Cost of 96 F150 Restoration?
 

Does anyone know a ball park estimation of a restoration of a truck in running driving order that needs some moderate body work due to rust? want it to looked like the day it ran off the assembly line. It is a 96 F150 regular cab short bed with a 302 manual trans. Thanks.

Too many variables to give an answer to this. It's like asking "How long is a piece of string"

Be prepared to spend as much as it cost when it ran off the assembly line.

First I would look for a rust free example...the rust will come back, I don't care who "repairs" it.

Body work = thousands of dollars
paint = thousands of dollars
mechanical work = thousands of dollars
interior work and glass = thousands of dollars

Unreasonable to expect to take an old truck and make it assembly line new on a budget. If you have deep pockets it certainly can be done, but you will still have old truck technology and would never likely recover the restoration costs. Could easily be $20-30K, and that is you doing a lot of the work. Taking it somewhere could be double. $80-100 per hour of labor plus parts gets you to $20K REAL quick.

Best of luck

Rust comes back when it isn't properly repaired.

I agree though, minimum $20k.

people restore there powerstrokes on another forum im on, i see 10k if they do it there self to redo pretty much everything except the engine/trans. but there are some on there that have spent 25k to completely redo the truck themselves. if you have a shop do it expect as much as double those prices.

iv priced out to restore my 250 and id be around 15k into it with a new another engine and rebuilt trans.

if your looking at a resto on a 96, you need to find another truck.

there are so many nice trucks already out there.
you can buy one across the country for mint price, and have it shipped to you and still pay less than you would trying to bring one back from the dead.

Some people have emotional attachments to their vehicles. It's not always about the money.

I had the rusted-out rear fenderwell sections cut-out and and repaneled. The rocker panels were pretty much the same. The bodywork, along with the prep and paint and clearcoat all done by a body shop totaled about $3,000.


While I believe Ford hit their peak on the Gen8 and Gen9 series as far as reliability and longevity - suggest some serious soul-searching is in order as to what is most cost-effective and palatable - reviving the old or going with newer. Also, suggest there is a big dollar spread between going for showroom new, and a respectable-looking, reliable-as-the-tax-bills daily driver.


Here, the truck has a tremendous amount of sentimental value that skewed the raw dollar numbers...

You could put a flatbed on it. It might look kinda redneck but that wouldn't bother me.

Willie