Project “Gun Smoke” continues. It’s a 1989 Ford F-350 4×4 with a 7.3-liter diesel V8. Gun Smoke got back from the mechanic with a new brake master cylinder and a patched fuel tank system. Now, it’s time for us to turn our attention to the body work. Gun Smoke’s bed is in very rough shape with lots of dents and massive rust. The front fenders and other areas are rusted through as well.
One answer may be to purchase a donor truck with good body panels and bed and sway some parts out. This is precisely what Tommy and Kase are looking to do. They found a 1990 Ford F-150 2WD truck for sale for around $900. This F-150 has all of the same body panels as a heavy duty F-350 of the same era. The donor truck lived a lot of its life in California. It has almost no rust on the body or the bed. This could be a perfect donor truck.
The purchase is made. Tommy and Kase got it back to the office, but only to find out that the oil pressure gauge is reading zero. Nonetheless, we like the truck, so we already named it “Gun Smoke Jr”. Junior’s brake pedal feel is much worse than Gun Smoke’s ever was. We added some oil into the engine and took for a brief drive.
Junior is powered by a legendary 4.9-liter I6 gas engine. This straight six was originally rated at 145 hp and 265 lb-ft of torque. This is basically as much torque as a 5.0-liter V8 on the same generation. The I6 made makes most of its torque low in the rev range. The straight-six was in several generations of the F-series trucks and was known to last hundreds of thousands of mile.
After all this, we are now not sure if we should part out Sun Smoke Junior or fix it up and sell it to make more money to help project Sun Smoke – which is going to charity.
Let us know what you think in the comments below.
