If the weather cooperates here, I should be going to talk to a guy about trading his DD '66 F250 Camper Special for my '88 GMC 1500, since he's looking for an auto and I'm looking for something old/cool.
It's got the 352 FE V8 and a 4 spd. Seller says it has a new intake and a Holley 4 bbl. My understanding is that the Camper Special means it got a longer wheelbase but kept the same overall length...?
Anything in particular I need to know about this beastie?
Oh yeah: can I hook up the 460 I have to that 4 spd? 
Hrm... Foggy memories. My dad had one for most of my life, recently handed off to a friend of the family.
IIRC, it drove reasonably well for a 45-year-old full size truck with drum brakes and no power anything. I didn't set out to damn by faint praise, but it is what it is.
I think that it ended up a couple of decades ago needing to have its kingpins redone, and that was a farm-it-out job, though I don't know how bad it was cost-wise.
There just isn't too much to them, so there isn't much to go wrong, and it's reasonably easy to work on what does.
Those were designed for serious hauling with a primitive suspension. Nice trucks but if you're going to ride around with it empty all the time it will bounce your kidneys & jar your teeth.
All right, I'm going to recant that 'longer wheelbase' thing, since that's what I call 'internet knowledge,' and I can't find corroboration.
These are great trucks, but keep an eye for rust. Front bed floor seems to be a bad spot.
Great source of info!
I currently have 3 and a shed full of various parts...even a couple of 4 door trucks. Dead simple to work on, Great aftermarket for replacement and upgrades, plenty of junkyard and swapmeet support.
Part of the "Camper Special" package is a suspension that does NOT deflect under any kind of load...or at least that's what it feels like.
My father bought one of these, why, I have no idea....I'm guessing the price seemed right. And it also had the 352 engine tho I imagine it must have had the automatic transmission. Somewheres around that time (before or after) he had a F100, one of the last ones that Ford made before going exclusively to the F150. ALMOST night and day difference between the 100 and 250. The 100? Almost car-like, while the 250 was almost like driving a tractor truck.
Front suspensions on these can be "tricky". When almost any front end component gets near the end of it's service life handling gets wayward and it's also prone to "unusual" tire wear patterns.
I own a '66 F-100, and used to own a '65 F-250 which was basically the same thing as a 1966. The 352/4 speed combo is reliable and strong. The rear axle ratio may be too steep for comfortable highway driving (my F-250 had 4.56 gears, it sounded like it was going to explode at 60mph) but since this one is a Camper Special it may have more highway friendly gears. edit: I just looked it up and a Camper Special F-250 had 4.10 gears stock.
The Camper Special option mainly consisted of a heavy duty suspension, radiator and battery, and west coast mirrors. You could get them with a longer wheelbase and a 9 foot long bed, but the vast majority came with a regular 8 foot bed.
Most likely it has manual steering and brakes; the brakes aren't so bad to live with but manual steering can be a bear if you don't have some good upper body strength. The tip is to get the truck rolling a little before you turn the wheel. You'll definitely know you're driving a truck...they're pretty primitive compared to today's vehicles.
Rust can be a problem. The most important place to look is in the front cab supports (you can see them inside the front wheelwells.) They can rust out completely and let the front of the cab sag. You can see the sag by sighting down the side of the truck, plus it can bind up the steering wheel. Almost all F series trucks of that era will have rust in the radiator support, it's hidden down behind the grille were you can't see it but more often than not it's going to be there.
The bed floor can rust out where it meets the front of the bed, also the bottom of the tailgate. In general they can rust most anywhere (rockers, floors, etc.) but these are the most likely locations.
In general they're not much more complicated than a lawn mower to work on, and parts availability is good. There are several companies selling reproduction parts, Dennis Carpenter and Auto Krafters are two I can think of offhand.
There are some easy upgrades from newer trucks, in particular the disk brakes and power steering from newer trucks up to 1979 are more or less a bolt in. The Slick 60s link above is good, there's also http://www.ford-trucks.com/
So...no guesswork needed when something's going wrong then, eh?
I'm heading off to check it out now. I'll report back.
The funny thing about these trucks is even though they feel immense when you're driving them, if you pull up next to a 2011 F-250 they look tiny. 
Well, this one was rougher than I can take for a DD. Mainly, it needs a full front end rebuild - I've driven plenty of 40-50 year-old cars and trucks, and this one wanders dangerously around 50mph. You have to let it pull to the right enough to take up the slack, then correct it to the left by about 25° and ride the balance without pulling it too far to bring it back hard left. A couple pucker-worthy moments in the 3 mi. test drive. (In my defense, when I told my girlfriend about the spooky behavior, she said, 'Oh really? I didn't feel anything weird.')
Aside from the front end, it actually drove pretty well. The 352 is gloriously torquey (especially compared to my anemic, in-desperate-need-of-a-tune-up 305), the clutch is forgiving, and the gearbox, though vague, didn't cause any problems once I knew where to look for the gate. And it didn't ride so much like a tractor as one may expect. However, my '88 1500 did feel like a Lexus in comparison.
The leaf springs on the Camper Special are really impressively gigantic.
It looked really rough but was quite solid in the main. Tons of surface rust, but surprisingly nothing through the metal that I could see. But all the little stuff this one needs could keep somebody busy for a year or two of a rolling resto.
If I had something else to DD while putzing around on this one - and if I had $1800 to throw at it for a Mustang II front end kit from TCI and just get it over with - I may have jumped on it.
The front end swap kit for these trucks come out of Crown Vics. Big disc brakes and power steering to boot!
O rly? Any specific year range of Vics, or were they all the same?
I'm fairly sure the 352 block was the same as the later 360/390/428 block. If so, the 460 will probably mate up to it. I had a '68 f100 390 short bed and looked over all kinds of engine/trans swaps.
One point about the steering - Mine was manual and had bad issues with one of the bearing races in the steering box wallowing out. I'm all too familiar with the point-and-hunt steering you mentioned. Ford had some quality issues in those years, but only on the manual boxes. If you planned to swap in power steering, you might find that the front end suspension wasn't that bad. I hunted for 6 months to find a junkyard manual box in better shape. Cured 90% of those issues for mine. At the time (late 90's) none of the aftermarkets made the manual box or rebuild kits, but ford could still sell you a new one for $1200 (??!!) We actually came up with a plan to machine out the case and fit trailer bearings but could never find anyone to handle the machine work.
I still have a manual 4spd Overdrive trans (std 3 + shifted OD 4th out of a 78 granada) in my shop that was supposed go in that truck. That's the only vehicle I ever regret selling.
The Crown Vic swap uses the suspension and steering from a 2003 or newer car. The crossmember unbolts from the Crown Vic, and the frame rails are nearly the same width on the F series so it's almost but not quite a bolt in.
There's an 83 page long discussion about it here: http://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/716058-buildup-06-crown-vic-front-suspension-int...
stuart in mn wrote:There's an 83 page long discussion about it here: http://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/716058-buildup-06-crown-vic-front-suspension-int...
Oh, so just a light read then.
