2.5itim 96 f150 build

2

2.5itim

Member
figured I'd post up about my project/daily driver f150 maybe there would be some interest here.

It's not a clone/conversion but just being built the way I want it to be, i bought this truck about a year ago and drove it daily up until the last month or so. The previous owner bought it new in 96 and really didn't take the best care of it maintenance wise.
He said that it had a new reman engine put in 30k miles ago and transmission was replaced 50k miles ago, I don't know if I can really trust him but it did seem to run well and shift fine other than having a huge engine oil leak which is now fixed (ended up being the lower intake manifold).

So about 1-2 months ago I decided that I'd build the truck I've always wanted. I'll just post up what I've already done, future plans and some pics.

How the truck looked the day I got it.


I got a pair of 15x8 wagon wheels off a buddy that I put on the front and bought a pair of 15x10 cragar v-5's with 275-60r15 and put them on the back. I will be buying some cragar 15x7 v-5 for the front at some point.



I made my own grill and bought a pair of black headlight bezels



I hated the bench seat so mounted 2 foxbody lx bucket seats with an expedition center console and am in the process of blacking out all of the interior. The seats will get recovered with black vinyl at some point.


I also hated the red stripe so for the time being I sanded that down, repainted it and painted it black, I need to fix a few rust spots and fix a few dents and then I'll repainted the whole truck.


Painted my mirrors, no more chrome!!


Dropped the front with belltech 2" drop springs and belltech nitro drop 2 shocks, I actually hate the way this front end feels now and will be putting crown 3" lowering springs and duetsch tech shocks on it, that should stiffen it up a bit.


Painted the windshield molding black


Picked up a tfs1 cam and installed it, also replaced almost all of the gaskets and got rid of my oil leaks, painted the water pump/timing cover, valve covers blue and intake manifolds black, put in a msd coil, cap/rotor, new plugs, ford racing 9mm wires and bumped the initial timing to 15 degrees.








Deleted all of the secondary air injection system and pulled all the old exhaust out.




Installed long tube headers, 2-1/2" piping into a magnaflow Di/do muller and both pipes exiting right in front of the passenger rear wheel










And finally where I am now, I flipped the rear axle and dropped the rear 5". I've got a lean that I had posted about I am working on sorting out.




Anyways... hope you enjoy, sorry for the long post!!
I've got another 302 I will start to build into a 331 stroker with aluminum heads and some kind of poweradder soon.
 
looking good..
any more pics of the mating of the expy console.. I have one there in storage that I was going to put on my old 95 eddie bauer but sold it before installing it.
how does it work with cam..post up vid.. im curious how it sounds
 
If you still dont like the feel of lowered springs in the front. I would recommend to put the stock springs back on and do the I dream beam, djm drop.
 
It looks like you don't have any sway bars. IMHO, these never feel right lowered without them. I would also put the stock springs back in and do beams. Much better solution.
 
good build up mate and i agree with the other guys put djm beams in it,i put them in my 89 150 and what a differance only problem was i wish i had done it years ago,well worth the money,keep them pics coming through...cheers.
 
Trucks looking good. But I agree you need to do dropped beams and probably at least a lightning spring as well up front
 
Thanks for the kind words guys, I'm really liking how this truck is coming along and having a lot of fun doing it. I hadn't been on here for a few days so I will start at the top!

Stockr, the console is actually just sitting in there at the moment, I plan to make a box out of 1" angle iron that will mount to the floor of the cab and then will be able to bolt the console to it the same way it was mounted in the expedition. It has been on my list of things to do but the console doesn't move at all so it's kind of been pushed to the back burner.
I will post up the videos of the cam as soon as I figure out how to lol, the truck really woke the hell up!! It has about the same amount of power up until about 1500-2000 but after that it pulls so much harder and it sounds really good too. It has a really nice idle to it, I had to bump my idle up to about 900rpm's because it wanted to die on me at redlights but now I have no more issue.

Drfrazzy, I think you are right! I have the stock springs here so I will hang onto them until I can get some djm beams. I think that's the only way I will get the truck feeling "right" again.

Oilwell1415, you are correct. This was a no swaybar truck from the factory, they are definitely on the list to do. My buddy has a spare rear sway bar on a truck he's parting out I just need to find time to get over to do it. I think I'm going to have to go search thru some junk yards for a front.

Droppedf100, thank you for the approval. Your f150 has been a huge inspiration for me on this build up!! Your build thread actually made me decide on spraying it eventually but I think I'm going to go wth a wet kit. As for the lightning springs, those things are so dang hard to find!!! I searched for about a year with no luck, but I am still on the lookout.

- - - Updated - - -

Me and a buddy put up a spray booth in his barn to paint his horse trailers, he said he will leave it up for a few weeks so I can paint my truck in there. So I have a lot of work to do before being ready for paint!

Today I went over the body and found every little dent, there was probably about 30 of them but most were in the same areas, so I sanded the areas down, body filled the dented areas, block sanded the body filler and sprayed on a quick coat of primer just to keep it from rusting.

I still need to shave the holes from where the old emblems were and fix the rust over the rear fenders. I'm thinking about cutting the rust out of the affected areas and fiberglassing instead of welding in new patch panels, I'd like some advice here, should I fiberglass or weld patch panels?
My reasoning for fiberglass is these are places usually affected from rust and fiberglass doesn't rust so should last longer?

Anyways, the body is now completely dent free, here's some pics!!







 
Well dang, I guess I need to look harder lol.

Well let's see if this works, this is right after I got the engine back together with stock exhaust only a flowmaster 40 welded on and dumped.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft0Yf4mbDJM

This is a short clip of open headers with the cam.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CyXllnDPuRM

And now with my cam, lt headers, 2-1/2" pipe and dido magnaflow. It's just a idle video, I'll try to get one with some throttle soon. It's pretty quiet at idle but really loud wot
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ivAmeLcQi70
 
What happened to all of your pictures. How did the lx seat bolt in? Right in or did you have to make a new hole??
 
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