New member 81 F150 restoring the interior

[JohnnyD]

Hi, I'm new to the forum, but have had my 1981 F150 Custom, short box, 2wd, 4-speed, straight 6 since it was new (it happened to come to my driveway the same day my first child came home from the hospital with his new mama -- definitely a gold-star day!). Now, after being the daily driver for my 2 kids, a farm truck, and on its 3rd coat of paint, I'm retired and have time to replace the door panels (crumbling from the sun), the cracked dash, and nearly non-existent floor mats.

I'm in the process of ordering parts. The truck had slider-type door locks when new. One slider has broken and I understand they were a "Ford has a better idea" that lasted only a few months. I'm wondering if I can use the same locking/latch mechanism and convert to pin-type locks just by buying the rods and caps or whether I have to get more serious about replacing other parts. Any thoughts?

[Gary Lewis]

Welcome!  Glad to have another retiree on here.  

On the lock situation, you can get the pin-style rods and caps and use your current door latches, but down on the pin will be Unlock and up will be Lock.  To change that just change out the latches to the later ones.

Or, you can see if anyone on here has the replacement sliders.  And, one of the catalog outfits is selling them now.

Also, we have a member's map (Bullnose Forum/Member's Map on the menu), and I'd be happy to add you to that if you'd just give me a town/city and state.  No address in other words.

[grumpin]

Welcome!

[JohnnyD]

Gary, thanks for the info. Hmm, I'll have to think about having up/down reversed. Have replied to a couple posts elsewhere on the forum where people had or were looking for sliders, so maybe I'll come up with a replacement. Have looked online and can't find anyone selling replacement sliders - any more clues? LMC seems to have a great variety of parts at reasonable prices, but no sliders.

BTW, I'm in NW Oregon - I've changed my signature to include location.

[Gary Lewis]

Johnny - I saw your posts, but there's little chance of Taden getting back with you as we've not heard from her since that post in Oct of 2017.  However, I'm sure Jonathan will get back with you.

And, I've looked but apparently I don't have any sliders.  Sorry.  But, I'm pretty sure that someone is now selling them.  

So you should search for them online.  The part numbers are shown below, and I just did a quick search for E0TZ 1022168 and got several hits, although most of those were used.  And, note that some people don't know that the second character is a zero, so you might also search for an O rather than a 0.

[JohnnyD]

Thanks, Gary. I have a pile of manuals, but didn't have a parts listing like that which teases out all the part numbers including colors. I need the LH one, so the part is -169, but this helped me find one on Dennis Carpenter. I'll wait to see if anyone on the forum responds to my requests.

Truck and interior were originally powder blue - that wonderful blue that Ford made that faded out pretty quickly. This is the second time I had it painted, and as you can tell from the photo, the paint guy managed to order the wrong blue. But he did a good job of painting it and I didn't do any body work other than putty up all the holes where the emblems go, so I didn't worry too much about the color not being perfect. Took a couple of months to get used to the brighter blue.

The dash is cracked and the door panels have crumbled from UV, so they're next to replace. Just have to decide whether to stay with sliders before I order the panels.

[Gary Lewis]

You found it on Dennis Carpenter?  Cool!

[1986F150Six]

Welcome!

[Ford F834]

Welcome! Sorry I’m late to the conversation. Sounds like you found what you needed? I converted mine to pin locks because both sides were broken/missing and I had no keys. It was just easier/cheaper for me to swap the whole lot over to the later kind. If you found replacement then that’s great. I love the 80/81’s.