BMANS59

The below truck was a project my father-in-law, Dave Miller (Poppy), took on as a gift to my son Bryce (bman) when he was first born.

The truck was built from 3 wrecks.  The most complete was the 1959 F-100 4x4, but we were missing gauges, a repairable front clip and a buildable motor.  We scrounged around the upper Mojave region and found a front end from a 1958 and a 1960 crew cab buried in the sand of a junkyard outside Barstow.  We drug the remnants back to Bakersfield and spent the next 2 years taking everything apart and putting it back together during spare time at the station.

I'll make the rest of this brief...  We ended up using the front lower cab off of the 58, it was pretty straight and the round turn signals are SO much better looking than the rectangular ones on the 59.  The 60 had a nice dash and when we looked at the state of the motor, we found it extremely tight.  The speedo showed only 27k miles.  We rolled the motor, checked clearances, found it tight and clean inside, so we bench fired it and it fired with little assistance, so we cleaned it up and dropped it into the frame.  Everything on the truck is original to the best that we were able.  4-Speed on the floor with an original 292. I loved that we could shove 33 inch tires under it without touching the suspension. Dave was a wrench turner, not a restoration man.  He has never done a restoration other than this.  It was a one time gift of love to his only grandson.

The truck was given to my son by his grandfather when he was 3 years old, that was in 1996.  My family moved to Colorado 4 years later and the truck stayed with Grandpa until Bryce got his license.  Unfortunately, we lost Dave quite suddenly in June of 2009, two months after Bryce turned 16.  He never got to see him drive the truck.  The truck will be coming back to Colorado with us over Christmas break to be with Bryce as Poppy wanted. Dave's spirit will be living with us too.