Frankenstein
Lives!
How to take a perfectly (almost)
fine '87 Ford F250 and turn it into something... uhh... different
Ford definately never made an F250 like this:
First a little background. This 87 F250 was a heavy duty (8600lb) four wheel
drive with a carburated 460, C6 transmission, and manual shift BW1356 Transfer
case. The drivetrain was all in EXCELLENT shape except for the rear 10.25 axle
was showing some wear. (Typical 10.25 pinion problem) The body was in decent
shape as well. The main problem with it was the rear portion of the frame had
rusted to the point that the metal was about 1/2 the thickness it should be,
so towing with it was becoming questionable at best even after reinforcing.
Mileage was another problem.. 9 mpg just doesn't cut it for a daily driver.
the doner F250 and the Bronco
My 351M powered 78 Bronco has been in serious need of a 460 for quite some
time, but I hadn't had much luck in finding one worth putting in or rebuilding.
Then one day I found an 4WD 88 F250 with an EFI 460 and overdrive for $900.
Everything about the truck was in great shape except for the body which is mainly
due to the salty roads of Wisconsin winters, and there wasn't a panel on the
truck that didn't have a dent of some sort in it either.
Seeing as how I have more motivation then money right now I decided to create
a monster by swapping body parts between F250's and motors between the 87 F250
and the Bronco. This would leave me with a good F250 to use for a daily driver
and tow rig with better mileage due to the overdrive, but enough power to tow
due to still having the big block. The Bronco would finally get it's 460, and
there'd also be a truck leftover that I could sell to someone in need of a winter
beater, to get more then the $900 I originally put into this project back.
I thought about putting the EFI 460 in the bronco, but I'd still have the mileage
and frame problem in the F250, and ease of (or lack thereof) trail repairs on
the EFI motor made me decide against it.
I also thought about just leaving the body as is between the two trucks, but
I figured I had the time so what the heck.
Here's what I started with:
- 88 F250 4WD EFI460, ZF trannsmission, BW1356 X-fer case, good frame, poor
body
- 78 Bronco carbed 351M, C6 transmission, NP205 X-fer case
- 87 F250 4WD carbed 460, C6 transmission, BW1356 X-fer case, iffy frame,
good body
After all of the swapping, here's what I ended up with:
- 88 F250 4WD EFI 460, ZF transmission, BW1356 X-fer case, good frame, good
body
- 78 Bronco Carbed 460, C6 transmission, BW1356 X-fer case
- 87 F250 4WD carbed 351M, C6 transmission, NP208 X-fer case, iffy frame,
poor body
Yea, I know... I have too much time on my hands...
Swapparama
Here's a list of what I ended up swapping. Some of the more intricate swaps
have links to more detailed descriptions in case anyone might be crazy enough
to do something like this. Click on the thumbnails to get larger pictures.
Body Parts:
- Bed
- doors
- fenders
- hood
- bumpers
- hitch
- rear gas tank
- complete interiors
- painted cab shells to match new body parts
Suspension:
- Springs all the way around to get the heavy duty ones onto the 88. This
was worth about a 2" lift and a higher payload capacity. Ride quality
is not noticeably different.. I cheated though. All I did was torch off ubolts,
and remove centering pin to release all of the leaves except the main. Frozen
spring bushings and I don't get along very well.
Axles:
- Hubs - The 87 uses an 8 bolt spindle and I happened to have a set of '76
3/4 ton International Harvestor Dana 44 disc braked spindles/hubs/external
type lockouts/axleshaft stubs. They are 8 lug and use an 8 bolt spindle as
well. Since I figured I'd never use them I swapped them onto the 87 so that
I'd have a spare set of Ford parts for the 88 ( I like spares). This was a
easy bolt on swap from stub shaft on out, using the Ford TTB knuckle.
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Binder Lockout- This is an external Warn Premium Hub, but
the cool thing is that it has a Binder Logo instead of a Warn Logo to increase
the "Frankensteinness" of this Ford |
- Parking brake cables
- Rear Drums
Motor:
- The 460 is going into the Bronco and I'll do a write up of that once I get
that completed
- The M from the Bronco was swapped to the 87
Transmission:
- C6 from the 87 goes to the Bronco in order to take advantage of the shorter
transfercase adapter
- C6 from a 78 goes to the F250, because it was laying around
Transfer Case:
- One of the nice things about Fords is that just about all of the transmissions
have the same splined output shaft. The transfer case bolt patterns are also
the same so swapping is just a matter of bolting one to the other regardless
of transmission or transfer case. This does not take into account linkages
and driveshaft lengths, but that's easy to deal with compared to trying to
modify a transmission output shaft or adapter bolt pattern.
- 87 BW1356 goes to the Bronco to take advantage of the 2.6 low range gearing
vs. the 1.96 gear of the NP205
- Picked up a cheap NP208 for the F250 so that I can keep my 205 in case the
1356 doesn't work out.
Drive Shafts:
- The C6 with NP208 using a long NP205 adapter shortens the rear driveshaft,
and lengthens the front driveshaft by about 3 inches each. The 1356 uses a
slip shaft, and the 208 uses a fixed yoke, so I had to find a driveshaft long
enough with it's own slip section. The 81 F250 had exactly what I needed,
but was too long, so I ended up shortening it.
Click for larger version
Using a cutting torch, I carefully removed the previous weld. Then cut off
the amount of shaft I needed to, and then pounded the yoke into the freshly
cut section of tube making sure the yoke was still in phase with the other
end and that it was straight. Then welded it in place. The truck doesn't vibrate
up to 75 mph, so no balancing seemed necessary.
- The front shaft needed to be lengthened, and since it's much easier to shorten
a shaft, I just went back to the junkyard, and found another rear shaft to
shorten down for the front.
Here is the finished truck
