I had always wanted to build one of these unicorns so I did a large amount of searching to find one.  Low and behold there was one that was within 20 kms from my shop.  This unit had been taken apart many years ago and one of the last owners decided a 351 Windsor engine was the ticket so they dropped it into the truck through the cab and then realized what work would entail to make it work.   Note to self……not a good idea!  I want to drive this unit within the confines of Brandon so that means missing potholes and not getting speeding tickets.  The engine in this vehicle is between the two and only seats in the front of the truck. The larger engine would be a pain to make work and the vehicle was not set up for that kind of weight allowance in the front of the vehicle.  The Ford motor company had put weights at the rear of the box underneath the floor so that the vehicle would not lift the rear end when one would brake hard when driving  in the forwards motion.  There are videos on you tube of this phenomenon and it does not look like fun.

These trucks were produced from 1961 to 1967.  They had inline six cylinder engines that ranged from the 144 cu to the 170 cu and finally 240 cu.  I had no such engine and at one time it wouldn’t have been too hard to procure one.  Today this is not the case.  I drove to Regina to purchase a 1974 Comet with a 250 inline 6 to bolt up the factory c4 automatic transmission.  I wrote about the building of this Comet last year.  I couldn’t send this car out to pasture after stealing it’s power plant.

Most of these trucks came with standard three in the tree transmissions but the automatics became more popular in the later years.  These trucks also came in a three window version as well as a five window version.  The five window version I like the most but beggars can’t be choosers so I was happy finding what I did.  Here are some photos showing the condition of the truck.  More to come………………..