A 1949 F1 preservation

[CSArno]

a little back story.. a friend called last week to tell me about a '49 F1 listing that was on craigslist. the truck was supposed to be in original condition last driven in 2002 in Caribou Maine. i called, turns out a widow had it, her husband passed away a couple years ago and she was just getting around to selling his things. they bought it in Pa 30 years ago and it was his pride and joy. after 2002 it went in to storage. inside for the most part. listing said all original, motor stuck. had it appraised, was a 6.. in the back of my mind i thought this was too good to be true... but i set a time to go look at the truck yesterday. After all, the pics looked pretty decent.. took the trailer and cash. it was a 3 hour drive one way... got there and it was 20 degrees with the wind blowing about 25 nothing but potatoe fields all around.. it took about 2 minutes looking at the truck before we knew it was coming back with us. it was an all original truck in great shape especially for the northeast!

got back home about 7:30 and pushed the truck in the garage. i just had to throw a battery in it to see if the horn worked. that would make me smile after a long day.. Beep, Beep it worked as well as all the lights, gauges moved, and heater motor worked.. unhooked the battery for the night..

this morning my main goal was to get mmo in the cylinders to start working on that stuck motor. got the plugs out and squirted a bunch in each cylinder. throttle was stuck closed on carb so had to take that off to dump some mmo in the intake. after that, i cleaned the mouse nests out of the cab and drained the engine of something that was once engine oil and see how many studs i could break getting the wheels off.. turns out none..

i decided to try to rock the truck while in gear to help free up the engine. i did that a few times and then bumped the starter to see what happend. starter made a thump and nothing moved, bumped it a few more times and it made a different noise, looked under the hood and saw where some mmo had come out of a spark plug hole.. rocked the truck in gear a little more and bumped the starter a few times and sure enough it broke free and spun over with ease! i was a happy man!
after some clean up of mmo that was all over the garage including wifes car, i checked for spark... nothing. looked at the ignition system for something obvious. all looked good. decided to save that for another day as i wanted to do a compression check on the cylinders.. some were good, some were bad, zero bad. probably have some stuck valves. i'll let it set with more mmo before i take the heads off..
but hey, the horn still works. Beep, Beep!😃
here are some pics of the truck.
if anyone knows how to get more than one pic in a post using an ipad, please let me know.
-Chris

[CSArno]

another

[CSArno]

and another

[CA Victoria]

What a gem, look forward to future updates.

[CSArno]

this is fun

[CSArno]

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and another

[CSArno]

front inner fender to show how little rust there is.

[TStiles]

Awesome find! Please keep us posted on the progress.

[CSArno]

the worst rust on truck. front of bed under that patch.

[CSArno]

and today we have fire! well spark anyway.. wasnt too big a deal to make it fire. i had ran some emory cloth through the points the other day and still no spark. today i put a test light on the points and found out that they still werent making good contact. a little more work with emory cloth and i had spark at the plugs.
still have a couple valves stuck open.. the cylinders i can get compression on are good. around 110psi
if anyone knows some magic i can use to get those valves free without pulling the heads, i'm all ears! all the valves that you can see through the spark plug holes are moving. had one of those that was stuck but lightly tapped on it and it opened and closed.

[cobra5laddict]

I would pull the intake and address things from the lifter valley. It would also be good insurance to have a new intake gasket. You never know what may have crawled down the carb to build a nest either. Once the intake is off you can soak the valves with MMO.

Looking forward to the progress!

[Ross F-1]

I know it's exciting to hear them fire up, but think of all the sludge that may be in there, set up like concrete. I'd pull the intake as Cobra said, not only to work on the valves but to judge how badly it's sludged. It's real easy to drop the pan on these, less than an hour's work.

And ditto on the mouse nests. Last engine I bought appeared pretty clean and had been stored inside for 20 years. It had enough acorns under the intake and down into the timing gear to prevent it turning. Half the seat's padding was under there too.

[CSArno]

Thanks for the advice, I plan on taking the intake and oil pan off to clean out the sludge.
I was able to free up all of the valves with a bit of an unconventional method. Find the biggest size allen wrench that will fit in to the spark plug hole, rotate it so it sits on top of the valve that is stuck open and tap very lightly on end of the allen wrench. Make sure the valve you are tapping on is supposed to be closed. It took very little tapping to get the valves to snap shut. And this was after several soakings with MMO. A couple I had to rotate through a cycle a couple of times and tap back down before they were completely free.

[Walt Dupont--Me.]

Chris, for a quicky you could remove the fuel pump and with a light look down in the valve spring area. Make sure a mouse don't jump out. Walt

[Vanspeed]

I really like where this is headed. Reminds me of my 48 I just sold this summer. All I did was restore it mechanically and electrically. I also did the interior but that was it. It was a great pickup. Looking forward to more. If I can help out in any way let me know. My old 48.

[CSArno]

it runs, it runs! runs pretty darn goid for the engine and valves being stuck less than a week ago.. this thing purrs like a kitten. picks up its own fuel from an aux tank (gallon plastic jug) the throttle plates on the carb were stuck, this morning i freed them up and gave the bowl a quick rinse with carb cleaner. didnt expect much from it but it works perfectly.. this truck hasnt ran in 14 years! the heater and vacuum wipers even work.. let it warm up for awhile then drained the motor oil which had an abundance of mmo in it..
so excited!
trying to upload a video without much luck. I'll have to upload to youtube and post the link.

great looking truck Vanspeed, pretty much exactly how mine looks except its a '49

[Ken Crans]

Nice truck! You can keep like Vanspeed or do a buff and polish like mine.lol Ken

[CSArno]

Great looking truck Ken! I'm going to keep mine the way it is for now. I want to get everything in good running order before making it shinny. I don't have to do anything to the body to run it like it is including wax it.
I drove it today! Have a big field at my house and made a couple laps around it. No brakes so didn't get too crazy.

[CSArno]

bad news on the engine. after it back fired from the base and darn near stuck the breather cap in my garage ceiling (no joke) I did another compression test and have zero compression on #3 cylinder. put a little bit of oil in the cylinder and re tested and it came up to 50 psi. waited a bit and tested again and it was back to zero.. the valves are closing. #8 cylinder is 65 psi. rest are 95-100 psi. thinking i have some bad rings.. hard to believe as good as it runs.. does have a fair amount of blow by. i didnt expect much out of it because it was stuck when i got the truck. guess i'll have to pull the heads and oil pan off and go from there..
drained all the fluids tonight and worked on the brakes which shouldnt be a big deal to get working. had the E brake working in about 10 minutes after lubing up the splitter on the bottom of the bed and spraying some down the cables. all the brake drums came off and everything looks in great shape. all the bleeder screws loosened right up except for one front one that was broken off but i was able to remove the wheel cylinder and drill and extract that with an easy out without any trouble.. how often does that happen?! Will have to replace the steel brake lines.
i could kiss the guy that owned this truck for the last 30 years because he put never seize on EVERYTHING when he replaced it.
truck is such a joy to work on when you're not breaking everything you touch.

[FortyNiner]

Good to see another 49 back on the road. It is exciting, in an old truck sort of way, when 66 year old stuff just plain works as designed. Enjoy the ride.