How We Made This 1968 F100 Drive Like a Mustang GT500

We have a really cool 1968 Ford F100, a classic pickup truck from that era. And everybody wants to have like the coolness of a classic truck, but the performance of a Mustang. Supercharged GT500. This thing gets down. >> Hi everybody. Welcome to the Fat Fun Garage YouTube channel. and we have this really cool 1968 Ford F-100. And we're really excited to just tell you all about it, take you for a ride, and so we're going to walk around it and try to discuss a lot of the reasons why we did what we did to it and why the customer kind of chose what he what he chose. And so we want to go over this one. This So this one belongs to uh some friends of ours. uh they live in New York and we've kind of coined this truck Stark because if you've seen any in the Iron Man shows, kind of has those same color features, right? Iron Man's super cool. We thought this was super cool. So, one thing about this is it has a really nice kind of like this dark burgundy paint. It it almost looks almost a little purple, a little red, but it's got a really uh deep burgundy, almost brown paint job to it and a lot of pearl in to it. So, we really like this color. Out in the sun, it can look uh two different colors. It can look like a really brilliant uh color, but at the same time, in the shadows, looks really dark. So, we like it. And then, of course, we got a lot of cerakote color. So, this color right here is a really nice color. We actually tinted it uh a cerakote color with a couple different colors to kind of get this look that we were after. And so we were looking for kind of this this bronze gold and burgundy deep, you know, uh pearl color. And then as we kind of go around, we can kind of take a look at these wheels. Of course, we got some shot wheels and we've got this little lighter titanium color that kind of bridges the gap with with all the colors here. So, um super cool, super rowdy. and then, you know, done meticulously. The body work on this is flawless. The guys did a phenomenal job. It's gapped. It's lined. There's nothing out of out of place on this. And so, we're going to talk about some of the upgrades we did. So, right now, you can kind of take a look. We've got this hood insert right here. It's all been metal fabbed in here. And then we, of course, we've got these little vents, these little hex vents that allow some of the air to come out. Uh, it also gives you kind of that Mustang look. We talked about, you know, the look and performance of a Mustang. Well, this kind of helps with that look of the Mustang, right? If you go back into the, you know, the the ' 60s, late60 Mustangs, uh, you would have seen some things like this tucked in the hood. You also would have seen some of these on the side of a Mustang. You also see this as well. And of course, we've kind of tucked this right into the side of the bed, which kind of again a nod to the Mustang. So, does it really provide a lot of high performance cooling? Uh, I'm just going to say aesthetically it looks really cool. I don't know that it's actually doing a lot other than it looks cool. It might be doing a little bit. Hey, we've never tested it. We never put it in a wind tunnel. So, uh these are our fat fender garage door handles. And then, um we also serak coated those. Cerak coated this. Of course, we got some billet mirrors that were all cerak coated as well uh to match. And then as we roll around in the back, you can kind of see the bumper to match. And then you've got, you know, handle and everything. But but take a look at a lot of people have asked us about just like this little seam right here. You can just kind of take a look at how perfect the guys made that look and just kind of part part of the body. We kept it. A lot of people would weld that up. We kind of like the look of breaking that up, but at the end of the day, you know, we we've seen so that and made it kind of just look clean, but keep some originality. Uh the bed's been raised because the truck's pretty low. Widen the tubs. We uh raised the bed up and then we put inner panels to kind of still keep it a truck. We didn't like want to flush it out, but then created all these inner panels in here to kind of keep it more of a classic look. And of course, you put your fuel in here. So, we talked about this truck being super low, but this truck didn't actually start off its life this way. There's a lot of people that would take a two- wheelel drive truck and they'll make it into a four-wheel drive, right? This so happens to have been a four-wheel drive truck. we made into a two wheel drive. And so we went reversed. Uh we had a really nice candidate uh that we started with. And so it happened to be where the sheet metal was was super awesome. It worked real good. One little thing that I like to show off here, this is a cool little billet LED light. And so we actually have that on the website. You can go purchase it. fits in, but it is better if you're doing a truck where you're doing all the body work and you can kind of body work to it and just get it to have a really nice fit. More of a custom piece rather than just a direct replacement. So, super cool. But the coolest thing about this for me is I love how they look, but I also love how they drive and how much power they have. And we're going to pop the hood here and just kind of talk about some of the features underneath it. So, this has our hood hinges on it. And so if you kind of just take a look at how easy that is to go up, uh when you lower your vehicle, there's a lot of uh things that have to be done to get the wheels up. And then of course you got some clearance issues. So we got um some hood hinges on here that are uh hinges we make and uh inhouse. And so we sell those on the website. So, if you're looking for just a little bit better hinge, of course, it only works with like lowered vehicles because a stock inner fender actually comes up in here and actually ties into this spot. It doesn't it's really not conducive for you to like put it in a stock application. But in a lowered application and when we have to replace this and create some space for wheels, this actually uh works out really well. Uh, of course, we got a Gen 3 Mustang illuminator motor. It's with a Whipple supercharger. You got the 3 L. works out great. I don't think you need anything bigger than a three liter. There's a lot of people are putting the 3.8 liter. My personal opinion, don't do it. It's a waste of money. We've got our wizard radiator that we cerak coated black uh designed to fit nice and flush here, look nice and tight. And then, of course, we got, you know, these brushless fans and everything. Real simple. Wanted to keep it clean. We didn't want to, you know, have it real fussy here. And so you'll notice a lot of the AC lines and heater lines and a lot of stuff are are kind of obscure and hidden. Goes up and down super nice. We're real happy with it. Uh we've got a a brake booster master cylinder. And I've had some people ask us, you know, why didn't we put a hydroboost? Why didn't we, you know, go manual brakes? Well, if we can squeeze a booster in there, we will. The brakes work awesome on this, you know, this truck. They they stop on a dime. We've even put that same setup in like a four-wheel drive pickup on 37s. And sometimes you get it adjuster right, it'll throw you right through the windshield. It stops really good. And often times we've noticed that, you know, when people just do, you know, brake booster, master cylinder, just between the booster and master cylinder, they don't quite get that spacing just right. So they're either pushing too early or pushing too late and affects how the brakes are performing. So everything is designed to work and it's designed to work a certain way. And if you deviate from that, then it, you know, things don't work very well. So, we've got a 132 mm throttle body. Looks kind of cool. Not always necessary. You can actually go a 4-in round throttle body to a 5- in intake and it'll work great as well. The difference might be 15 horsepower quite frankly. And but when you're dealing with a supercharger and you have that much horsepower, 15 horsepower is really not that big of a deal. So, real real simple clean. We've had this truck uh debuted at SEMA a year ago. customers had it and then of course he gets home and then it snows and then he sits it in a bubble bag of you know that bubble garage they have and it sits in there. He gets it out and and um he starts driving it and a couple little things that he noticed and and one is a key fob kind of wasn't working well. He also thought it was having some starting issues but I think he forgot you have to have your foot on the brake and clutch at the same time. few little things, but so he happened to be coming out this way and so gave us an opportunity to kind of, you know, check it all out, kind of give it another clean bill of help for him. So, he's good to go. So, great customer. So, we pretty much took care of all that stuff under warranty for him. Uh, just to make sure he's happy and and those tiny little things. But the good news is is we got to have it back so we could do a really cool video on it, which we actually didn't get to last year because after SEMA, they came here and then they picked it up and took it home. Anyways, but let's take a look on the inside and, you know, really just kind of give you a good a good feel. Okay, so inside this truck, of course, we got a 6B trim manual transmission. We got a push button start. We got, you know, this has all been cerakodated. We got the decode Dakota digital RTX gauges. And aside from the center console, all this other stuff in here is actually one of our interior kits that we sell online. Got a little bit of a suede headliner. And then he's got like a little phone charger here. So, if you put your phone right there, you can charge. And of course, uh there's your key fob. And then you've got pretty cool little console. You got the base knob right here. You can put some papers there. Your speeding tickets. This is where you put your speeding tickets right here. And uh cuz uh one of these days I'm going to I'm going to need to put one in here. Real simple classic look. You've got your you know all cerakodated restood AC system. And then we also we also make this little piece right here. We have this beautiful leather interior. Um and it's uh from Apex. Super nice. Smells super good in here. And of course it has kind of that bronzy kind of distressed look. You know that's what the customer wanted and of course that's what he got. And so with all that, we got to go driving. I say let's go for a drive and let's see how she performs. We will obey all traffic laws and rules and we will not be. Okay. All right. I'm ready to go. You guys ready? All right. Let's go. I'll break and collect. That was fast. So, right here, check this out. So, we got our parking brake right here. If I was to push it, it wouldn't go off is what I'm told. And it only works when we're the keys off and parked. This right here is our microphone because we got, you know, connect with my phone wirelessly and I that's where the microphone is for talking on the phone. And then of course you got wipers and headlights and push button start and and then a radio with a couple nice 10-in subs in the back. All focal throughout the whole thing and just a nice super clean sound with the Mosone amp. And so it's all DPS sound. And so you get a really good crisp, clear music. And we kept the wing windows because I don't know, I'm a little bit, one might not know that I am a little bit of a purist. I just like some things to still be 1968, right? Like if you get rid of everything, it's tough. Also, check this out. One of the things we did is we actually had this column that was 2 in closer. And we forgot at the time that he had a stick shift. And so the column was actually a little bit closer. So there's a little bit more room here now because one of the things I noticed was we probably should have made a change. And so we actually changed the steering column out and put a little bit shorter column in here for him so that he could actually, you know, benefit from that just having a little bit more more space there. So this actually is way better. I love it. I'm super happy with it. I'm glad we did it for him and he's going to be super happy with it. You know, the braking's, you know, I don't know. How'd that feel? >> Felt pretty good. >> Yeah. You want it to You want to be able to hit the brakes hard and and, you know, have it have it work. But, yeah, it's super smooth. Like the ride quality for, you know, for a performance vehicle, performance truck, right? Feels great. You know, we're super happy with it and love the way it um love the way it feels. You know, you know, this uh is a spark steering wheel. It's all been leather wrapped, you know, to match. We got the two little black stripes here. If you kind of take a look here, we got these lines here. And so, we wanted to kind of incorporate it there. Look at these two lines right here. And so, there's a lot of these like little features in the truck that are all designed to go together as we kind of planned it all out. So, that's a lot of the things you pay attention to and trying to tie it all in. So, wind noise and all that stuff. I mean, that that's just something you're no matter who you are, you're going to have to chase that just a little bit, right? We got wing windows here. It's all been sealed up. All new weather stripping, but even then, you still might still might fight it a little bit. And so, for us, it's just like chase it, chase it, chase it. Rattles, noises, wind noise, right? You're constantly just like, "Okay, I hear this noise. I hear this noise." I mean, ultimately it's a 1968 aerodynamic of a 1968 and also, you know, seals up like a 1968, right? So, back then they weren't driving these, you know, 100 miles an hour down the road. And so, you're going to be fighting you're going to be fighting just if you kind of look here like it, you know, it's it's it's it's responsive, right? And so you're not starting to turn like it's it's turning. If I turn the steering wheel, it's it's it's going to go. And so a lot of that comes down to just a lot of the geometry with your your chassis, your suspension, the power steering rack that you're using, right? If you're using something that's made in China or it's a Reand power steering, then you might not get that connection. You also might have too many him joints built into it and so you're getting slop. We work really hard to have that, you know, right out of the steering wheel column right into the into the rack, right? And the less joints that are in there, the more direct that's going to feel. But that has to come down to exhaust, right? Does your exhaust allow for that kind of clearance? So, a lot of the stuff that you know happens at Fat Fender is that because we build trucks and we also sell parts is that we're taking into account all that stuff, right? So, if you buy a chassis from us, for instance, we're going to make sure that the power steering racks the best on the market. It's made in the USA. All the parts and fittings are designed to go together. Our headers and everything that are on this are designed for you to take and use our parts and products of a steering column and kit to go direct right into the into the power steering rack. And so that's going to give you the the tightness, the handling, the performance that you're looking for. I've driven a lot of other chassis and other companies and they only thought about the chassis. They didn't think about actually everything else that goes into it. They didn't think about the rest of the build. They didn't think about the steering column and how that's going to connect up and designing headers a certain way. And so there's a lot of this parts that aren't super cohesive to go together. And as we're, you know, working on the whole build and taking into account, you know, what it is you might want or what it is the customer might want and what will make this really successful. We're really trying to figure out how to make a kit out of everything. So if you're like, "Hey, I want a fat fender garage truck to handle like this, to drive like this, I will go there. I'll buy their chassis. I'll buy their column. I'll buy their their steering linkage. I'll buy the power steering rack so that everything performs a certain way. And we're not we're not mixing, matching, trying different things. We're really trying to develop a recipe that allows complete total success. And so that's what gives us the recipe to have like these consistent outcomes and develop these consistent products so that everybody at the very at the very end we can produce the same result, you know, over and over and over. And so, so anyways, we're going to go uh do a little more driving and have some fun with it. And I hope you've enjoyed this. And please like, subscribe, follow us, go to our website. All the products that we've been talking about, you can go purchase it. You can follow us on Instagram, FatFender Garage. Pretty easy to find us. Uh follow our YouTube channel. You'll see a lot more builds like this coming out. And uh until next time, we'll see you later.