He Put a Ford Pinto Engine in a 100-Year-old Model T! | Full Custom Garage

I've been living out here on the ranch for almost three years now, and it occurred to me that every ranch needs a dedicated ranch truck. Something so that when you mosey into town, they know who's arriving. I've been collecting parts, I've been stashing parts, I've been shopping for parts, and I've been thinking of all that stuff, and it all starts with this little jewel. It's a classic piece of Americana. You know, here at Envisioning Central, we like to start off with projects that have a lot of missing parts. It really keeps the mind free to explore the possibilities. Now, you're probably thinking to yourself, doesn't look much like a ranch truck. And the only reason for that is because a good 70% of the vehicle is missing. That's not a concern for me. I've thought it all through. I've thought part of it through, and here we are. What could possibly go wrong? You know, I'm not one to give stuff away. This Model T has been hanging around for a bit, but I knew it had a ton of potential. What am I going to do? Put in the old-fashioned engine and putt along at 30 miles an hour? Oh, no. This is where it gets real good. I'll be right back. This must be what it feels like to be a Formula One driver. Except, you know, in a Pinto. I mean, 2.3 liters of fury. You can just mash the pedal to the floor on this thing and not worry about it. It's like a go-kart. It's fun. A fine machine. I tell you, they don't make them like they used to. What we have here is a perfectly good, perfectly hot-wired Ford Pinto. And I was thinking Model T had a four-cylinder. This is a four-cylinder Ford. Why the heck not? Ford engine in a Ford project. I just like to keep it that way on certain occasions. So if I could update my Model T from the factory brochure, I would order 2.3 liter with an automatic transmission. It's a perfect donor. I want it to look like an antique. You know, I don't want it to be a restoration. I want this power and ease of shifting with the Ford Pinto and automatic transmission. Sounds simple. You know, it's real easy to describe something. But this was never designed for anything with, say, 100 horsepower. So definitely have to upgrade the strength of the chassis. But the first thing is just the fitment of the engine. I know it's physically bigger than the original engine. And I got to see how that's going to work out. You know, in classic old-school fashion, you're going to wear what you got, right? If you only got one pair of shoes, you're getting them on somehow. In simplest terms, this is the classic shoehorn technique. You know, you hear, wow, they must have shoehorned that engine into that car. Yes, literally. Heck yeah. See, now the motor mount is in that C channel. That's what I was going for. So I think the simplest solution is I made four of these tabs that fit inside this C of the chassis so I can weld in there. And then the original motor mounts, the bolts go right through. I really want to keep the same formula for the transmission mount. I'm going to leave all the stock pieces in place and then attach it to the chassis. You can see it's the original crossmember transmission mount from the Pinto. It's going to hang right on this surface. It'll get drilled through. And then this will sit right on top of that. And the little wrench comes in real handy with this. Put your little wrench on there, and you give it a pull. The coolest factor of these Model Ts is back in the day, there were no roads. So everything was off road. It's a perfect runabout, you know, just for getting into town and back. So what I did here was I set this plate on top of the frame. So that's just set in there like a cradle. And I set this side under the frame. So that way when I unbolt it, I can just drop it out and get rid of it. That is step one in the 500 steps of this simple project. We're making progress on the mechanical. I got some really cool ideas for this ranch buggy. I'm talking about the style. On to the good part. Notice anything different? I see a lot different. The thing with this is, you know, I need a ranch truck, right? You see what I'm driving. I want something with character. You know, when I show up at Carl's Hardware, everybody knows who's coming to town. Yeah, this is rad. Alan is well versed in custom work and creativity. He works on the fly a lot like me. And I'm sure that he is not concerned with a venture into the unknown. Check out the Harley exhaust. I love it. I was going to use the Model T exhaust. And then I remembered I had these chopper fishtails. So I just put it into a single. I use both tubes and put them together. You're a really talented fabricator, right? You got the paint skills. You got the bodywork skills. How's your carpentry? I think I know what a square is. Okay, let's throw this on. I'll show you what I'm thinking. As usual, I like to loosely assemble all the pieces and then see how it fits together. You know, I wanted like a truck, but not like a pickup truck. Like a van body with a roof that comes over, like a sea cab, but a wooden body. A cab. Let the envisioning begin. So I think I see what you're saying. Like a stagecoach. Like a paddy wagon with kind of a hot rod. You know, like something I would say like mother's pies on the side or something. Like a delivery truck. I really don't see it yet. I know it's pretty vague, but it's like a van, right? But it's like a sea cab, but it's like a delivery vehicle. But it's old-fashioned, but it's new. I hear you. I see. But I don't see it in my head. Fortunately. I love what I see. I came up with an idea of the envisioning process, right? Forget about whatever fabrication it takes. Let's just talk concept for a moment. Yes. You know, I'm not one to tout my own merits, but this may be my greatest achievement of all time. The envisioning board. The full-size sketchpad. Da Vinci. Einstein. The greats. I'm standing on their shoulders and I feel that I've arrived. See how I jacked it up in the back with that rake? That's kind of what I was thinking. Like, it would have that stance, you know? So it's not fully Model T. You know, a lot of times you'll see where it's like, you know, kind of like that shape, right? Right, right. It kind of takes away from that nose-down look. It kind of does. It's almost like they kept the buggy look where the man stood there holding the reins. Right, exactly. First step is to figure out the seat height. You don't want to be looking up over the windshield. Fortunately, Alan's about the same size as me. So he's the guinea pig. All right, it's all you. Oh, let me see. Oh, that's it, man. You're in the car. It's perfect. That's the height. That's the height, yeah. It feels comfortable. You can theorize all day long about the look and proportion, or we can use Ian's envisioning board. That's a take. Take that drill. And right where your shoulder blade is, drill a hole right through. Perfect. Right where your knee is, you're bent. Now, right where your ear is. Right where your nose is. Right where you'd like to be holding the steering wheel. Directly across from your belt buckle. Belt buckle. One for your pancreas. Where's my pancreas? Now, we have a clear and decisive layout. Perfect start. So, it was the ear, right? I don't know. Did it work? Yeah. Hey, all I said was I had a good idea, and didn't say I had it all figured out. If this is your ear, and you would just be inside it. So, you can barely see you as you're driving. Yeah, I just want to kind of be in it. Seeing this opening, I just get this, like, 70s feel. I don't know why. I get the 70s feel. You know, now I'm starting to feel it now. Look how tall it is. It is tall. That's a freaking tall truck. I'm digging it. You know, this is the process of refinement. You start with an idea, and you just keep honing it. So, this is round. Trace that thing. Seeing, like, a real life size representation, you know, really helps the process along. How's that look? Yeah, it's perfect. It really is. You see a little bit of your knee. See your leg a little bit. Feels comfortable. It's like you're here, and then you see somebody you don't want to see. Well, that settles it. Next step is to take the template and transfer it to the wood. You know, full size, full strength. And it's really going to flesh this thing out. My favorite part of the project is, like, the first 10 minutes of it, right? Where you just bring that idea to reality. I think that's our line, man. I'm digging it. I like the round. The round says Hot Rod to me. Yeah, once we're talking about C-cab, I'm like, oh yeah, just, like, wide open. You know, if it was a delivery vehicle, no, no doors or anything. You just hop in and hop out. Prepare to enter the C-cab. Yep, looks difficult to get in. That makes this show car. Oh, yeah. It doesn't matter if I fit in it. I don't even concern myself with that stuff. I got something here from Speedway that's going to seal the deal. It's exactly what every Model T needs. Perfect. I love it, yes. We got the look. We got the sound. We are on our way. Now that we have the template, we'll transfer it to our final skin and complete the structure. Because this is a transition, this is going to be like a subframe inside the roof. And then the actual body will go around this. It's time for the school glue. A big concern for me was, how are we going to put this thing together, right? So typically, you know, you put a nail in the wood or a screw and you see the head. And I'm like, no, this is more like furniture, like cabinet work. So I concocted this idea of a subframe or substructure inside. And then the fasteners were reversed. That looks like a C-cab roof, don't it? We got to get in the business of furniture making, man. We could build a couch. Definitely in the cartoon realm, this is where I thrive. Oh, yes. The absurdity is just beginning. I love it. The roofline looks really good. I got two words for this. Groovy. Let's put this insert in and see what happens then. Oh, yeah, like it fits the windshield perfect too. There's nothing like three-dimensional representation. Life-size. This thing is way cooler than I thought when we hung up those boards on the rafters. It's big. Looks like a Hot Wheels almost. Oh, yeah, totally cool. You know, I got to say, the envisioning process and assembly of this went way smoother than expected. It's exactly what I was thinking. A little bit of nonsense and a lot of fashion. The C-cab's really coming along. Alan and I just followed through that same process front to back. We laid it out, squared it up, screwed and glued the entire assembly together, then skinned the roof with Masonite. All that hard work led up to this. The construction of this thing is pretty much there. It's just now, what does it look like? From here up, I love it. From here down, I have concerns. I don't really like this tone. I don't want to drive this truck. And then I don't like this either. So, you know, Model Ts were black and I'm thinking, well, I want a wooden body and I don't want to really paint it. I got a little leftover auto paint. And I want to experiment. Experimentation is the spice of life. You know, sometimes just taking a whisk, you get what we want. You could primer this thing and body work and do the whole deal, but I want it to look like a wooden body. It could just look like fiberglass, you know, when you're done. But I was thinking if I take a rag, kind of like staining, I could do a test piece. Or I could just put it on the truck. I think I'm going to go for the latter. You know, I like to go all in. No test piece, just go for it. Adapt, carry through. This is my process, you know, because either way, you did something. It's better than sitting there and doing nothing. Feel a little like Bob Ross, the master right now. All this happy little wood grain. We're trying to enhance it. The vapor's coming out of this auto paint bucket. They're really working for me. A totally different mood. You know, I think I'm going to try this on the side too. Part of the process is accepting the fact that every shot might not be a straight line to the finish. The things you can't plan for are usually, you know, in my opinion, the coolest thing ever. Well, I've achieved something. Black really did knock the yellow down. We still got two tones of finish. I like that. I think it still needs some development. I want to get this thing off the jack stands and on the ground. Now that I hit this positive note, I want to fix something that's just been on my mind. It's been bugging me since we started this thing. I've had these for years and now I finally have a purpose for them. Wheels and tires are one of the big statements of the vehicle, right? It's like, well, what is it? Is it a cruiser? Is it a race car? Is it a monster truck? What is it? What is this thing? I'm asking you. What is this thing? These are 32 Ford rims and these cool Excelsior racing tires. The look of these rims is classic. I mean, imagine if I did this whole Seacab project and left those dirt track tires on it all the way around. Four good used tires. I think it's the perfect option. The big problem is the 32 Ford bolt pattern doesn't match the Model T and it doesn't match the Ford Pinto, but I got a plan. We got three different bolt patterns going on here. The Model T rims in the front, the Pinto rims in the back, and these 32 Ford rims. They're all different. I had my friends over at Send Cut Send. They're really cool. You send them a drawing of what you want. They cut it and then they send it back. So it's perfect. Laser cut steel plate. They also set up the bolt patterns for me. This is the 32 Ford rim bolt pattern and this is the Pinto bolt pattern. All I got to do is start drilling. You got to be careful with wheel adapters. You know, not all bolt patterns are meant to be paired together. So the four lug to five lug conversion gets a little tricky. This is the moment we've all been waiting for. Is it going to fit? This is one thing I was worried about. I'm glad it's not directly rubbing, but it's close. Exactly what I was looking for. Simple, clean, old-fashioned. What was on there was pretty weird. What's on there now is just right. The next challenge is the front. That Pinto engine is significantly bigger than what was there. So we got a couple problems, as usual. Sometimes when I'm deep in a project, I just wake up in the middle of the night. Shocked and sweating. I had trouble sleeping last night. The typical thing, the big question mark. What to do about this paint job? I came out here first thing in my nightcap and socks. I sprayed that side black, and I got to say I'm happy with it. Am I compromising the airflow from this fan? Absolutely. Is it going to overheat? That's hot, Robbie. So it looks like it's going to work. And you know, the only thing that's going to tell is testing it. But man, if I rev this thing and it starts nipping on the radiator, that could be the end of it. Even in 1923, the engineering and the thought, it was preparing this car for the rough roads ahead. And I'll tell you, this hardware is pretty interesting. It's like a suspension for the radiator. I just think it's so cool because it's like the simplest form of suspension. The way it's laid out with the springs, it's going to stay where you put it, and it's going to hop around a little without destroying itself. So if this thing does go bouncing around on desert, you got a little shimmy to the shake. So this looks good for sure. It'll cool it. But I'm looking for something a little bit more like the Model T, you know? That aluminum is way too bright. I know just what to do. All of a sudden, period correct. Look at that. That looks old-fashioned, wouldn't you say? The big stickler in selling the antique look is keeping this hood in place. Nobody sees what's going on in the engine, you know, the sleeper factor. This is where our problem begins. So if we're to scrub a line straight through, you got an alternator bracket, got an intake manifold. We got a dipstick. It looks to me like we're gonna have to cut that hood pretty good. That's not very stealthy in my opinion. Gotta do what you gotta do. Desperate times call for desperate measures. There's no way this thing's going without a hood. See, I got that dipstick tucked out of the way. No problemo. If you're an auto purist and somehow made it this far in the show, I suggest you cover your eyes. It's about to get real. You know what that means? I'm gonna have to cut into this original hood, and I ain't scared. Okay, maybe I'm not that nervous, but I do feel a slight tug on the nostalgia heartstrings. Scratch the paintwork. Aha! What's going on in that Model T? It's just a matter of chipping away at all these culprits, you know. Some stuff can stay, some stuff can be modified, but this alternator is a major factor. Who'da thunk? Actually makes them a little more aggressive. That's gonna work. I don't know what I'm gonna do in the end for these two things, but I want to put these headlights on to see how they look. Looks like all the mechanical stuff is gonna clear. We'll see what this develops into. The headlights are gonna tell me. I think this is gonna seal the deal on the front end. These two prime specimens. These are the real deal Model T lamps. They look like they belong there. It's actually a Model T. Nobody knows that there's a Pinto in there. I love it. The final element, the crown jewel. The thing that says you're meant to ride like the wind. Everything's lining up. I'm putting the final trim parts on this and something, it just needs a little bit something. I've been struggling with this. You know what they say, it ain't over till it's over. And it ain't over yet. It's getting close to drive time. It's gonna be a wild ride. Moving right along on this buggy, you know, we're getting all the little things in place. Got rid of all that yellow wood tone. Everything's painted black, getting the wiring progressed. It's almost ready to go down the road. There's just one final thing. We've been busy. This Pinto engine's a little bit more modern than the Model T. So I added a fuse block. And one cool thing I'm doing is I'm routing it all into the stock dash. So it's pretty groovy. The original key will actually start it. It's pretty neat, these old-fashioned switches. I was able to open it up, find out what terminal matched to what, and I just wired it in place of the other stuff. But it's not all daisies in custom buggy land. Let's sit back here looking at it. It's like, man, what else could I possibly do? I think the sides are just a little too bland. It's just a real big panel. You know, there's a lot of action with the hardware on the windshield, with the lights, you know, the way that the running boards, it's all very dimensional. Then you have this long, flat side. It's like it needs something. Everything's fair game when I'm working on a new project. That's kind of sacrilege. This will drive people nuts. I just might do that. This one might actually fly. It's only natural, you know, when the shop is full of signage and you're looking for some kind of element on the side of this thing. It's like, hey, what about a sign? That'll be pretty groovy. The thing is, this is a pretty classy rig, right? So to comic it up, you know, to put something funny on it just might not fit. I'm thinking conservative. We can mark this day in history. That's right. I said it needs something conservative. I started thinking oval, like an oval window. It's like, well, it's a Ford and, you know, Ford is a blue oval, right? I mean, I got this sign and it's definitely more appropriate than the Chevy rectangle, right? Not really feeling the blue, but a little of the old envisioning device. That works. I like that. Needs to be antique, you know, and that's the right script. But it's old school sport, you know, it's like headlights had it. It was on the grill shell. I just think hanging a sign on the side is going to be a little bit, a little bit like not what I'm looking for. I got an idea that just might enhance it a little bit. Check this out. The Ford oval, right? It's not complicated. It fits the bill. It's the iconic emblem. Why wouldn't it be there? It's going to take a little something to fit it up, but I think it's a good progress point. You know, I was thinking from the start, like an oval window, and I was like, why would it need a window? But you could see that would play for sure. Just like making a custom bumper or a chop top, you know, the modification should look like it belongs. Like it was always there. That was a little dustier than expected, but I think that this edge is going to be really set off if I make it black, black like that. I think we can kill two birds with one stone here. I definitely need a piece that's going to support the signage, but I think we could also enhance the look of the interior with the same panel. Kind of a double whammy. Yeah, see nice and clean. It just gives that interior like some kind of like reason. I really want this to look like a picture frame, you know, like really amplify the fact that it's in set. So by painting the edge, it's going to draw your eye inward towards the sign. I like it, but the blue is still bugging me. If you don't like it, spray it black. That's my motto for this vintage vehicle. Getting rid of the blue really helps. It's like I kind of like having it look like brush strokes like that. It looks almost hand-painted if I just do it like that. It's super antique. Finger painting. It's not just for kindergarten. I couldn't have hoped for better on that sign. You can see it's that oval shape. It's recessed and it looks antique. It looks good. The whole thing here is, you know, this is the artist's canvas, right? There's bound to be a little overspray. We'll work through all that in the end. I made that template to duplicate it on the other side. I'm going to do the same process. Few more minor details and this chuck wagon is ready to chuck. Or something like that. We got this Model T project finished up and in gear. My favorite thing about it is just that old-time feel. I dub thee Mr. T. I pity the fool that doesn't like this car. I mean, this thing is a pretty unique mashup. It feels like an antique car. Exactly what I was looking for. The thing was, I started just with the idea, right? 27 ranch truck. Once Alan and I started collaborating, you know, we got the plywood out. We got some two-by-fours out. And really, we developed the look of this C-Cab body. And I got to say, it's beyond my expectation. It's got the old Model T steering column. Model T switches. A little old, a little new. It's definitely got the flavor. A huge part of this was the visual statement it's going to make. My friend Gilbert, the pinstripe master, he came by and did his number to the sides of this thing. And it's perfect. I didn't want to get into this restoration. I just want it to be functional. And everything I added to it, I want to make it count. It's got the big, giant eyeball headlights in the front. It looks like a classic vehicle, but it's got a little trick underneath. I got it wired up. I got it fired up. Now it's time for the true test. This thing is engineered to cross the Great Desert and go all the way to the market. Taking it for the shakedown run. No surprises, fortunately. Reliability of this engine transplant. Smooth, hard acceleration. Not all the gadgets you got to do with the Model T. This thing drives awesome. I was super surprised because that Pinto was pretty busted. Wait till he hits second. The driving experience of something like this on a dirt road is just mind-numbing. It's teeth chattering. Old school. You take a corner, you're going across the seat. It barely stops because there's only rear brakes. It's got way too much power for the whole thing. It's over the ruts, it goes in the berms, over freaking mud piles. It's a heck of a ride. No stoplights, no seatbelts. Nothing between you and your destiny but this plate glass window. My first statement was I want a ranch truck, right? Of course. Do I do anything that's absolutely functional? Heck no. And I was allowed to do exactly what I want. And that was wing it. I had all these components. I had an idea how they could be retrofitted together. And I just went for it. Sort of an experiment with a strong reward. And man, Model T, it's definitely a cool rig.