In 1966, i was recently discharged from the army and was back home on the ranch where the family business was orchard care. I was living in El Modeno, California, (the eastern end of the city of Orange) when I first saw my '56 Ford pickup. I was driving down the street and there it was, parked in the front yard. There was a For Sale sign on it, so I stopped and paid the guy $600. It seemed like a fair price. It was a six-cylinder, three-on-the-tree F-100. The left front fender had been repaired, but that was the only apparent damage, so I drove it home. I was now the proud owner of a truck that would still be with me 37 years later. The next night, in our old red barn, I pulled the engine and the transmission to make way for the balanced and blueprinted 327 I acquired from my brother Bob. I sold the old engine and transmission for $700, and, at that point, was ahead 100 bucks. I bought a four-speed hydro GMC transmission, installed it, and drove the truck for the next 15 years.
I married my wife Randi in 1969. I drove the truck as an everyday work vehicle, and the weekends saw us taking many trips to the dump as we worked on our new home in Yorba Linda. As we looked forward to the birth of our son, we counted our cars and decided we could sell the truck in order to keep our '68 California Special Mustang and pay the hospital and doctor bills for the new baby. With a heavy heart, we sold our baby blue truck to my youngest brother Michael. That $1,600 went a long way back in 1971.
Many years passed and we still had the Mustang, which we were showing at the Orange Plaza car show where Michael had joined us. That's when Randi began convincing him to sell the truck back to us. A year later, after much cajoling, he agreed, and the truck was coming home. He sold it to us for $6,000, which was what he had put into it. Randi thought we were buying a driveable truck to buzz around in on the weekends like the old days. Instead, it was in parts - many parts. I was not daunted, knowing that I was going to restore it to a glory it had never known.
We began work on it in 2000 by sending it to Pro Design Hot Rods. Michael had some suspension work done by Mike Filion and crew and thought their work was great. This turned out to be a collaboration that was exciting, educational, and always interesting. The guys at Pro Design Hot Rods are professionals who care about the cars and their clients. I decided from the start that our truck was due for a Ford motor. I ordered a 514 SVO big-block crate motor and bought a built C6 transmission. The truck has a Volar front clip and a 9-inch Ford rearend. We wanted to make some subtle changes but keep the truck true to the original look - no shaving of door handles or badges. We kept the stock exterior and dash. All the gauges were recalibrated to match the new motor. Now the speedometer registers to 120 mph. We had the truck painted a pearl orange at Paint N Place in Anaheim. Jerry had painted our Mustang a few years before, so we thought of him first. I had always pictured it in a bright, glowing intense color, which turned out to be House of Kolor Ultra Orange Pearl. It glows golden on all the curved metal.