CHERRY

*This story was sent to me by a young man named Will Pyle. Sometimes these old cars and trucks morph into a member of the family, and it's plain to see that is the case here. Thank you for the great story Will!

In early 2014, I was around 10 at this time, me and my dad had bought a 1966 Ford F100 from a friend of ours who needed the money. We were living in a suburban neighborhood at the time and didn’t have much room for it, so we rented a storage unit to do all the work in.

We brought it the storage unit and started to tear it apart. It had a locked up 352 with a 4 speed as its power train, some damage in the front fender from a wreck, painted this ugly orange and had a few rust spots under the body. We found a 428ci (Police Interceptor) off of Craig’s list for about $1,000 and completely tore it down and rebuilt it.

Once we got it running in the truck, we found later model twin I beams with disc brakes and swapped them out. We did some cosmetic stuff like a new fender, grille, valance, etc. Once we finished gathering all the parts for the cosmetics we got it painted Cherry red, and that’s how the truck got the name, “Cherry”.

Shortly after we got it back from the paint shop we got the bench seat redone, put in new carpet, and put in a C6 transmission so it would be more fun to drive in the metroplex.

I drove Cherry my entire sophomore and junior year and loved every second of it. I have learned so much from this truck and still take care of it like it's my baby. I am proud to say we did everything but paint, bench seat and a transmission all in a storage unit with no power, A/C or heat.

A lot of blood sweat and tears has been put into this truck and I loved every second of it. Now that Cherry is “somewhat done” (you can never be done with an old truck) I am currently building a 1964 Ford Fairlane 500