The FORD Lounge

[ArdWrknTrk]

Winch bumper Flareside isn't a combo you often see.

Looks good, Dane!  

[Rembrant]

grumpin wrote

Nice truck! As much as I love my factory mounted (external) tail lights and tailgate chains, this one looks pretty clean without both. I assume he has custom latches mounted inside the gate...that's a pretty common mod.

I assume it was originally a Styleside truck?

[Gary Lewis]

The Hawks were a cool cars.  And, they ran pretty well, although the Golden Hawk got the attention with the supercharger.

Anyway, that Flareside is ..... unusual.  As Jim said, you don't often see a winch bumper with a Flareside bed.  So it is less than "smooth" in front, but with the taillights integrated into the bumper in the rear it is smooth back there.

[85lebaront2]

Gary, you do realize that the 1955-56 Golden Hawks had Packard Clipper V8s, 320 ci in 1955 and 352 ci in 1956. When S-P killed Packard and built the Packardbakers for 1957-58 to honor their commitment to the Packard dealers it was a stopgap to keep things going after the big AMC/S-P merger fell apart. Studebaker wasn't the only beneficiary of Packard's big V8s, Hudson and Nash also got them as the long term plan was for S-P to merge with AMC (which would probably not have ended well for Chrysler).

[grumpin]

I wish the pictures were better. It’s a 1981 frame with a 1984 F250 diesel cab and clip.

351W with a ZF5 and transfer case out of a 1995 I think. Good eye on the tailgate latches. I’ll have to look closer next time.

And it was a styleside Cory, again good eye! He couldn’t remember the year of bed but said it was era correct.

Edit: That’s my Bronco in the background of the one picture, classing up the place!

[ArdWrknTrk]

We'd often call this a "bitsa" as in.... bits of this and bits of that.

 Dane. Always keeping it classy!

[85lebaront2]

Well, not a Bullnose, technically a truck though. I am in the process of replacing my 1994 Taurus LX with a 2009 Flex Limited. For Gary, it has the 3.5L Ecoboost V6 which I believe is the same engine as Blue has. 6 speed transaxle and AWD (standard on ecoboost) with a class III receiver already on it so it should handle (a) my 2K capacity Aluma and (b) my brake equipt tow dolly for taking the konvertible to the muffler shop.

[ArdWrknTrk]

Those turbo Flex look a little weird but we're ROCKETS with that engine.

(Probably no weirder that the Taurus 'jellybean' did when they came out....)

[Gary Lewis]

Jim - You and Janey think they look weird.  I think they look cool.  But you are right about the engine, with the 3.5L EB they would be rockets, or rocket sleds.

I wanted to buy one when we bought the 2011 Murano.  Janey was amenable but the salesman told me the EB wasn't available in it.  A few months later we took a trip in the Murano to NM where my good friend showed me the video of all the testing Ford did with the EB and explained it was available in the Flex.  

Bill - I think you are going to love it!  It'll easily pull what you've listed, and then some.  And it will have tons of interior room.  Cool!

[85lebaront2]

Gary, we already have a 2011 Flex Limited, non-ecoboost. We like it for all the reasons stated, it is closest thing to a traditional station wagon you can buy. Seats folded, loads of cargo room, seats up, 7 passengers. we have the middle seat refrigerator/freezer, middle seat HVAC controls, also the kiddie entertainment system, dual screen DVD players that can also be run from the front. Both of us love the SYNC system for hands free calling (which can also be done verbally). It has the HID projector headlights which remind me of the ones a friend gave me for my GT350, he brought them back from Canada as a Christmas present, they were so strong I could read the registry number on a boat parked at the end of our 2 block long dead end street as soon as I turned in and hit the high beams. The Flex headlights do not "dim", they have a shutter that covers the upper left side of the beam for "low" beam.

[Gary Lewis]

Yes, they are essentially a station wagon.  So, you'll have two of them?

As for the Sync system, if yours is like mine and you love it then you've not used a modern system.  That Murano and Janey's GLK blow my Sync away for navigation.  They both have a joy stick that significantly improves the interface.

And I'll bet the shutter on the headlights is to keep the HID hot and working.  Neat trick.  

[grumpin]

I used to volunteer to drive veterans to the VA facility in White City. We used an AWD Flex.

I really liked that car. If you drove like you should on packed snow and ice that thing would rarely slip.

Only “problem” I had was it was hard for older or crippled up vets to get in and out of the third seat.

I believe it was a 2011.

[85lebaront2]

Yes, two of them and both the "cinnamon" color with sunroof (not my choice on either, my feeling if I want a roof leak I'll take my konvertible). From the pictures the center of the dash looks the same except the color. On the SYNC system, I have a radio in Darth that will do the same hands free calling.

Joystick, hmm, can you play Pacman on it? that's the only use I ever found for a joystick unless you consider the one connected to the toploader or T10 in the Shelby, or to the A525 in the Horizon to be a joystick. One of the reasons I don't want to go too new, if they are not going to use a conventional shifter, then give me back my "typewriter drive" like we had in the 1959 DeSoto and 1962 Plymouth. I am damn sure a set of pushbutton switches could do the same thing a knob does and with a much easier to determine which position you are in particularly since most all modern automatics are computer controlled. The 6F50 in the flex is shared with GM as a 6T50 (Ford uses F for FWD and GM uses T for transverse) Chrysler does their own thing, but uses T or L to differentiate between FWD and RWD like GM.

[Gary Lewis]

I know that this isn't a truck story.  In fact, it isn't even a Ford story.  But it is a story that I think you might like...

I may have mentioned about three years ago on another forum far, far away about an article in Hot Rod re the 1965 Malibu SS of a friend of mine, Cliff Gottlob.  That article describes the Malibu I helped unload off the transport one summer evening in 1965.

I'd started hanging out with Cliff a bit before then and had gone to at least one, and probably more, Corvette club meetings in Wichita with him.  One evening the phone rang and he said his Malibu had come in and he wanted me to come help him get it off the transport.

You might ask why he didn't start it and drive it off, but that wasn't the plan.  He was going to blueprint that engine before it was fired.  So we rolled it off the transport and onto a trailer and he took it to his shop - the same shop where I'd pulled the 348 out of my '58 Bel Air and put it in my '58 Impala.

If you want to know more of the story read the article in Hot Rod, although that car was never lost.  But now lets turn to a call I got from another friend yesterday.  It seems that the '67 Vette that Cliff had raced for years has been restored.  This article in Vette Views Magazine tells more than I ever knew about the car, although I'd seen it run many times and had been around it quite a bit.

But what that article doesn't say is what my friend called about yesterday.  The results of the Meacum auction that are mentioned in the article.  The last bid for the car was $3.5M - and it didn't reach the reserve.  

[Gary Lewis]

85lebaront2 wrote

Joystick, hmm, can you play Pacman on it? that's the only use I ever found for a joystick unless you consider the one connected to the toploader or T10 in the Shelby, or to the A525 in the Horizon to be a joystick.

The joystick in both the Murano and the GLK allow you to move the cursor on the map, zoom in or out, and select things, with your arm laying comfortably on the center console and your right hand easily tilting, rotating, and pushing the joystick.  On my Sync, in a bouncy pickup no less, you have to use your finger to drag the screen to go to a new position, and once you find it you have two minutes before it reverts back to where you are.  As for zooming, you have to touch the + or - button on the screen, which requires you to take your eyes off the road to find and then steady your hand on the bezel of the screen in order to touch it.  And selecting something also requires touching the screen.

In my humble opinion, the Sync system on my 2015 F150 is FAR inferior to either the 2011 Murano or the 2014 GLK.  I hope the one in your Flex is better than mine.  

[ArdWrknTrk]

https://fordauthority.com/2020/08/regular-car-reviews-hilariously-tackles-a-1984-ford-f-250-explorer-video/

[Gary Lewis]

Jim - That's hilarious!

Did you notice the cowl seal?  Garage door seal.  

Artificial horizon!  That's funny.

Did you notice that it doesn't have a headliner?

How about that exhaust - that thing's running rich.

But, overall that is a wonderful truck!

[ArdWrknTrk]

Comedy of errors??

Yes I'm a very astute observer.
But it's the feature -and the bug- of the way my mind is wired.

[85lebaront2]

Ok, update on the Flex. There is a problem with the center seat, probably the middle one. They are replacing it with a new one from Ford and are waiting for it to arrive. Current ETA is tomorrow, so depending on that and how long to install it I may be getting it Friday, if not since I have to get the check for them from my credit union and they are amenable to meeting half way (3+ hours each way from here to Tarboro or vice versa) we will meet at the BayPort CU branch in Suffolk VA to take care of the transfer and hand over of my 1994 Taurus LX as a trade in.

[Gary Lewis]

Glad it is going to be that easy!  That's amazing, Bill.  Good luck!