivers side had broken through the rusted floor boards. Wound up jamming a couple of 2X4's under the seat to shim it up and drove it like that for a couple of years until the engine expired. By then you could feel the cold air coming through the rust holes. The good old days!

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