F-150 reminds us that if at first you don’t succeed, maybe you need to drift.
Most Ford F-150 pickups will do a burnout, but some of the older trucks might struggle to spin the tires on dry pavement. Fortunately, if you can’t get your old school F Series pickup to smoke the tires, sometimes adding a little lateral momentum can help. The video above is a good example of this approach, as a little drifting leads to plenty of tire smoke.
This video comes to us from the TankMonkey YouTube channeland it features a classic Ford F-150 doing a burnout in Mexico, but it doesn’t actually take place in Mexico.
Classic F-150 in Mexico
The details on this classic Ford F-150 are short, but we know that it has a carbureted V8 engineand an open differential. The front end styling is specific to the 1978 and 1979 model years and during that brief era, there were several small block and big block V8s offered. We don’t know which engine is under the hood, but we know that it has an open differential. Finally, it sounds like this truck has an automatic transmission, making the burnout with a stock-ish engine a little tougher.
As for the location, the description claims that the YouTuber was on a trip to “Mexico”, with the country name in quotes. Street racers often say that they are in “Mexico” when they are doing something illegal with the belief that if they were in Mexico, American authorities cannot use the video for legal matters. In other words, we would guess that this video wasn’t actually filmed in Mexico.
Persistence in Tire Slaying
The video begins with the old school Ford F-150 attempting a burnout with a small crowd gathered on the sidewalk. The first attempt is bad and the second isn’t much better, with the left rear tire spinning without any smoke.
Next, the driver heads into an area of the parking lot with an island in the middle of the road, whipping the rear end of the F-150 around as smoke begins to come off of the one spinning tire.
Finally, after getting the tires hot during that brief drifting display, the F-150 driver heads back to the area with the crowd to redeem himself. This time, the passenger’s side rear tire smokes hard, ending the video with the strongest burnout of the clip.
"Before I was old enough to walk, my dad was taking me to various types of racing events, from local drag racing to the Daytona 500," says Patrick Rall, a lifetime automotive expert, diehard Dodge fan, and respected auto journalist for over 10 years. "He owned a repair shop and had a variety of performance cars when I was young, but by the time I was 16, he was ready to build me my first drag car – a 1983 Dodge Mirada that ran low 12s. I spent 10 years traveling around the country, racing with my dad by my side. While we live in different areas of the country, my dad still drag races at 80 years old in the car that he built when I was 16 while I race other vehicles, including my 2017 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat and my 1972 Dodge Demon 340.
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