Farmer’s classic Living the (other) Californian lifestyle in a rusty F250

FARMER’S ARMOUR

Agriculture and pick-up trucks go together like a horse and carriage. Even so, an artfully decorated 1972 Ford F-250 is not what you expect to see working for its living down on the farm in the sleepy surroundings of East Staffordshire…

Words and pictures: Dan Fenn

Pick-up trucks belong on farms. Building sites too, of course, as well as all sorts of other working environments, but mainly they belong on farms.

There’s a chance that this might come as news to some people. These days, you’re as likely to see a truck on the school run as anything else. And in the world of hot rods and ‘kustoms with a K,’ old ones have become an increasingly popular alternative to prewar Fords.

But they still belong on farms.

Rich Bratby’s Ford F-250 is just about old enough to count as a custom, or a kustom, being into the second decade of its life. But he hasn’t blown it, or bagged it, or done it up in half an inch of paint with a metal fl ake glory coat and 30 layers of lacquer. And he doesn’t polish it. In fact, when bits fall off it he says he doesn’t put them back on again.

Yes this old farm hack is, in its own way, a show truck. And it’s defi nitely a daily workhorse. And if you thought the way to make an impression in a pick-up was to go out and blow two years’ wages on a Raptor, think again.

The F-250 was built in 1972 and for the fi rst fi ve years of its life, it worked on a farm in California. We don’t know where in California, or what the farm produced, but let’s picture it rolling down dirt tracks amid endless fi elds of rye shimmering in the evening sun as some good ol’ boy rumbles into town with his dog on the seat next to him and a fresh-faced young farm hand riding in the back on the way to court his best girl at the barn dance.

Or you can picture it getting peppered by wet salt as freezing sleet blasts in from the North Atlantic and huge men called Hamish and Lachlan bellow in Gaelic to make themselves heard above the sound of the ever-present gale. Either way, it’s all been in a day’s work for an F-250 which nowadays resides in the altogether less trying environment of East Staffordshire.

That’s where Rich Bratby is to be found. He’s had the truck for about a year and a half and in that time he’s turned it into a cool, quirky daily driver done with a knowingly artistic nod to its own heritage.

‘The Ford was fi rst registered in the UK in 1977,’ Rich tells us. ‘It had been used mainly as a ranch truck. I wanted to keep it that way – I didn’t want it to be a garage queen but a tough, usable truck.’

But how did it get from California to the north of Scotland?

‘The guy who owned it several years ago has a trawling business,’ says Rich. Not just trawling,

People who take these things too seriously might cry in their real ale if you were to call Rich’s truck a rat. But there’s plenty of rust presented as patina here, plenty of decor and plenty of artful accessories – and, like a true rat rod, it was built to be a daily driver. Rich is particularly proud of the fact that according to the grille, it’s an ‘ORD’ – the ‘F’ fell off and when something does that, he says, it stays off. So that makes it an F-off big truck, then…

actually – the company actually fabricates the things, which sounds like the sort of welding you don’t give to your apprentice to mark the successful completion of his first week on the job.

‘It was on a farm next to the coast,’ he continues. You can almost feel your teeth rusting. But they make ‘em tough down Dearborn way (actually, the fifth-gen F-Series was built in no less than eleven different factories across the US of A alone, as well as in seven other countries), and when he picked it up Rich’s main concern was that it was decorated with a shark-based jaws design on the door.

A shark? Surely if you’re going to compare an F-250 to any animal, it ought to be a bear.

Which brings us back to Californy. Home of big bears, big trees, big mountains and big trucks. On big farms.

‘With the truck being from California,’ explains Rich, ‘which is a big agricultural centre, I decided it was time to give it a makeover and return it back to its original farm truck theme.’ You can see for yourself how it turned out – which is to say you can see for yourself how cool it is. Done to make an impression, but absolutely 100% not a garage queen.

A little decor, indeed, is just the finish on top. ’It has had quite a bit of work done over the years to keep it a very strong, durable truck,’ says Rich. And then some, indeed. The 390ci V8 engine has been built – not for full-on performance (he’s had plenty of that kind of vehicle, including some seriously fast stuff) but as he puts it, ‘it’ll lay down lines if that’s what you want to do.’

It also laid down its big end, which is what happened before the part about having quite a bit of work done. Not much before it, though. The problem may have been provoked by an LPG system, which someone thought was a good idea but Rich definitely didn’t, at least not for long.

Still, if life throws you lemons and all that. The LPG may had chucked a spanner in the works but that was just a good excuse for a rebuild. New big end, new top end, new pistons, con rods, springs and camshafts, new Scott Drake ‘Powered by Ford’ valve covers. A whole lot of new stuff, then,

Mexican blanket, Stars and Stripes headliner, floor mats, stickers… this is one of those interiors that’s gained another ornament every time you see it Ford’s 390ci FE engine is original to the truck but not original in the other sense. In the year and a half since he’s owned it, Rich has given it a new big end, new top end, new pistons, new con rods, new springs and new camshafts, as well as new Scott Drake ‘Powered by Ford’ valve covers. Still, the biggest improvement came from replacing the fuel pump with one that was actually working

all of it designed not just to bring the engine back to life but to bring it back as a thing transformed.

And with all this good gear in it, the big V8 fired up and ran… ‘a bit rough’. Oh.

‘We found out the fuel pump wasn’t working,’ explains Rich, which would defi nitely do the trick. ‘After fi tting the pump, my mate John Massey at Birch Trees Dubs stripped the carb, rebuilt it and cleaned all the fuel lines. I uprated the ignition coil, distributor and leads, and fi tted a Hilborn style carb scoop.’

Now it’s gone from running a bit rough to not a bit rough. The 6.4-litre FE unit would have put out 201bhp and 376lbf.ft when new (trucks built up to 1971 had 255bhp, but from 1972 the engine’s compression ratio took a dive and power output went with it); Rich’s hasn’t been on the rollers since all the work was done but it makes the right noise, turns rude when asked and doesn’t break any more.

Elsewhere, mechanical mods are few and far between. And while the bodywork has been done, as you can see it’s been ‘done’ with more than a passing nod to the F-250’s heritage as a worker of the land.

‘It’s an original truck with no aligned panels,’ says Rich. ‘A farmer who owned it back in the day had a blowout and damaged the rear quarter panels, so they’ve all been repaired and welded. Some of the panels were being eaten by rust so it’s all been patched in. It has the War Boys logo from Mad Max Fury Road welded in to the bonnet!’

File under ‘places you weren’t expecting that paragraph to go.’

As most of us know, it’s easy to make a car look ratty (as in old and crap). But the true rat look takes a lot of skill and effort to do right. Whether this is a rat-looker is another matter… people can get very put out in these circles if you don’t play by their rules, so instead we’ll take the fi fth and say it’s a fantastically unique pick-up whose owner has ploughed his own furrow to great effect.

‘The interior had no carpet and holes in the bench,’ continues Rich. ‘I recarpeted it and fi tted a Mexican blanket, and I had some Ford mats delivered. Then to stick to its heritage, I took the original headliner off and retrimmed it with a polyester American fl ag from the States.’ There’s a school of thought that says there’s a right and a wrong way to do this, apparently – it needs to face top side forward as if it’s a standard being carried into battle.

There’s another school of thought that says whatever.

Anyway, the coup de grace was defi nitely the paintwork on the outside. ‘I took the truck to a friend who is brilliant at signwriting and pin striping. He drew up some designs and did an amazing job, giving it a real farm truck vibe.’

Which is absolutely what it’s got, even if it’s nothing like anything you’d ever see doing a job of work down on t’farm on this side of the Pond. Or is it? Look carefully, and you’ll see on the grille that this is actually an ORD, not a Ford. Which takes us back to what we were saying about keeping it real.

‘At the end of the day,’ says Rich, ‘it’s a rusty old farm truck. With a kick – but whatever falls off stays off!’ Good luck fi nding a Raptor owner that cool…