We have our ideas of how a ’70s vintage F100/150 should look, but folks down under have their own, as shown by this one shot by Pete Wilding. I’m actually inclined to think it’s an F100, but the image quality is not good enough to read the badge.
Speaking of image quality: a note to Pete and other Cohort posters: it’s generally better to not crop your pictures, especially so radically like this one, for a number of reasons. Just leave them in the normal aspect ratio. Thanks.
Looks like an LPG tank, and it pleases me to see that the wiper sweep has been reversed.
Yeah I think it has the little red tag on the license plate to say it’s LPG.
That’s right, mandatory in my state, to alert the emergency services of the explosion hazard.
The CC effect is strong. After posting on the 73 F-100 last week I saw a beautiful black 73-75 F series truck in the parking lot of my mechanic. I would have taken pictures had there been any daylight at all.
LIke you, I saw a 73-75 F-Series last week. This one was a base model in brown, parked on the lot of a used car dealer. Two Chevrolet pickups of the same vintage were parked beside it.
This seems to be a pretty true-to-form example of an Australian F-Series; unlike here in North America, it was much more common to see these in a specialized commercial (construction/mining/tow rig/ambulance) format. Most Australians would recognize this F-Series wrecker from the movie “The Castle”
Most of these would be running a smoothside bed, and I wouldn’t give them a second glance. The bright orange paint and matching dropside bed made it a standout; it’s a period Falcon colour. But yeah, these were pretty much the standard chassis for ambulances in Victoria for several decades.
I’m thinking this would have been bought as a chassis-cab with an aftermarket dropside flatbed added on delivery. Many rural cities have a bodybuilder for this sort of thing. A lot of ambulances get repurposed, but they didn’t have all that extra chrome trim on this one.
And Paul – sorry about the photo cropping. I’ll hang a note on my laptop not to do it again. 🙁
The ambulance body builders in Tamworth NSW actually sell the cab back walls they remove to aid with repurposing old ambos
A slight variation on this F-150 lives near me, at a house that sometimes looks like a Ford truck museum. Here’s the truck — it’s parked at the end of the driveway and hasn’t moved for a few years… in this picture you can see the front fender of a newer F-150 Raptor that the folks who live there use a bit more frequently.
78/9 F100 XLT trim has been added, mate of mine has or had a 4×4 SWB version same colour he rebuilt it piece by piece as things broke over the years but every thing has been done at least once steering boxes several times, he also converted it to LPG with the mileage he does and a 351 engine it was the only sensible choice, they suck petrol at a phenomenal rate and when you drive from Bowen in FNQ to the Huon in TAS regularly the fuel bill is immense.
A 351 in a 4×4 F-100 would get maybe 12 mpg (10mpg US). Since most LPG jobs retain dual-fuel capability, and the motor can’t be set up exclusively for LPG, and LPG causes about a 25% drop in economy, that works out to 7.5 mpg US.
Two things for the majority US readers here: one, LPG is half the price of petrol – making it only slightly cheaper per litre than petrol in much of the US!
Two, Bowen in Queensland to Huon in the island of Tasmania, is about 1700 miles, not counting the 273 mile ferry ride.
So whatever Bryce’s mate earned up in Bowen, he’d have bugger-all of it left by the Huon….