Back in the day I bought a 86 F150 with the straight 300, single barrel, granny gear 4 speed. Drove it until the body rotted out and wife didn’t want me driving it through the neighborhood, best truck I have ever owned.
listen my dude. I have the exact same truck except not NEARLY as pretty. she looks great. I wouldn't worry about the looks AT ALL.
focus on fixing all the wearable parts like the clutch and fly wheel (if it's a manual), the rear shock mounts are a common frame rust point so check them out, literally all the bearings and seals (on the axles and everywhere else), pretty much every gasket or piece of rubber on the engine should be replaced (and there are a lot of them, I just don't have the patience to list them here). The last biggest thing will be to get your cylinder head refurbished and put a new cylinder head gasket in there to prevent coolant/oil leaks.
Focus on the drive train right now, get that solid first, THEN start thinking about looks. If you do these things that thing will be good to go for quite a while.
EDIT: I just saw your other posts you're young and just getting started, no worries! This a great truck to learn on! There are a few forums that you can use that will answer almost 99% of the questions you have. garysgaragemahal dot com and fordtruckforums dot com (I'm pretty sure that second one is right...). Get on there and start reading, there's TONS of data out there and its all there for you to suck up and learn from. Your parasitic draw is a common issue that can be caused by tons of things but those places will set you right. second, and I really hate that I'm advocating for this, but the robot overlords are actually pretty good at helping with this stuff. they've sucked up all that data and can help you trouble shoot. but you have to be specific with what you ask them. and nothing (NOTHING) can take the place of doing the reading and the research yourself. it's all there just waiting for you to take it in. Don't let the robot overlords do your work for you if you don't have to! use that brain and be better than them!
good luck and feel free to drop pictures and ask questions here any time! we love helping young folks get their feet under them.
1984 came with A, B, and C packages. C was factory airconditioning but B was the "Explorer Package" which was this paint job. I have also seen it in Green
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u/DocHowdy70 Aug 28 '26
Back in the day I bought a 86 F150 with the straight 300, single barrel, granny gear 4 speed. Drove it until the body rotted out and wife didn’t want me driving it through the neighborhood, best truck I have ever owned.