Yes, patina is cool, and has been for some time now. And yes, I’m quite fond of it, and have been for a very long time. An old vehicle that shows the effects of 50 some years of UV radiation as well as wear and tear has become a historical object. It wears its age honestly and proudly, rather than a coat of shiny resale red and chrome mags. But then I can’t stand the look that Botox and fillers have given so many faces these days either. Why do folks want to hide behind masks that have no more expression?
Fortunately, the trend towards appreciating old cars and trucks in their honest state took root some years back, and now true classics and exotics often command higher prices if their in decently preserved original condition than if restored. Obviously, fake patina is just as bad (or worse) than not, but this old F100 isn’t faking anything.
I encountered it at the dump transfer station just a week or so earlier, and got a shot of these two dump-runners together. If my truck hadn’t been repainted at some point before I bought it in 1987, it might be further along in its patina-making.
And then we saw again it the other night downtown, as we were heading home on our evening urban hike. This truck has seen a bit of sunlight in its day, as well as our endless winter rains.
Somebody has rescued it, and put it back in service. And added some new clearance lights, which are a bit of a hot thing too these days, I gather, although strictly speaking, it doesn’t need them and there are not enough and not spaced properly. But you get the point.
It’s a bit fascinating to see how patine develops asymmetrically on different body panels. `
This is a ’64, which means the last year of the old type chassis, with the solid beam axle in front, leaf springs, and a narrower track. In 1965, the whole frame and suspension, with the Twin-beam ifs on the front, was drastically revised, even though the body wasn’t, and the ’65 an d’66s are really more like the ’67 and up generation under the the skin. Jim Cavanaugh will tell us how rough-riding his was; my ’66 actually rides quite well.
1964 was also the last year for the 223 ohv six, which only dated back to the new 215 in 1952. The new six cylinder engines that arrived in 1965, the 240 and 300 ‘Big Six’ were completely new, and would of course become somewhat legendary. But the 223 was a fine engine in its time.
The steering column in theses older versions had a significantly different angle than the ’65 and up, due to the new front end. These older ones are more vertical. This one is sporting the four speed manual, which has a “granny low” first gear, so that it’s really effectively a three-speed for regular driving. No overdrive available on these.
The plywood in the bed means we can’t see the condition of the steel bed floor, but I have to assume it’s still solid and straight, or mostly so. Mine sure is, despite all the abuse and rain.
It appears this truck was last sold by Gene Cutts in Cottage Grove, 20 miles south of Eugene. A real local.
This one is very close to the 63 F-100 I had, only mine was a Flareside bed and painted park bench green. Mine rode as hard as anything I have ever been in, though in fairness a prior owner had added extra leaves to the springs some time during its life.
The 223 made nice power and you are right – low in that 4 speed was never needed in any kind of normal city or suburban driving.
The weathering pattern is interesting to me. I have seen so many pictures of weathered old Studebakers in which the paint on the main body holds up so much better than that on the front hood and fenders. This truck seems to have done the opposite, with the front dog house holding up the best of anywhere on the truck.
I think patina is a regional trend, and seems to be popular or acceptable in areas with less of a rust problem. Around here, patina, especially that involving rust as a deliberate style feature is virtually never done. And if it were, the police would pull the truck over for a mechanical inspection, which would be quite the hassle. For the authorities, visible dilapidation suggests mechanical neglect.
So, although I like the patina look, I’d never drive one, because I don’t want that kind of attention. Do other regions have similar problems?
I think it’s not a natural occurrence around here Mike because by the time the top surfaces of a vehicle achieve this appearance the bottom 18″ would have been long dissolved by salt induced rust.
I do see some cars locally with fake patina, Paul are you a fan of fake patina or does it have to be the natural product?
To my eyes this truck is just tipping past patina and into decay, but that is probably related to my initial point. At any rate it is great to see this truck still doing it’s job.
I said in the post that I don’t like fake patina. It’s fake; ’nuff said. 🙂
Oops, reading too fast and looking at the pictures there…
I want to agree with that and in the worst way. Thing is, fake patina gives the look without the actual state of decay. If the ‘real’ surface rust can be frozen and cleared to keep it from deterioriating further then I’m all for the natural route.
It’s nice to see an old truck still being used for a purpose. 🙂
What do people do to make old cars and trucks have ‘fake patina’ instead of real-life aging? I’ve never heard of folks doing that. Sounds nutty. I wonder what the point is? (I don’t need to add any fake patina to my ’64 Falcon. It could use a fresh coat or two of paint and some body work here ‘n’ there . . . ).
It appears there were a lot of changes to Ford products between the 1964 and ’65 model years.
For trailers some states require them when a certain width is exceeded. I think the magic number is 80″. This is why tractor trailers always have them, little garden trailers never have them, and things like boat trailers only have them if they are big.
Could it be similar with pickup trucks? Put the lights on if you expect to be carrying a load wider than x?
As an aside, I was once present when a pickup truck so equipped went through inspection in Mass. the owner said “oh we don’t use those”. The inspector said “if they are there they need to work”. The owner got through inspection by removing them. I’m sure he reinstalled them later to plug the holes in the roof.
Yes, it’s exactly the same for vehicles as well – over a certain width and you need the five marker lights (amber in front, red in rear of course) spaced with the two on the outer edges and the three in the middle.
You’ll notice that pickup trucks with factory dual rear wheels have them, due to the width of the rear fenders, while single-rear wheel pickups do not.
You can easily find the DOT lighting requirements online, as I did a few years ago when I re-did the lighting on my brother’s double-axle trailer to make it DOT-compliant.
Fun fact: the reason the Ford SVT Raptor has 3 amber lights in the grille and two red markers on the rear fenders below the taillights is because it is ~86-1/2″ in overall width, putting it 6 or so inches over the minimum required for clearance lights.
I think its mostly a west coast thing. No salt on winter roads, so they tend to rust from the top down. Relatively thick sheet metal and no severe creases or bends mean they can go decades without rusting through.
When the GM plants in California went to first generation water based paints and primers in the early ’70’s, hoods and other upper surfaces rusted quickly.
I’ve long been curious about “Clearance Lights” (I never knew what they were called, thank you Paul) on pickups, especially old ones with relatively low profiles.
My Dad’s ’69 C/20 had them across its white painted cab roof, and back in the ’70’s all of my uncles, who were home builders, drove Ford pickups of the next generation after this one, also with lights across the top of the cabs. I never quite “got” what they were for.
When they seemed to fall out of fashion I forgot about them entirely, but have recently seen a few Silverados and F-Series trucks sporting them again. I suppose if the purpose is to help define clearance, then the new trucks may have more actual need for them, but I came to view them as a bit of an affectation, as I never quite understood their purpose. Can anyone give some insight into a real need for these things on a standard pickup cab?
FWIW, I got curious and Googled the history and purpose of these things. The following was the best and least convoluted answer I found:
I’ve had several trucks with “clearance lamps” and none have leaked. Like anything else on a vehicle,routine inspection prevents problems. The purpose is safety. They offer increased visibility of larger vehicles for oncoming traffic. Back when the general public was smarter,it let people know the vehicle approaching is bigger than them and will have a much greater stopping distance. They are also referred to as ICC lights and are part of an overall package mandated for heavy trucks. On the rear they let drivers know the vehicle ahead may be traveling slower than other traffic. The law requires any truck over 5t GVW to have them. Since dual rear C/30s fall into that bracket and GM used a special panel for them in 69-72,the lights were offered on the lighter trucks,too…mostly for bling factor and for those wanting more safety. The first truck nuts would put things on their pickups that the big trucks had and mounting cab lights was at the top (get it?) of the list of favorites. I used to notice when driving my trucks with clearance lamps at night that people would sit and wait compared to ones that didn’t where they’d pull right out on you. From a distance they just see the lights and figure it’s a big ole KW coming at them. There days not so much. They’ve degenerated to the point of not taking responsibility for their own safety and pull out anyway.
They were always called cab lights in my neck of the woods. Clearance lights were on top of box trucks and tankers.
No fake patina on this Ford either. A real work truck.
I like that generation of F-Series, but what is with the tilted bed?
I’m sorry, but there’s no excuse for patina. To me, it shows utter neglect of a vehicle a person has spent their own money on and failed to take care of their property.
As long as I had a penny in the bank, I’d never drive a car like that.
However…
If a person bought something already in a less-than-ideal condition and used it as a beater vehicle, well… I may have done the same thing – let it go and use it ’til the wheels fall off!
See? I’m not all negative after all.
As for the clearance lights, the only reason I can think of is that the original or subsequent owner installed them imagining himself driving a semi.
I think you’re not getting the point. This truck, like so many other old cars and trucks, was resurrected from some back yard or field, having sat for years/decades. This is how it looked when found, recently. And it’s very cool out here to to find old cars and trucks like this and get them mechanically in good running condition, and then leave the body as is. The ’51 Hudson I did a CC on is in the same boat.
It’s a very deliberate reaction to the restoration industry, which costs a lot of money and then you end up with a vehicle that often cost more than it’s worth, and then you only drive it on summer Sundays.
It’s a different world out here in the PNW, Zack. You should see how folks dress…
Well, Paul, that makes sense.
I suppose my mid-western mindset is a lot different for a lot of reasons, one of which is my (adoptive) parents’ German “scrubby Dutch” heritage in the St. Louis area, which is where I’m from. Some early residents in the city were known for scrubbing their section of the alley! My great aunt was like that. Plus, they were a half-generation older than my contemporaries’ parents (born well before WW1).
Can you say “Pride” with a capital P?
Maybe Wifey and I need to take a vacation trip to the PNW some day and see for ourselves, as I have always wanted to visit that part of the country.
Also, what you say about restoring an old vehicle is so true – that’s why I have never done it, although I tried many years ago. The result, unless you are taking it to car shows and sit around all day in lawn chairs, it truly isn’t worth it, especially if you intend to actually use the vehicle for daily business.
The restoration business is crazy, but I enjoy watching shows where people spend a fortune on a vehicle that cost 20 times more than when it was new. Not my money, or lack of it.
Thanks for informing me – I need that from time to time.
Bellingham WA is full of patina’d people… they look like they were rescued from some back yard or field, having sat for years or decades. Its interesting to watch them drop off their expensive newer cars at the dealership where I work.
I’d paint it. Its gone too far. I’m mostly tired of over-restored cars, but this is like celebrating open sores, or something.
I’m exaggerating… a bit. I do like my truck to look like they work. I have a nicely scruffy ’93 Ranger Sport. Maybe someday I’ll fix the dents.
There are some interestingly patina’ed hamsters for sure, and a surprising number of expensive cars. I swear there is a higher density of Audis than there is in Capitol Hill in Seattle.
Gosh, I live on Capitol Hill,Seattle, mine’s parked outside. I wonder if I might have “Scrubby Dutch” or worse?
I work at the dealership where they sell those Audis… yeah, lots of them.
Am I the only one who brush-paints my truck? I paint it about every 10 years, with touch-ups in the meantime.
I beat out the big dents when I got it, no reason to go after all the little ones. It’s a metal object left outside- put some paint on it.
It may be that patina has different connotations in parts of the country where visible rust is seen and dreaded as a ticking time bomb, indicating maybe 3 or 4 years until structural disintegration.
Although the rocker panels are noticeably sound, on the east coast that a truck that looked generally like this (lovely as it is) might also have a severely weakened frame, and potentially break its back just hitting a rough railway crossing 🙂
Patina may be a beauty only certain climate zones can appreciate.
I love the truck but have to agree the patina might need to be arrested before the truck is too far gone. Clearance lights are for appearances only, driving at night with 4 or 5 bright amber lights just above your forehead has a similar effect to having the interior light on at night.
I suspect clearance lights on a pickup truck are some sort of big-rig affectation with no real use, not dissimilar to big-ass, chrome, vertical exhaust stacks in the pickup bed.
On a tall semi-tractor, cab clearance lights might have some legitimate purpose. On a light pickup, not so much.
My dad’s ’78 F-100 had cab lights. I didn’t notice light shining back on me, but seeing the light reflecting off the antenna drove me batty.
Clearance lights are required on vehicles over 80″ wide (which is part of the reason why full-size pickups haven’t gotten any wider since the early ’60s). This means anything that’s a one-ton DRW truck or larger needs them, but not 3/4-tons or one-ton SRW models. Anytime you see clearance lights on anything smaller than a one-ton dually, they’re for cosmetic purposes.
My father, who would have been 95 in September, grew up driving first horses then trucks. When he got to a point in his life when he could afford to have a truck as his “toy”, he bought a F250 Camper Special that had a set of lights on the cabs roof. I’m not sure but because he wanted to put the same lights on the F150 that replaced that Camper Special I think he equated them with REAL trucks.
The ’93 Dodge one ton dually I had for a short while had the factory roof lamps, and also had factory clearance lamps on the fiberglass extensions over the rear wheels. I remember looking in the owner’s manual to see if they were stock, they were due to the oversize width and GVW rating of the truck.
My white ’70 C10 (owned from ’76 to ’06) had a good dose of patina going on as well, but when surface rust areas would begin to appear I would do a little SOS pad and water scrub, followed by rattle can primer and a quick shot of rattle can white just to keep rust perforation at bay.
Yep, that’s another one: anything over 80″ wide has to have clearance lights at the widest point of the body. This naturally includes all DRW pickups at the fenders, but also includes the Ford F-150 Raptor, which is about 86″ wide at the front fenders, and so requires clearance lights there.
Other trucks that require side and cab clearance lights are GMT800 models (mid-’00s) with the rare Quadrasteer option. The steerable rear axle only protruded about 1″ either side compared to the standard axle, but this necessitated custom bedsides on Silverados and Sierras to cover the protrusion. Suburban 2500s that had Quadrasteer used these fender flares:
Because that’s what the television (and billboards, and magazines, etc) tells them is best.
(the ’96-’03 F-pickup in the background of the lead shot wishes, utterly in vain, that it had even a crumb of the honest gravitas of the ’64 in the foreground)
Two parentheticals:
80-INCH WIDTH LIMIT: as many CC-ers know, that’s what got Ford and maybe some makers in trouble, with their 1960 cars exceeding that limit.
GENE CUTTS: Got to celebrate 70 years of marriage, apparently passed on only last year. Details in photo:
A nice old truck there .
My ’59 F100 in 1968, also had the 221CID i6, with three on the tree ~ I only used it on the Farm and it was fine power wise .
This truck looks to still be in pretty good shape and would benefit greatly from re sealing the cab roof’s gutter before it rusts through and destroy the cab .
I bet this trucks doors still open and close like new ~ these old Fords always had better door hinges than my beloved Chevies and GMC’s .
I *think* I spy a trailer brake controller on the dash, maybe he has a trailer for the larger jobs .
-Nate
Ironically, I was watching Goldfinger last night, which is practically a showcase for a parade of dhowroom–fresh ’64 Ford Motor Company products from a Falcon Ranchero to a sadly crushed Lincoln Continental – and a red Country Squire with dog-dish hubcaps of all things. Curiously absent was an F series.
and one of the 1st Mustangs (a convertible, no less) built + Thunderbird.
Love that movie.
There is a similar F100 for sale on Craigslist in central Florida, it too is “patina’d” to within an inch of it’s life. Big difference? It’s sitting on a late model Crown Victoria frame with a 4.6 Ford engine.
I love these trucks, and that dashboard….lots of knobs but almost no instruments, just that big single circle. Straight front axle instead of Twin I Beams, engine that’s tough as nails….and a “granny” low gear, THAT’S a real truck.
The next question is do you preserve the patina as is, or “drive it until the wheels fall off”?
On the one hand, you have a cool vehicle that proclaims durability in the face of long odds, but then you take it and artificially lengthen its life.
I would be sorely tempted to fix it with a flat clear coat and rustproof the inside panels so it could go on like this forever, or until mechanical parts get too expensive.
Would that be wrong?
Jay Leno had a visitor with an old Beetle and the guy had brushed off the loose rust and spread linseed oil over what remained.
I undercoat my cars with raw linseed oil yearly. The stuff is amazing.
I’m a fan of the Warner T-18 4-spd. with the granny gear. I ordered my 1977 F-150 with the 300 6-cyl, the T-18 and the lowest rear axle ratio (3.00). My thinking was that the 6-cyl and 3.00 rear gave reasonable economy on the highway; but you had the granny gear to get you going on a steep slope or with a heavy load. Running around empty, you didn’t bother with 1st gear.
Damn that truck is cool… wish it could talk, wonder what stories it could tell?
While about three decades newer, the second picture reminds me of last week. Dumping seemingly endless loads of pine needles for fire clearance, I was one of three GMT400 pickups lined up at the dump. Unfortunately, clearcoat paints dont patina, more like peel off when they are done.
Here is a similar type of patina seen in the desert Southwest (Arizona, on Route 66), where the merciless sun beats down on the cars. I doubt either of these cars were runners, and their interiors had been torn to shreds from decades of solar exposure.
I like when you see old faded hand painted lettering on these old trucks. A window into its past.The owners name, a farm name, a contractor ,the town it was from.
In Missouri up until 73 or so all trucks including pickups were considered commercial or farm vehicles and had to have lettering or signage bolth sides, even personal use pickups, stating owners name, licensed weight,(local or beyond local) and home town. It was pride sort of thing to have a new truck professionally lettered by a sign painter in 2 color 2 dementioal calligraphy. By the 2nd or 3rd owner mail box stickers would do.
The door hinges on these trucks will last forever but the cab mounts,at least here in the Midwest would not. Often they were rusted out while the paint still shined. The front cab mount boxes were exposed to the road spray off the front tires. Something Ford did not remedy with inner fenders until1977.
The roof will be the first thing to go. If anything rusts out inn the west it would be the roof once the caulking has deteriorated like this. That and the back of the fender when the little drain clogs. I am not a big fan of patina which tells me that the vehicle exterior wasn’t taken care of. Take care of it and you won’t see that so often. Basically I hate rust in any of it’s forms.
Back of the fender… yeah, ask anyone with a mid-’60’s Chevy truck. And the rockers beneath the doors. Had to fix a lot of those.
I have mixed feelings about patina. For one thing, it’s a bit of a misnomer. Patina was a term applied to things like bronze or wood antiques, but picked up by old car lovers like us to euphemistically describe what used to be known as Surface Rust. We’ll know the trend has gone too far when people start calling their lower body rusted Midwest relics patina’d.
It’s a unique look that is not without its appeal. I lived in Arizona for a long time and it was pretty common there to see old lacquer paint vehicles with that kind of long term upper surface deterioration and zero lower body rust. Kind of like Mater in the movie Cars. It’s very charasmatic in a rustic sort of way.
But, having also lived in the Midwest and New England, I hate rust. In my mind, any type of rust is not compatible with long term survival. Style be damned, if a vehicle is worth keeping and preserving, it needs a decent coat of paint to keep the body panels intact. It’s irresponsible to let a mechanically sound vehicle of this age continue to slowly disintegrate. I have a caretaker mentality on old cars and that’s what I think of when I see a vehicle like this. Sorry, Paul! I prefer your truck with it’s faded but intact paint.
Is that the USS Hornet or Intrepid’s 5-inchers?
Neither as their 5/38 mounts are open and on sponsons. This is on the USS Iowa circa early 2009 when I was wandering her decks.
Sorry, note the difference as I also forgot to say their mounts were singles when they did their SCB-27A modifications between 1951-53 which removed the duals.
USS Hornet mount 51
That’s not patina, that’s neglect. Paint that poor truck, please.
Reminds me of a truck I’ve seen in Richmond. Same generation F100, I think the same year judging by the grille, but stepside. And perhaps an even greater display of patina.