Hello All,

I have started a YouTube channel (BarnBuiltBeaters) to document building my 1978 Ford F-Series. The channel first begins with building my shop to work on my truck.

Over the years, I have done numerous different projects on it while in college and then shortly after. Eventually I decided to take it off the road and do a complete frame off restoration. She won't see the road until she is done! Although I have already done a lot of work to the truck, I have since gone a different direction and basically starting fresh again. I have always wanted to start a YouTube channel and decided now would be a fantastic time for me to do so. Here is a Link to my introduction video which shows my truck as well as my soon to be shop! Look below for what I have accomplished over the years!
Intro Video:

This was the day I bought my truck. Although I did not pick it up from the original owner, I purchased it from the original family. The owner wanted his daughter to take the truck but unfortunately, fortunate for me, she was not interested and the old man was forced to sell it. I came up for a reasonable offer but I was lower than what another guy had offered the old man. Obviously he ended up taking my offer even though losing out on money. He knew I wanted to restore it and would love it while the other guy was going to use it as a worktruck. The old man was tearing up a he signed it away. I have previously tried to find this man to show him all the joy (And frusteration) over the years but have never been able to.
The truck came with all the papers including the original bill of sale, I believe it only cost around $7500 for a brand new truck!

The truck came with a blown head gasket. So instead of simply fixing the it, I decided to pull the engine. This was the first engine I have ever pulled, torn apart, and built and I loved every minute of it. I was in college going for automotive engineering at the time and had no garage to do such a project. Luckily I had an amazing professor who, after trading some work, let me park my truck at his place and build my engine in his barn.
400ci, .030" over, dual plane Weiand intake, 750CFM holley vac carb, HEI Dist, 9.3:1 hypereutectic pistons, bigger cam (sorry dont remember!), roller rockers, ported heads and lastly, a full machine job including balancing. Going for Automotive Engineering I was able to put all my specs into a dyno simulator which came out to roughly 500hp/500trq. Although we had both an engine dyno and a chassis dyno I never strapped it down. However after readiing, dyno sims are usually within a few % of actual numbers....not with my tuning though haha!

Here is a short after graduating and landing a job in the Detroit area. Always loved this picture. Some new tires, wheels and, trac bars.
33s wrapped on 16s stock height for those of you who are wondering.
Mickey Thompson Baja ATZ tires and Clasic III wheels, both I highly recommend!

This was my third in depth project. The first being the engine build and the second, not shown, being my automatic to manual and full time to part time T-Case/hubs swap. My bed was in okay shape but I figured the amount of time involved in fixing an old bed I may be able to build I brand new one! So I ordered replacement parts and luckily my best friend at college worked at his family's body shop for 14 years. We assembled, welded, did all the body work and painted and bedlined the box.

Here is the color! any guesses?

"Boring" Grey, Selenite Grey from Mercedes to be exact. This was roughly the shade I was looking for and the size and amount of flake I wanted.
Although the bed turned out absolutely amazing, I am not sure I would go this route again. The panels came with very little filler work needed but the panels took forever to line up and required ALOT of working. I am super fortunate to have my buddy and the resources the shop were able to provide and there is no way I would have been able to do this without him...or at least it wouldn't have turned out nearly as good!

Although I was sad to move away from my friends in MI, It was something I had to do as MI wasn't my ideal place, I missed my mountains! This was my truck 2 days before I had to move!

During that time I pulled my engine for a starter/flywheel issues. I received an offer and ended up selling it. now time to go a different direction!

My buddy was selling a 12V Cummins he was going to flip but was selling his house and was looking to get rid of it fast. He told me what was wrong with it (rod knock). I ended up buying it for a pretty good price ($800) and brought it home where I stripped it down. This will be my next engine

Over the next year I started buying a few parts and prepping them for my engine build. I wish I had known how expensive diesels were to build, I may have chose another path! This is a stage 3 Hamiliton Head which I got an incredible price on new. The Snail in the back is a Borg Warner S475 which will be my primary turbo for my compound setup (still have to get secondary turbo). I prepped both parts buy soaking them in parts cleaner for a few hours and then baked them for a few hours where I could then spray high temp Cerakote. Also shown are the valve covers (also did the injection lines) in Cerakote too. These are the colors for my engine build, tan and black!

Another good snag! this is a 2018 Dodge Ram Frame. Since I will be putting a HO diesel I was worried about the frame, axles, suspension, etc with all the additional torque. I read that our frames can twist, not sure how much or the truth behind it. But, I also thought this would be a pretty cool idea! It has modern coils in each of the 4 corners which should make the ride MUCH better my old leafs. The axles have trailing arms/trac bars from the factory which should prevent axle warp. The axles are cummins tough and numerous people drive HO cummins with these, to my knowledge limited issues, And a the big one, a boxed frame! I pciked this up for 3000 dollars. I will have to cut it in half and weld it together to fit under my truck as well as make all the body mounts. I am thinking the engine should pretty much bolt in with minor fab work and the trans and t-case will bolt directly in.

Then Lastly, I have been experimenting with carbon fiber. For YEARs I have wanted to try and finally did. The process is easy but pulling it off is very difficult. This was my third, last and, best piece I made. The finish is decent and the weave orientation is okay but it didn't want to separate from the mold and ended up breaking chunks of the mold off due to lack of release agent. The nice thing is, each pull I make the results keep getting better. I have just placed another order of supplies and will be attempting to make different parts. My end goal is to make alot of the interior pieces out of carbon (door panels, cluster bezel, seat belt covers, etc) as well as some of the body panels...we will see if I can ever pull it off "perfectly"

If this all interests you, I highly recommend SUBSCRIBING to my channel, BarnBuiltBeaters. All of this will be shown there and we will begin working on some of the stuff above once the shop is finished.

Let me know if you guys have any questions, I love talking trucks!