Pros and Cons of Bullnose Ford Ownership | A Mini Buyer Guide

[Music] what's up guys this is riley with hudson motors today we are here with our 1983 ford f-350 our bullnose dually and we want to give you guys some pros and cons to bullnose ownership if you're watching this video before august 14th 2022 we are giving away this truck on our website hudsonmotors.com if you're watching it after that date we'll probably give away something else that's cool because here at hudson motors we build restore and give away classic trucks just like this one here so if you're watching this after august 14th check us out and see what else we're giving away but for this video's purpose we want to kind of give you guys a better in-depth looks of what it's like to own a bullnose ford what are some of the pros and what are some of the cons like any old truck there's some things that are great about them and some things that are some challenges that you learn to live with so let's go over it and uh let's hop right in so first things first is something that you guys are probably obviously is glaring right here is this hood you can see that our hood here has a bend in it this happened between the time that we made our walk around video so if you're seeing this video first and you haven't seen the walk around we'll put a link to it in the description we do a full walk around of this truck showing off all the good stuff all the stuff that we put into it in between that video and this video just by shutting this hood it has bent along the hood hinge this is one of the big cons with these bullnose fords is that the aftermarket produced tailgates and hoods and body panels are pretty stinking weak so if you can find an all original bullnose if you're looking for one of these find something that's all original with an original hood an original tailgate we are lucky to have an original tailgate on this truck it shuts and opens wonderfully but this is an aftermarket hood and they're weak and they don't hold up like the factory hoods did so if you have a factory hood save it do the body work that it needs to be to be right don't go buying an aftermarket hood because this is what you're gonna get gonna bend at one of the two hood hinges and you're gonna get this ugliness i see this more often than not in bull noses if you're on facebook marketplace type in 1980 to 1986 ford truck you're gonna see more than half the trucks are bent like this at the hood for that exact reason biggest pros when it comes to owning a bullnose is that you get a lot of modern amenities um a lot of great stuff that goes into a trek that makes it more daily drivable but it still has this amazing amazing classic look i still think that this is the the truck that is kind of the end of the classic pickup look with its headlight bulbs these are the h4 bulbs that are they're individual bulbs they're not sealed beams like you get in the 87 and 91s or 92 to 97 fords this truck very much so looks still like a classic truck it's still a head-turner especially with things like the two-tone paint job that you find a lot of these bull noses the pinstriping that you find on these trucks they are very classic looking they don't kind of just look like an old work truck they when you're driving around people still think it like look at that classic truck oh would you look at that just look at that so they're really cool we love the styling that's obviously subjective you know that's just our opinion here but we think that they still look very classic and are very very cool to look at a lot of the other classic styling is things like this big old chrome grille we've got these big walrus teeth for these bumper guards these are a very classic look on these old-school bumpers with these big big big bumper guards they're cool very classic looking so like i said just a ton of cool classic styling more classic tail lights in the rear the tailgate is very classic as well i'll show you all that as we go down so another con that we have to talk about like we talked about with the hood the aftermarket hoods and stuff is that these body panels are very prone to rust now bullnoses aren't that rare of pickups i would tell anybody out there to not go crazy thinking you found the perfect truck if it's full of rust there's gonna be another one but these trucks are pretty prone to rust the body panels tend to get eaten out pretty bad we got very lucky and found a very nice very clean truck to do this giveaway with we lucked out on that but i would tell you to be careful and be wary when you're looking at bull-nosed forts we see them all the time rotted out rotted out over the fender wells floorboards cap corners all that kind of stuff so take your time find the correct truck if you want to get into a bullnose find the right one don't go settling and find something that's full of rust and then you know it's not really worth to restore find something that's been garage kept or something that's been out of the salt out of the snow and you'll be more happy let's talk about another pro one that might be maybe the biggest pro when talking about these bull noses is that parts are very very interchangeable between a plethora of different ford trucks you can use parts from bull noses from 80 to 86s from 87 to 91's if you want to use brick nose parts if you want to use obs parts a lot of their parts are interchangeable you can even use some super duty parts some 99 to o2 parts will even swap into these trucks for example let me give you an example of some of the parts that we swapped in from other trucks this front axle this is a dana 60 front axle this came out of a 95 ford f-350 and so did this zf5 five-speed manual transmission those both came out of a 95 and then we've got super duty seats in here come around we'll show you these split bucket seats with the the middle jump seat these are out of uh of a super duty ford and they bolted right in so these are great trucks because a lot of this stuff is interchangeable and so when you can't find parts for your bullnose or maybe you want a different door panel you can use brick nose door panels 87 to 91 door panels all that kind of stuff so it's really nice to have different trucks to be able to pull from and make things better another great example is our coolant reservoir and our windshield wiper reservoir is out of a 92 to 97 just made a bracket up and it fits right in and boom you can use that instead so really cool that you have a huge plethora of parts however with that being said there is the reverse side of that that because these trucks are still relatively new i mean this truck's 40 years old now but there is not a ton of aftermarket support yet there's not a ton of reproduced parts like you would find for older fords older chevys and stuff like that there's not a ton of reproduction parts so a lot of times you're stuck going to the junkyard or stuck finding new old stock or finding nicely used stuff on ebay that tends to be the case as it's really hard now to find the parts that you need and a lot of it's just not reproduced it's kind of a double-edged sword you have a lot of still usable used parts some new old stock parts but there's not a lot of aftermarket reproduction parts and so you're kind of doing your best to mix and match and find whatever you can find so let's pop the hood i want to talk about something that's great about these bull noses is that they're so simple like there is no complicated anything you don't have to deal with with pcms with ecu's with tcus nothing these trucks are just good and simple they're great so if you've seen under the hood of like a power stroke ford a power stroke diesel you got hoses and lines and wiring running all over the place not in these trucks really all the wiring you have up here is just body harness stuff and whatever relays that you're running just to keep the truck alive but because it's all mechanical injections and stuff like that they're very simple it's really just a motor an ejection pump and a turbo in there now with that being said they're simple but at the same time they're not that fast they're not rocket chips by any way shape or form even with the turbo on here it's really just good enough to kind of keep up with traffic they're not the fastest trucks on planet earth and these 6.9 idis as cool as they sound and they're very reliable diesels there's not a lot of aftermarket support for them either and even companies like banks who made the sidewinder turbo kit for this they're stopping to produce these things and so it seems like the 69 is going to be kind of obsolete pretty soon here and you're going to have to swap in like a 7 3 power stroke or something like that like we talked about in the past in the beginning of the video here like there are some nice modern amenities that you get with the bull nose like you get really nice air conditioning you get a tilt steering wheel which is pretty cool like from the factory tilt wheel but then it's still very classic looking in here you still get a really classic looking dash your radio is kind of tilted towards you you can still run a two knob radio stuff like that so it's kind of this mix of some modern amenities with a very classic look but i will say that when you're looking for a bullnose and this might be this might be turning the video into more of a a buyer's guide on how to buy a bullnose what you'll see a lot of time is just the plastics that they used in these in these interiors was really subpar you know starting in 1980 this is kind of the introduction of plastic interiors into passenger cars in the united states and i don't think they knew what they were doing i don't think they knew what quality of plastics to use what plastics would hold up in the sun and the plastics in these trucks a lot of times is absolutely thrashed and so do your best to find a truck that has original plastics that aren't beaten up that aren't broken that aren't cracked there are some reproduce reproduction parts out there like there's reproduction door panels but these are original door panels that we tried our best to restore because in my opinion original parts always fit the best but you can still tell that these these door panels aren't brand new this is just kind of one of those things you gotta look out for with bullnose is that if they've been parked outside parked in the field or have been abused their whole entire lives their plastics are going to be thrashed luckily our dash pad it was already wrapped in leather we bought it our dash itself is in perfect shape the clips aren't broken the door panels are in great shape but it's hard it's hard just to find a truck that has a pillar trim and that has the kick panels and all that kind of stuff that are all intact our kick panels were probably in the worst shape we bought this truck they were really flaky just the plastic just it just gets aged and dry and middle and it starts to get brittle and it starts to start to flake really bad so did our best to sand as much that flake away and just expose healthy plastic and and repaint those so that's something else to look for but we could go on and on and on these are these are just issues that you might have when you're dealing with a classic that you just need to know and be aware of this this truck is 40 years old if if this truck was built in 1982 and sold as an 83 and we're in 2022 now this truck is 40 years old and it's going to have issues and it's not going to be a modern 2020 pickup that's able to do you know zero to 60 in six seconds or something crazy so you know we could nitpick all day long but these are just some of the things that you should look for when you're looking into a bullnose and wanting to own one what's it like to own one these are some of the good things i love this truck it is full of character and the character and the smiles per gallon outweigh the all the negatives for sure we're not going to go crazy and nitpick things like turn radius and all that kind of stuff just take that all with a grain of salt and know that when you're driving these you're going to be happy it's therapeutic it's fun they sound great and but like again you still get some of those niceties that you would kind of want to drive a truck more than on sundays to or to the grocery store or something like that so it's great to have a truck like this i would highly suggest to anybody who's kind of looking to get into their first classic truck start with the bullnose they're not that hard to work on you can find parts for them there's there's resources out there available for these trucks and you don't have to be a full-blown professional to work on them you can figure out a lot of this stuff and like we said because the parts are shared across the years there's a lot of knowledge out there about these trucks it's a great great starter classic for someone that i would highly recommend so with that being said we'll shut this video down thank you for watching if you like this video make sure you subscribe to us here on youtube hit the notification bell so you don't miss a video and then check us out on instagram at haunts and motors that's where we post the most post build updates of our future trucks and all the other stuff that we're working on and then check us out at hudsonmotors.com where you'll see whatever truck we're giving away we have tons of great stuff for you to buy to get entries and win these trucks tons of cool merch that's inspired by classic truck culture and all that kind of stuff so thanks for watching we'll catch you on the next one [Music] you

Channel: Hodson Motors

Views: 83,903

Keywords: ford, bullnose, bullnose dually, dually, 6.9 idi, banks turbo, turbo diesel, diesel trucks, hodson motors, truck giveaways

Id: ZAVZ_n2RYXQ

Length: 11min 5sec (665 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 03 2022