Dad’s Father’s Day F100

My Dad bought this truck in 1972 at a dealership in Garden City. The first owner in 1964 was from Syracuse, KS from some receipts I found in the owner’s manual. Dad let my older brother drive it to the family farm in Pawnee Rock, KS on the weekends. I had to settle for shifting the gears or just steer since I couldn’t reach the pedals. My earliest memories were the extra clothes Dad kept between the seat and gas tank, and a gun rack in the back window. The truck passed hands to my Dad’s younger brother who needed a reliable truck in the 80’s. He eventually stored it in the farm shed for 20 years where it was almost forgotten about when my uncle started working in the oil field in Great Bend. For 15 years I wanted to fix up Dad’s F100 and give it back to him as a gift. Our uncle always told us we could have it back when we wanted to get it running again. With our Dad getting into his 70’s, my brother and I knew we needed to get started. In the spring of 2016 we got the title from our uncle and we worked on it for almost 2 years. My brother lives in Wichita a couple hours away, so we would meet every couple weeks to make decisions and figure out what needed to be done next. We didn’t invite Dad over to our house much the next two years because we didn’t want him to find out what was going on. We swapped out the old 292 and 4 speed transmission to a 6R80 automatic transmission with a 5.0 Coyote from a 2014 F-150. We wanted the truck to have power steering and vintage air for more comfort. We put a 3:73 Ford Explorer rear end under it, along with a Crown Vic front end to improve the handling along with disc brakes. We gave Dad the keys in June of 2018 at the farm in Pawnee Rock where it had gathered dust for 20 years. Dad thought my cousin had scrapped the truck years earlier, and didn’t recognize it was his ’64 F100 when my uncle pulled it up to the shop. It was an emotional two years working on it, and I am glad we got through it. I can’t say enough about the help at the front counter at LMC Ford. I got to know them on a first name basis from weekly trips to your store.