Maybe the adage “a little paint can go a long way” applies here but when the seller describes this truck as “rough” in the eBay ad we’re thinking that we are not seeing what he means or his standards are stratospherically higher than ours. To us, this 1973 Ford F-350 wrecker is a really basic and neat truck. Yes, there’s some wheel overspray on the tires but overall is there anything you see terribly wrong with this thing? The 360 engine would be pulled out and a big block would be swapped in…or it would be tuned up. The long throwing manual transmission would stay and ultimately we think that this truck with the ability to do burnouts and plant you back into that bench seat would be super fun.
It may be a Krylon rebuild but we would cruise the heck out of this truck. We love this era of Ford, especially with the round headlights and there’d be no shame in this game cruising into a car show or other event, right? The wrecker unit is missing a cable and maybe the winch. If you wanted to go whole hog you could invest the money to make it workable again or if you just wanted the look it wouldn’t be much of a thing to put a cable on there and a hook to make it look cool.
Is it just us or are we really missing something that would classify this truck as “rough”?
Scroll to see more photos and then the eBay ad for this 1979 Ford F-350 Wrecker
keep it the way it is and cruise it or use it! Ever since Roadkill rescued “Harry” the tow truck, i’ve been wanting one!
“Putty and paint, makes her what she ain’t.” It looks fairly good in the photos, but I wonder what that quickie paint job is hiding. What’s with the blue radiator?
Leave it pretty much as it is. If you must do something with the engine, Don’t bother with swapping in a different engine, chances are it’s not geared to go much above 60 anyway. Make it into a 410 (428 crank and Mercury 410 pistons) and put one of the generic RV cams in it and you’ll make torque for days (we had FEs in our old tow trucks and for some reason they’d always ping with factory cams, but RV cams would always solve that plus have better mileage, more power, yada yada yada.)
The clues say: Dump truck engine swap, junk yard fresh with paint to match. Assembled, running, worn out pile of parts. May contain more filler then one would ever want.
Those old beds rot out horrible around here. Looks to have home-made repairs.
That’s a $1000 junk car hauler. After you buy a Sling and a Winches. The top cables are boom raise/lower. The sling parts are going to set you back a fair bit. The winches a few grand. Another 2-3K you can add a wheel lift on it and tow newer cars with less chance of damage.