Where it all began. The night Zack bought the ’72 Ford F-350 Crew Cab

The build process you see in these photos are part of a masterpiece in progress. Zack Spivey, otherwise known as zackattack04 on cumminsforum.com (click here for the specific thread), has been working on it for nearly three years now. Like so many projects (and don’t we all know this), it began as a build that was supposed to last a couple of months, but because of the complications involved, and the owner’s desire for perfection, he still has some work to do.

The 5.9L Cummins being re-built and made ready for transplant.

Zack brought the truck home and almost completely stripped it in a weekend. The frame was blasted to clean it up and make it easier to work on. The frame was in good shape, but he was worried it might not work for the Cummins power planned for it. So it was boxed from end to end using 1/4-inch steel plate.

Zack had been bouncing back and forth between body work, frame, engine, and three drivetrains and it is slowly started to come together. The engine build was completed with lots of hard work and expensive parts thrown at it. The trans was gone through and its transfer case was reassembled after shift forks we replaced. A Valair dual disc clutch was also installed.

Cab painted and back for an initial fitting prior to more frame work.

In the mean time the body work started to make it look like truck again. With an “amazing paint job,” as Zack put it, from his good friend Nate at Budget Body & Paint, the cab was set on the frame again. Then came the wiring and interior. Getting carpet, seats, headliner and lots of little things buttoned up meant Zack got to move to the front of the truck.

A 1980 Dana 60 high pinion king pin axle was used for the front end. “Once it was square I tacked the front hanger on, and then moved to the shackles. After installing the Cummins, trans, and t-case, along with the cab, seats and a few other things installed, all the weight pushed my shackle angle in to negative,” said Zack. So it was back to the drawing board. After rethinking the suspension setup, he was able to re-tack the shackle hangers in place and get them perfect.

The truck came with a Dana 70 rear axle, and at first Zack was going to use it, but a friend of had a disc brake set up for a 14-bolt axle. Zack also had a 14-bolt with gears that matched the Dana 60 already installed in the front. A quick trade of the 390 V8 that came out of the truck for the disc conversion, and Zack was installing the 14-bolt rear end. At that point Zack began looking into the parking brake.

Front end bracing and bumper supports in place.

It was then he found that if he was going to run a parking brake cable, he would have to use a much smaller rear caliper than he wanted. There were other options for the parking brake, but none interested Zack. That’s when he changed his mind and decided to run a 11.25-inch rear end he had from a 2006 Dodge. It was large enough to handle anything Zack was going to throw at it and it was already set up with disk brakes. Using half of the original Ford parking brake cable up front, and two left-side short-bed Dodge cables on the rear, created a perfect match in the middle to make it all work perfectly.

Zack wants this truck to do it all, not just something nice to look at, so it needed a goose neck hitch. He also wanted a long bed he could use (having been a short-bed owner he knew its limitations), but wanted something low profile and clean looking. So he had some 1/4-inch steel bent up to the width of the frame with the center cut out for a tube to hold a goose neck ball, then welded it in centered over the rear axle. He then installed the long bed centered on the frame, cut a hole for the tube, leveled the tube with the bed floor and welded it up. Because Zack wanted easy removal or flip of the ball, he made a rod that runs through the driver-side frame frame rail that locks open to flip the ball over. That leaves the floor of the bed flush for cargo.

One of the other hurdles Zack has had to overcome so for in the build were the mirrors. Zack told us, “Grafting Third-Gen Dodge truck mirrors into a ’72 Ford cab was interesting to say the least.” Because the doors on the truck were pretty close to perfect shape, he didn’t want to half-ass the job and make it look butchered. Zack cut about 15 different plates before coming up with two that were a perfect fit for the doors. He took extra time welding and grinding these plates in to the doors, being careful not to warp any part of the doors. In fact, it took two days to finish about 24 inches of weld. Patience paid off and the mirrors turned out beautifully.

As we said before, Zack Spivey’s Cummins-powered 1972 Ford F-350 4×4 long bed build has a number of things still to be finished. And we can’t with to see the final result. We’re going to keep tabs on the progress of this beauty of a transplant project so stay tuned to Diesel Army for all the details, as well as a full feature on the completed truck.