I Take My 1966 F100 On A Road Trip – And Get 21 MPG

Having spent a few hours stitching on my latest improvement to my ’66 F100 — a proper full-grain leather steering wheel cover from Australia — I decided that it was time for a bit of a road trip. I haven’t taken Ol’ Yeller anywhere but a few miles to the lumber yard, garbage/recycling transfer station and the yard waste dump/compost and gravel facility for all of these past couple of decades.

The PNW Truck Show and the Museum at Powerland in Brooks, OR (a bit north of Salem) was the destination, but I avoided I5 and took the back roads of the Willamette Valley through its endless fields. This is what brought the pioneers here on the Oregon Trail: gold of a different sort, and more reliable.

In case you missed it, I made this short video almost ten years ago that shows how I shift my truck’s three-speed B/W T85 with overdrive, which has been set up to engage manually via a little switch on the dash, not automatically. It also shows how I shift without using the clutch, and despite the many commenters on this Youtube video that insist otherwise, No, I’m not “floating” the gears. Since the overdrive unit has freewheeling, that has the same effect on the transmission as engaging the clutch: it allows one of the gear clusters/shafts to be disconnected from the engine or drive shaft, thus allowing the synchronizers to easily engage the gears. I regularly downshift from third to second without the clutch; good luck doing that without freewheeling.

My speedometer currently runs a bit low; using a GPS at 1900 rpm actual speed is right at 58-59 mph. On this trip, I mostly kept it right between that and 2100 rpm, or 65 mph. At these speeds, the 240 six is hardly working, requiring just a very light touch on the accelerator. It’s also right at its torque peak, which is inherently an engine’s most efficient speed.

I often get comments about why I don’t put in a V8 or at least a warmed-over 300 and how slow it must be with the 240. I’ve never felt a need for more power, and it’s also important to point out that my bare-bones truck weighs only some 3400 lbs. That’s featherweight in today’s world. Pulling into a highway or such, it picks up its skirts just fine, and I’ve had it up to ninety. This combination of the 240 and five usable speeds is just ideal, at least from my point of view.

In 1993, when we were moving from Los Gatos to Eugene, I moved most of our stuff on several 1100 mile round trips up and down I5, pulling a trailer too. The 240 six had no problem hauling the load up Siskiyou Pass, not in overdrive of course.

Having redone the bushings on the front suspension a couple of years ago and the drum brakes last summer, it feels like… new? It’s very relaxed at speed, and contrary to popular belief, it rides very nicely, not at all harsh due to the fairly soft springs on the base F100 and the Twin I Beam front suspension. Yes, the steering has some play, but I did recently put in a new flex steering couple and adjusted the steering box, so it’s ok; it’s just how these were, a bit sloppy.

 

Grass seed is the biggest agricultural crop in the Willamette Valley; it supplies some 90% of the world’s grass seed. In years when grass seed demand is low, more wheat is grown. This is a medium sized field; some are just vast. It’s been harvested and is now stubble, and I saw many being plowed. Many of these farms have been bought by Mennonites.

The southern half of the Willamette (pronounced wuh·la·muht) Valley is almost totally flat between the Coast Range on the west and the Cascade foothills on the east. Stephanie calls it the Iowa of Oregon for obvious reasons. It’s almost totally agricultural, and the little towns that serve that activity have a decided Midwest feel to them.

Rolling by this cemetery reminded me of the time my older son and I rode our bicycles to Albany (60 miles) on these same roads back in about 1994 or 1995. We met Stephanie and our two other kids there at the annual Mennonite Harvest festival, and rode back in the Grand Caravan with the bikes on the rack. It’s actually the longest bike ride I’ve ever taken. I ride locally on brisk rides for exercise but just never got into the touring thing. Having three kids was a bit of an impediment to that.

Speaking of bikes, I dragged our dirty made-in-Eugene Burley tandem out of the garden shed and spent Saturday deep-cleaning it and installing new tires, brake pads and chains. We bought it about 20 years ago and rode it a lot on local bike trails and out into the valley a bit. I put a big spotlight on it and we often rode it on hot summer evenings along the Willamette River bike paths where we’d stop and I’d hop into the river for a nice cooling dip.

We switched to walking when we had to take in Little Man about 11 years ago; now that he’s slowing down, it’s time to get back on the tandem. I still ride my 1978 Japanese steel-frame Novarra road bike for my frequent morning quick rides.

I’m going to save the truck show for a separate post or two. This was only for BIG trucks, and wow, were there many that came from all over the West Coast; several from California. Seems like old truckers like to hang on to their beloved big rigs. I’ll show you this teaser: it’s one of several Detroit Diesel 12V-71 powered trucks. I’ve actually not seen one of these in person before. Awesome. The only thing to top that in pure visual appeal would be an ultra-rare Hall-Scott V12 powered truck.

I took a different route home, heading north then west, to the Wheatland Ferry over the river. It’s operated by the county and is usually quite busy. Three bucks is the ferry fare, and it’s all over in a couple of minutes.

Capacity is nine cars.

The northern half of the valley is a bit different, with more hills and varied terrain. The land is used differently too, with many huge nurseries and in this case, giant hops farms. Again, the Willamette valley dominates hops production, and it too was harvest time as I drove through.

The other major crop throughout the valley is hazelnuts, often grown in vast orchards, unlike this one. When we first moved here in the early ’90s, there was a much greater variety of crops grown. Eugene still had a canning plant downtown, and farmers grew all sorts of vegetables. But that’s all changed, and except for some localized farming to feed a processing plant, it’s mostly grass, grains, some berries and hazelnuts. The latter has really taken over because it requires so much less manpower, which has become harder to come by. The nuts just fall to the ground and are picked up by a mechanized sweeper.

As I headed up into the Eola Hills that bisect the valley up here, the rain came on hard. It had dumped earlier at the truck show; this is a bit unusual for the time of year, but it certainly was welcome. I was glad I had put on new wipers the day before, anticipating this likelihood. This hilly area is dominated by wineries, which is another major agricultural use in the valley. Willamette Valley wines are held in high regard, as we are at about the same latitude as the famous wine growing regions of France.

The clouds really framed the vast sky of the valley, giving it much more interest than the usual cloudless summer day. I tanked up shortly before arriving back in Eugene, and the 11.4 gallons it took for the 239 mile trip came out to 20.96 mpg. Not bad, for an old pickup.

I know; it’s not that impressive for modern cars and trucks, but the technology and aerodynamics were vastly different. I remember it was a big deal when the new 1980 Ford pickups came out and advertised a 21 mpg EPA number (Adjusted to modern EPA numbers, that would be 19 mpg).

I’ve been thinking about taking the truck on a longer trip, for several days or more, all on back roads and smaller highways in Eastern Oregon and Northern Nevada. This shakedown trip only encouraged me. What I need is to find a vintage aluminum bed topper like this one, so I can sleep back there and stow my gear. And maybe a few basic hand tools just in case.