Keep on truckin’

By Cristin Ross

July 28, 2008 05:27 pm

— By Cristin Ross
cross@jacksonvilleprogress.com
They don’t make ’em like that anymore. And that’s exactly why Jacksonville resident Tim McRae’s 1948 Ford F-series pickup, “Old Yellow,” strikes a chord with so many people on so many levels.
“I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and told me they or their grandpa had a truck just like this one,” McRae said. “That’s why I like these old cars and trucks — they have so much history.”
McRae’s truck boasts a lot of history, too, both local and national.
Ford Motor Company introduced its F-series truck line in 1948. Today, 60 years later, Ford’s F-150 is one of the most popular trucks on the market, according to the company’s Web site.
“The 1948 F-Series pickup was Ford Motor Company’s first all-new vehicle after World War II,” the Web site states. “Initial buyers were mostly farmers, manufacturers and small businesses, attracted by the promise the new pickup was “built stronger to last longer.”
They weren’t kidding around.
As far as McRae can tell — from the original title that came with the vehicle — Jacksonville resident E.A. Acker bought the truck brand new. Acker then sold it to another Jacksonville local, Johnny Reagan, through Texas State Bank for $900 on Aug. 18, 1949.
Reagen’s ownership is verified by longtime Ford enthusiast and dealer Shelley Cleaver of Craft.
“I remember Johnny in that truck when he’d come down to Morris Walter’s feed store in Jacksonville,” Cleaver recalled. “He used that truck to work now. I remember he even hauled a steer in the back of it once.”
Reagan sold the truck to Jim and Will Tarrant, both of Jacksonville, about seven years ago. The pair started restoring the truck to its former showroom glory, but when they found they couldn’t finish the job, the Tarrants found the pickup a new home with McRae.
“We did a little horse trading for the truck,” McRae said with a laugh. “Jim and Will (Tarrant) started the frame-off restoration, but I think it turned out to be a longer process than they’d anticipated.
“It sat in Jim’s yard just collecting dust for a while.”
McRae, with the help of the service crews at Bill McRae Ford Dealership in Jacksonville, finished the restoration.
“What I mean by frame-off restoration is that we completely took the truck apart, all the way down to the frame,” McRae explained. “We cleaned, rebuilt or replaced everything that needed it, repainted it and reinstalled it all.”
In 1948, the Ford F-series pickup came from the factory with a flat-head 226 cubic inch straight 6-cylinder engine that boasts a blistering 95 horse power and gets 20 to 25 miles to a gallon of gas. The motor is mated to a Ford four-speed floor-shift transmission turing 4:10 rearend gears.
“The gas mileage really surprised me,” McRae admitted. “We’re still trying to get that out of trucks today. Another surprise was how easy it is to turn and stop, since it doesn’t have power steering or power brakes.”
The truck weighs 4,700 pounds — about twice as much as 1/2-ton trucks weigh today, according to McRae.
Old Yellow’s original motor had a cracked block, so McRae and his mechanics hunted up another to install — after an overhaul and custom paint job.
“Most of what we needed wasn’t too hard to find, actually,” McRae said. “Jim (Tarrant) had the most trouble finding the gear that goes on the distributor shaft when he was working on it.
“He finally had one made specifically for this truck. It wasn’t the most expensive part, but it was the hardest one to come by.”
While they kept the truck as close to original factory specs as possible, restorers did make a few minor upgrades, including changing the original six-volt electrical system to 12 volts, using cadium-plated bolts to put it back together (to prevent rust) and using marine-grade plywood for the truck bed’s floor, rather than the slats that originally came in it.
“I wanted to keep it as close to original as possible,” McRae said. “But we did make a few minor upgrades where we could.”
So original, in fact, the truck sports the same chrome yellow paint and features wide white-wall tires and, interestingly enough, a hole in the grill for the crank rod used to manually start the engine.
“I doubt there’s many people with the arm power now to start it manually,” McRae said with a laugh.
Old Yellow was featured in this year’s Tops In Texas Rodeo parade, held July 9. Cleaver had the honor of driving it for the parade.
“It drove real good,” Cleaver said. “Didn’t get hot at all.”
McRae admitted when he took it for a test spin, he worried there might’ve been a problem with the transmission.
“It makes such a racket when you shift — it sounds like a threshing machine,” McRae said. “I kept saying there’s got to be a problem, but Shelley says that’s exactly the way it did in 1948.”
Cleaver explained, “Ya got to double-clutch it!”

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