FeatureInTheGarageMedia.com
BY ROB FORTIER
Photography BY TIM SUTTON
Derek Brown’s Bad
1967 Ford
Bumpside
1967 Ford
Bumpside
BY ROB FORTIERPhotography BY TIM SUTTON
Derek Brown’s Bad
1967 Ford
Bumpside
1967 Ford
Bumpside
W
ho in their right mind would buy and subsequently build a Bumpside Ford pickup primarily for the purpose of autocross/road racing? Derek Brown, that’s who!
“Before I bought this truck,” Derek told us, “I was at a Goodguys event in Del Mar and there was a 1967 F-100 running autocross. I thought, ‘Man I got to get into this since I’ve been racing my entire life!’ I started in motocross … then went to shifter kart racing … then onto Sprint Cars in late-model stock. I still race motocross today.”
So, the bad Bumpside bug bit—now Derek just needed to satisfy that fix with the right F-100. “After searching for one of these trucks for over a year, I found this one in Fresno, from the original owner. I flew up there, they picked me up at the airport, fed me lunch, and I drove it home! The truck was mostly all original, aside from the 428 installed back in 1972. I drove it like that for maybe three years with the 428 and three-on-the-tree. Pretty badass!
“When it came time to start the build/race truck transformation, I had purchased most of the driveline parts [Speedway Engineering rear and T56 Magnum trans] and new Coyote BOSS through Roush-Yates in North Carolina. (I grew up in North Carolina, so I have friends who work on the race team and they helped me put all this together.) Shortly after the truck was assembled here in California, my wife and I decided to move back to North Carolina to build a house. (That’s what I do for a living now.) So, as I was building the house, all the set up and tuning came together in Mooresville; Chuck Mallet and Pancho Weaver, Trans Am road race guy, handled the chassis set up [custom purpose-built fully adjustable IFS and three-link rear suspension]; all subsequent tuning was done at Roush-Yates. Kyle Tucker at Detroit Speed also played a big part in getting the truck figured out—as I kept blowing up the steering system at autocrosses until we figured out the right combo.”
When Derek says the F-100 was badass before, well, that brief statement is more than applicable to the Bumpside’s current state of affairs … to say the least. The original-paint 1967 short-wide features 18-inch Forgeline race wheels with rather sticky-compound 30-series rubber and 13-inch Brake Man binders with a Tilton master/pedal assembly, custom-built No-Limit aluminum fuel cell with an Aeromotive fuel-delivery system, vintage Kirkey road racing seats with Crow Enterprises harness system and LMC replacement interior, Sparco/ididit/DSE steering, and AutoMeter instrumentation in a Classic Dash gauge panel. Watching Derek do his thing behind the wheel on any given road coarse—or unoccupied stretch of road—is something else … but nothing compared to what it’s like being strapped in the cockpit alongside him as he’s doing it!
