11 minute read
Down on the farm
California has a special place in the heart of car culture, but the Golden State is also one of the USA’s principal centres of agriculture. So actually, Rich Bratby’s ‘72 F-250 ranch truck is about as Californian as they come
Words and pics: Dan Fenn
The phrase ‘Cal-look’ has long been part of the Custom Car lexicon. Back in the 80s, it seemed like the world was being taken over by generic air-cooled Beetles done in the classic Californian style.
We’re not going to get into that debate right now. But we are going to get into another kind of Cal-looker. A 1972 Ford F-250, to be precise.
What, you’re wondering, are we on about?
We’re on about the California beyond LA and Frisco, beyond Venice Beach and Compton. The Golden State may be the home of Hollywood, hippie culture, West Coast rap and an eye-popping population of porn stars, and most of the world’s wealth might seem to have been sucked into a narrow strip of its coastline like light into a black hole, but more than anything else California is the home of farms. Big farms, and lots of them.
And where there are lots of big farms, there are lots of big trucks. Trucks like this here Ford.
For the first five years of its life, the F-250 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 fields 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 a screaming 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.
Tough and usable
‘The Ford was first 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.’ Tough and usable, but also an absolute favourite on the show circuit around the Midlands.
But how did it get from California to the north of Scotland?
‘The guy who owned it has a trawling business,’ says Rich. Not just trawling, actually – the company actually fabricates the things, which sounds like the sort of welding you don’t give to your apprentice to have a bash at in 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 Ford way, 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? Maybe on a Babararacucudada, but surely if you’re going to compare an
Your instinct might be to call Rich’s truck a rat, but while a lot of thought has gone into the F-250’s appearance you wouldn’t have to look far to fi nd someone willing to take you to task for it. There’s plenty of rust presented as patina, plenty of decor (shout out to Nigel at Harry’s Hotrod Shop for the artwork), plenty of artful accessories – and, like a true rat rod, the truck 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, it stays off 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
F-250, particularly this one, 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,’ says Rich, ‘which is a big agricultural centre, I decided 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 with shows in mind, for sure, 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 to keep it a very strong, durable truck,’ says Rich. And then some. The 390ci V8 engine has been built – not for full-on performance (he’s had plenty of that kind of vehicle, American and otherwise, including some seriously fast stuff) but as he puts it, ‘it’ll lay down lines if that’s what you want to do.’
The end of the end
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, 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 definitely do the trick. ‘After fitting 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 fitted a Hilborn style carb scoop.’
Now it’s gone from running a bit rough to not a bit rough. The FE lump 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
Mexican blanket, Stars and Stripes headliner, fl oor mats, stickers, old copy of Custom Car… this is one of those interiors that’s gained another ornament every time you see it, and to prove the point Rich sent us the two pictures above left between us doing our photoshoot and getting this layout done
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, it’s not been ‘done’ in the sense you’d expect if we were talking about a different kind of custom car.
Nothing aligned
‘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.’
When we first saw the F-250, at the Weekend of Wheels show near Nottingham this last summer, it was very carefully presented with, among other things, an old copy of Custom Car from the 1970s sitting on its dashboard. That’s an illustration of the care Rich puts into it – as most of us know, it’s easy to make a car look ratty (as in old and crap) but the actual rat look takes a lot of skill and effort to do right.
Not that this is a rat-looker. It’s a Callooker, remember?
‘The interior had no carpet and holes in the bench,’ continues Rich. ‘I recarpeted it and fitted a Mexican blanket, and I had some Ford mats delivered from Andy’s Motorsport in Ireland.
‘Then to stick to its heritage, I took the original headliner off and retrimmed it with a polyester American flag 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 definitely the paintwork on the outside. ‘I took the truck to a friend who is brilliant at signwriting and pin striping, Nigel at Harry’s Hotrod Shop. He drew up some designs and did an amazing job on the truck, 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.
‘At the end of the day,’ says Rich, ‘it’s a rusty old farm truck. With a kick – but whatever falls off stays off!’
