1954 F-100 Rat Rod – The beginning

As most of you know, we are revamping the site and part of that process is moving our own personal projects into the blog.

I sold my 1954 Ford F-100 about a year ago, but still feel like documenting the process will be beneficial for many of you. If you have a fat fendered ford, or other classic truck, follow along and hopefully you will gain some insight from my project.

To begin the story of my rat rod, you have to travel back to my high school days when I owned a 1953 F-100. It was a fairly rusty truck with a cool flame job and a 292 Y-block engine with original drivetrain and suspension. Now anyone who owns or has driven a classic truck knows they don’t stop, steer or handle anything like a new one. Also a lovely quirk of the 1953-1956 pickups is the doors open at will ! The latching mechanism on the trucks was subpar when new, and once a few years loosened things up, the doors would not stay latched.

So fast forward to 2005, I was spending my evening browsing Ebay and looking at the classic trucks and spotted my 54. It was in primer, red wheels, absolutely rust free and it had a 396 Big Block Chevy and a 4spd. transmisson. Perfect, except it had the stock suspension. The builder had flipped the rear on top of the springs to lower the rear, and heated the front springs to de-arch them. This was fine for flat CA or FL roads which is where the truck lived most of it’s life, but it would not cut it in PA where I live.

So I bought the truck and made the following project list…

- Mustang II suspension

- Power disc brakes

- Power Steering

- Air Bag suspension on all 4 corners

- Bear Claw Latches on the doors.

- Hydraulic clutch

- Flowmaster mufflers and new headers

Next post I will detail the research of the suspension and maybe even the install of it.

- Kevin