Datamancer.net - Technical Art and Steampunk Contraptions

	This is my '56 Ford F-100 Pickup truck. It's dirty, ragged, fast, and dangerous...just how I like 'em. I've named it Papa Legba, after the Voodoo loa. Once the truck is 100% complete, I will redo this page into seperate sections, but for now, here's a brief overview.

It's a '56 Custom Cab F-100 with a T-Bird 429, C6 tranny (I would have preferred stick, but whatever), Torino driveshaft to a Ford 9-inch rear. I then added Edelbrock headers, 4-barrel 750 Holley carb, fiberglass tilt nose, front disc conversion, front and rear sway bars, front monoleaf lowering springs, rear axle flip, frame box and c-notch, rear air springs, entirely new interior, new custom H4 headlights and a bunch of new chrome.
When I first picked it up, it was relatively sound, no rot or rust...it just looked like total hell and ran a little rough.

The interior was pretty trashed, almost nonexistant , and the shift linkage was all screwed up. The thing wouldnt even go into park..the highest you could go was reverse, and that was bashing your fingers into the dash.	The first thing I did was get the engine running right, then I stripped the framerails, etched and painted them (seen above), and gave the engine and firewall a good general cleanup. Next came a full engine rebuild.


I stripped the whole engine down, rebuilt it with a new gasket kit and stainless hardware set. I added a bunch of new chrome, a polished aluminum 750 4-barrel Holley, and switched the throttle and kickdown over to a cable system.


After some body work, some filled holes, and a new paintjob. I also rebuilt the gauge cluster and added a new chrome bezel, 2 new gauges, tinted glass, and painted the needles red to match the color scheme.

New padding and carpeting, cut to fit. New chrome sill plates, new kick panels with chrome stainless carpet keepers, new speakers, and you can see the filled-in gas fill hole in the foreground.

Close-up on the kick panels	New chrome steering column, repaired and repainted steering wheel, and new horn button


New chrome E-brake handle assembly, new Classic Instruments gauges (with red needles) which I tinted to match the speedometer, new switches and bezels which I lettered red , and new ignition lock cylinder so both doors and ignition are the same key, new shift boot, and new chrome Lokar-style swing brake assembly with chrome pedal. The technicolor bird's nest on the left is the new E-Z wiring harness I'm installing. Below is the custom dash extension panel I'm making to house the air pressure gauge for the rear air springs, and the rest of my accessory switches.



Here's a test fit of the painted left side panel (excuse the zillion finger smudges)

The right side is notched in with a little concave hollow for the bottom of the glove box to swing into.

These door panels were made from some sheets of mica that I salvaged from the construction site up the street from my house. The chrome and vinyl bits were taken from my 64 Cadillac then mixed up, flipped around, trimmed, and generally reworked to fit the truck doors. when I was finished, I actually had enough chrome left over to make a strip all the way across the bottom with only one small seam about 2 inches from one side, so I'll probably end up running that along the bottom eventually. The front and rear edges will be getting modified polished stainless kickpanel retainers (you can see the ones I mean on the kickpanels in the next pic).

the view from the inside...

The tailgate is made from all 1 inch mild steel structural tubing. The F O R D lettering was salvaged from my old tailgate and the rounded rectangular frame around them was taken from the front wall of a scrap metal modern F-150 truck bed. I built out the sidewalls with two rows of 1 inch mild steel rods which made the bed structural and moved the fenders out to clear the tires after the axle flip.

Here's the rough mockup after a fully custom fabricated rollpan with license plate bucket and rounded corners.
Keeping with the red and black theme, I painted the old, pitted chrome 'V8' with a red face and black sides, and put a new 'FoMoCo' (Ford Motor Company) emblem on the nose. I think this is a much cooler logo than the blue oval. I wish they still used it. You cant see it too well in the pics, but its a big gear with a lightning bolt through it.

The headlights are 6-inch H4 conversions which are brighter and also do away with the sealed-beams, allowing you to just drop a new bulb in from the back. Then I drilled 3 red LEDs in a triangle around the bulb housing and wired them all together, then to a switch under the dash. You cant really see it during the day, but at night, they glow a wicked red....looks totally fucking evil. While I was in there, I also wired in two amber LED clusters inside the headlight itself to act as my directionals.
Well, thats it for now, I'll be adding more pics soon, so keep an eye on this page for the rest fo the bodywork, the refinishing of the wood bed, and a ton of other neat stuff.