96 F150 camp truck.

[83chevyk5 [Veteran Member]]

The start to my current project/daily driver.

In an effort to save money on gas and stop the wear and tear on my last truck I picked up this old man f150 from a friend.



It was set up prefect for a driver, a 4.9L (300ci inline 6) backed with a m50d2 5 speed. Xl package so vinyl interior and air conditioning. Bench seat up front so everyone can still ride.
Only thing I didn't like was it had 28"s on the back and 30"s on the front and spun way to high on the highway to get good mileage.

First thing to do was a set of 31x10.5 all terrains to get me in the sweet spot for rpm at cruise.



It was then just driven for quite a while to work and was doing a fine job at that and doing truck stuff.



After we got done with our house and decided to part out the suburban I set my sights on making my dependable daily driver into a project, cause I'm smart like that!
After coming to the realization that I can't afford or need a built rig with how I like to use our rig. Taking what I've learned from a life time of car camping and what I would like to do in the future Ive come up with a build plan that should work well.

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[Reserector [Veteran Member]]

Needs change. That looks like a good platform for almost anything you want to set it up for.

[83chevyk5 [Veteran Member]]

Since I'm unable to leave anything alone I started to gather up parts to make this machine work for me. First thing was getting 4x4 since just a one wheel peel doesn't work to well in our clay.



After a day of degreaser and pressure washing I got most of the red clay to come loose.



I went ahead and replaced the pivot bushings with new rubber units, and plated the back side of the passenger beam where they are prone to bend.



After a while hover mode was engaged and the front able was thrown under to replace the stock TIB front end.



From the factory 4wd trucks got a 2 inch block in the rear to sit higher and maintain the rear end up rake, the 4wd front end gave a nice level ride for my truck.





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[83chevyk5 [Veteran Member]]

It was driven in poser mode for quite a while while I decided the direction for this build.

So the plan......
4 inches of lift, 2.5x14 coilovers for the front, deaver springs in the rear with longer shackles and a 2.5 x 16 or 18 depending on what it travels. Engine and bed cage to support shocks and stiffen up the loose noodle frame.
33x12.5 tires, maybe 35's at some point.

I'm going to run my 300 for the time being and start to gather parts for an ls swap and 4l80e. I've not been impressed with the ford engine offerings of this era and for the cost of building a 302 or 351 I think I can swap in a less complicated engine making more power with better mpg. And it should tick off the ford guys...

For my camping set up I want to try a RTT, they aren't to bad on pricing used from the instafad crowd. I think for boondoggle style camping that we do it may work out. It will be mounted low on the back of bed over drawers of some sort.

After riding in my old leaf sprung solid axle rigs for so long I think this should work very well to be able to not get beat to death on rough roads and net decent mileage for a camping truck.

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[83chevyk5 [Veteran Member]]

Being as this build isn't going to be cheap to do properly I'm going to do it in stages.
Currently we are on V1.5, V1 being stock 4wd.

Scrolling fb market place one evening I came across an add for a ford lift kit, guy didn't know much about it other than what he found with the part number and he said he found it in a shed of a house he bought.

A couple hundred bucks and a ride into La. netted a complete front and rear 4 inch superlift superrunner lift kit.



Now those who know me know I'm a sucker for old 4wd stuff. I knew the radius arms on this kit were an older version, but going through the boxes I geeked out, the date code on this kit is 06/07 of '94, 2 years older than the truck and top of the line for the time.







The fact that this kit survived in original packaging in our environment absolutely blows my mind.

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[83chevyk5 [Veteran Member]]

While burning down vacation days between switching careers I went ahead and threw the lift on for V1.5.
I lucked out and only had to deal with 3 or 4 rivets on one radius arm mount.











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[83chevyk5 [Veteran Member]]

I also went ahead and addressed a comfort item as well. Some nice silverado buckets and jump seat/console replaced the worn out bench seat.



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[83chevyk5 [Veteran Member]]

And to bring us up to date, I went ahead and brought the truck from sema quality to driver quality by actually adding a tcase and front driveshaft. The only pain was that I couldn't find a factory rear driveshaft, I could find them for everything except a supercab 4x4 manual trans. I found a guy in Florida parting out an automatic supercab and got the shaft, took a little off and squared it up in the barn.








We recently moved east a bit to be closer to my work, so I wanted to thin out the scrap pile and threw together a new bumper for my prelander.





And had to see what 38's would look like before they went to their new jeep.



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[83chevyk5 [Veteran Member]]

I've got a set of 15x10 wheels for, I just need to find a decent set of tires to throw on and be don't for a little while.

The next mod will be removing the drop brackets and cutting out the lower ball joint ear to move it out and correct camber for the lift springs, and it needs new balljoints.

With the drop brackets and drop pitman arm it has awful bumpsteer. V1.5 has definently shown me why TTB has such a bad wrap.

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[Reserector [Veteran Member]]

I remember having to make my steering link and track bar the same length and same angle to get rid of the bump steer.  I'm guessing that the TTB doesn't have a track bar?