F-1000
All great things in life are born in our imagination, brought to life through hard work and preserved with resilience. This is true in every aspect of the human experience. From falling in love, to building a career, or raising a family and, most importantly, when it comes to building hot rods! Especially if you set out to build a vehicle that grabs your attention and won’t let go. That’s exactly how Nick Jackson built his Ford F-100.
Rancho Santa Fe Cars and Coffee pulls in millions of dollars worth of high end exotics, never before seen and one of a kind vehicles. Porsches, Lambos, Ferraris, Aston Martins, and Bugattis, ranging from fresh off the lot to collectables, all lined down the streets. It's surreal, visceral and an all around life altering experience.
It’s for that very reason that when I see a crowd beginning to form around one specific vehicle at these weekly shows, either my curiosity or F.O.M.O. begins to get the best of me. That’s what happened the Saturday I met Nick, Amber and the F-1000. I made my way past a car club with Carmine red, Verde Metallic and Blu Dino supercars to find the source of the congestion on the main road. Through the throng of people, I snuck a peek at what the fuss was about and what did I see? A pickup truck.
This isn’t just any pickup. She’s the furthest thing from the cars that have been cruising up and down Paseo Delicias all morning. In stark contrast to the cars with perfectly protected paint and sharp, clean body lines, this truck is riddled with holes, covered in rust and has a massive gap in the bed that’s big enough to stick your arm through to touch the pavement below. Long, dark scars course down the sides of the bed, evidence of her being chopped and shortened 20”. Despite the interest in the body, it’s whatever is lurking under the open hood that is drawing the large crowd. At the front stands Nick Jackson, owner and more importantly, the builder of the truck.
I begin to wonder if I’ll ever get a chance to speak to him as I listen to their questions, all of which he takes time to happily answer. “How long did it take to build this?”, “How many inches did you chop off here?”, “What type of wheels are these?, “Holy shit! What’s the size of that turbo!?” The last question piqued my curiosity so I made my way through the sea of onlookers and took a gander at the engine bay. It becomes apparent what all the fuss is about.
“Dear Lord” I whisper while admiring the immaculate engine bay.
Nick approaches me, my stunned silence and the drool dangling from my lip makes him think that perhaps I’ve had a stroke while admiring his truck. “It’s a 78MM.” He says with a smile. Like a mind reader, or just another hotrodder, he innately knew what I was gawking at.
The “F-1000”, is a 1966 Ford F-100 that’s been torn down and rebuilt into a street stalking, LS powered monster that lurks the streets of San Diego. The body of this ol’ pickup looks like the work of a mad scientist hell bent on piecing together his masterpiece. But the engine bay tells a completely different story. It’s artwork in metal form. Custom fenders are nestled below a perfectly tucked roll bar. Each nut is meticulously polished, each tube precisely bent. A satin black finish is offset by a clean LS motor (eat your heart out purists), and one massive 78MM turbo that’s heat wrapped. This motor is to Nick what the Starry Night was to Van Gogh.
Painted on the side of the door in large bold lettering is “Jackson & Blanc - Est. 1931”. I ask if it’s his shop truck and who Blanc is. “It’s my family’s company. We’re only a few years from turning 100! I grew up working there. I started sweeping in the warehouse, installing and now, I’m fortunate enough to run the family business. We’ve had great years, and we’ve had some tough years, a couple times we weren’t sure how we would make it. Though, with enough hard work and creativity, we always seem to pull through.”
It’s this grit, determination and imagination that also helped Nick see this massive project through over the last nine years of building her. “I always knew I’d finish it, but that’s not to say that there weren’t times that I had my doubts.”
We’ve not spoken very long before his wife appears by his side. “Hi, I’m Amber!” She says with a contagious smile. “We’ve been together for eight years now and she’s been supportive every step of the way.” Amber is a hot rodder with plans to restore her grandfather’s 1965 Ford Mustang GT. “She’s really my ride or die. Amber calls it the ‘Frankentruck’ but her real name is Ethel. Or sometimes, ‘Project Dirty Driveway,” he says with a laugh.
“I grew up loving cars. When I was little, I could point out any car and tell you the make and model. It didn’t matter what it was, I just wanted to be behind the wheel.” That young love grew into a passion for building imports and Nick found himself under the hood of Hondas and Subarus for a while. “But those were cars that you simply added parts to. I knew I wanted to build a car from the ground up, start to finish. I wanted to build something special.”
With that motivation, Nick set out to find a project that he could craft into his own. “We had a fleet of old brown Ford’s and that was my inspiration for this build. So I found this truck for sale only a few miles North of San Diego. It was running, driving and sort of had brakes. I bought it from a really nice kid who wanted to see it go to a good home.”
Nick spent only a few months behind the wheel of his truck when he lost the brakes coming down a hill one night. Downshifting, he did his best to slow a couple tons of steel down, doing everything he could to save his new ride from total destruction. “I tried using the e-brake and it still wouldn’t come to a stop. But I was lucky enough to get it to slow down enough to tap the front tire against the curb until she stopped completely. That was the last time I drove it for nine years.” With the help of his friend, he got it home, pushed it into the driveway and went to work.
Nick funnels his creativity through building cars and with this truck, he knew what he wanted and took some creative avenues to see it through. “The cab of the truck is from the desert, near Pahrump, Nevada that I hauled home during a business trip.” The front end came courtesy of Ford Crown Vic that Nick parked in his garage then his driveway as he tore it apart. The 4L80 overdrive transmission was scavenged from a Chevy Astro van. And the LS motor was a $900 deal off of Ebay. Easy to see where the name “Project Dirty Driveway” was derived from.
“I’m not afraid to try.” Nick began tearing Ethel apart using tools in his garage and a 110 volt welder. “One night, I pulled out the plasma cutter and started chopping her up.” After being satisfied with all the grinding on his frame and adding a four-link suspension, he set his tools loose by chopping and shortening the bed twenty inches to give it the aggressive short bed styling. “I would go as far as I could and then something would come up and she’d have to sit for a while. I’d do some more and then she’d sit again, at one point she was in storage for three years.”
With more than some words of encouragement from his wife, Nick decided to finish his project once and for all. “It was actually her and I that sat this motor down into the car. You never realize how much you trust someone until you’re lying under the car and they’re lowering a motor towards your face.” Amber was there with him through some of the long nights, working side by side on Ethel.
“I knew from the very beginning that whatever I built was going to have an LS.” It’s no secret these motors have amazing power capability and reliability, both of which are what Nick was looking for so he could not only build that hot rod, but also drive the hell out of it too. To drive the hell out of it, he needed power and lots of it!
The LS is packed with forged internals, topped off with a Holley EFI kit and that glorious turbo. “We just ran it on the dyno and it laid down 638 Horsepower to the wheels. The plan now is to run E85 and take it up to 17-18lbs of boost to put us at the 1,000 HP mark.” It’s all one can do not to reach out and touch the turbo in appreciation while he details his plans to smoke all those who dare underestimate him at the light.
What does one do with 1,000 horsepower? Anything they want. It’s what they need that is the more important question. A single cab, short bed pickup with a fire breathing LS motor needs to hook up or else all those numbers mean nothing. The pickup was outfitted with a Detroit Locker in the Ford 8.8” that Nick had already chopped and shortened himself. “I went with the 8.8” rear because I wanted something that was available in the junkyard. These are parts that are expected to be broken!” At all four corners hang a set of 6 piston Wilwood brakes. What’s grabbing the road when an insane amount of power is trying to destroy all around it? How about a set of Classic 18” wheels, 12” out back and 8” up front, powder coated black and wrapped in 335/35/18 rubber to handle all that power.
At this point, Nick had gotten most of the body, the frame, wiring, drivetrain and plumbing to where he wanted it but now, he needed the finishing touches. For this, he turned to Dean Sharp and his team at Sharpe Automotive in Santee, California. “All the dirty work was done by me and all the beautiful work was done by Sharpe!”
It was Sharpe auto that recommended and then built the custom fenders that protect the engine bay from rocks and flying debris! With having 1,000 horsepower in the plans, the shop manager James Wright built the integrated roll cage that fits flawlessly in the cab and runs down into the engine bay. “I spent most of my time with James who runs the custom side of the shop for Dean. I can’t recommend these guys enough. In fact, I’m going to be taking Amber’s Mustang to them.”
The truck was outfitted with a black TMI interior and a custom Holley digital dash to match the technology under the hood. The only thing missing? A radio. “Yeah, sometimes I’ll use my golf speaker that mounts to the dash. But I’m really just listening to the engine!” How can you not with the exhaust pipe dumping just in front of the passenger tire?
Ethel sees a lot of time out on the road, even though she only hits the single digits mark for fuel economy, it’s the smiles not the miles for Nick. Once the team at Sharpe handed the keys over to Nick, he wasted no time spinning that odometer and catching all the best car shows in San Diego.
In our world, your automobile is a source of identity. It’s a physical form of who we are and the realization of our dreams. Our hot rods are testaments to our resilience, hard work and imagination. Each one is special and each owner has their own story. Parked at a show where money is obviously no problem and whatever you can dream of can simply be bought, Nick stands out among the crowd for doing something most people could never say, “The F-1000 was built, not bought.”
