After two years involving HUNDREDS of hours of extremely tedious work, the project of digitizing the entire text section of the 1964-1972 Ford Truck Master Parts Catalog (MPC) is now finished and ready for release...and so it's now possible to have your own searchable database of '64-'72 Ford truck part numbers right on your home computer!

Every page (nearly 5,000 of them!) of the Text section of the MPC (pictured at right) has been scanned, read by OCR software and then proofread...twice...to ensure accuracy. It's then been saved as four digitally-searchable PDF files for quick and easy reference.
 

Fig. 02 - Each page was individually laid out prior to being read by OCR software. Green is text, red is images and blue is tables.

Fig. 03 - After being read, the monumental task of proof-reading every single page began. In split-screen mode the original copy can be compared to the original scan.

NO corners were cut in the creation of this Digital MPC. Most of you who know me from the FORDification forums or Facebook groups know how anal I can be about details...well, for a project like this one you actually NEED someone who's that anal. If it was to be associated with this site, it had to be good!

Here are some screenshots for the visual and to show how it works:
 

This one is just a demonstration to show how you can highlight the text and then copy/paste as needed. This the first of the four PDFs. You can see the bookmarks that were added (along the left side) to make finding each section quick and painless.

Here's how it works. While viewing the PDF in Adobe Acrobat (or Acrobat Reader), click on Edit > Find (or just hit Control F) which will bring up the search window in the upper-righthand corner (red arrow). Then just type in the number you're looking for and hit Enter. The entry in the text will be highlighted as pictured once it's found.

So let's say you're not sure which of the four PDFs has the info you need. Rather than search each one individually, you can search all four at the same time. You'll also notice that right below the Find in the dropdown menu you see the Advanced Search option. Clicking that will allow all files in a directory to be searched. So by simply placing all four PDFs in one folder/directory, you can search the entire 5,000-page MPC with a single search query.

This is a screenshot of one of the pages of the Help section I put together, which is a quick-reference guide of what basic parts groups are in each section. Since each PDF has bookmarks, finding the section you need is extremely simple.

This is another page of the Help section. This is the Quick Reference Parts Guide that will show commonly-researched parts, the part's Group (Basic Part) Number (that you'll search for in the Digital MPC) and the section it can be found.

I'll be updating this Quick Reference Parts Guide on a regular basis and will post the newest version here so you can save it to your computer for easy access.