Montgomery Noble is a 21-year-old college senior at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., where he is studying aerospace engineering and specializing in astronautics, which is the designing of rockets, satellites, and other objects in space. But when he is not in school studying the coolest thing ever, he can be found pursuing his various hobbies, all of which seem to have something to do with a motor, such as riding four-wheelers and dirt bikes, riding his Yamaha Raptor 700R, going on the boat fishing, and working on cars and trucks or whatever he can get his hands on. In fact, this summer between college semesters, he has been rebuilding a project 17.5-foot boat from the ground up, replacing the stringers and transom, installing a new deck, and doing all of the fiberglass work. Montgomery has even been working on restoring a 1998 Dodge RAM 12-valve Cummins! But his real passion is his 2012 Ford F250.

In order to pay for his expensive hobbies, he does a lot of commercial and residential painting jobs, as well as sells rock lights on the side and goes onto Facebook Marketplace to find items he can flip for some quick and easy cash. And this is in addition to the part-time job he works during the summers when he’s not in college, as well as working on other people’s vehicles.

A Kindled Interest

Montgomery first gained his interest in cars and trucks when he started high school. Neither of his parents had any automotive interests, so he wasn’t even exposed to the passion until he began at Wesley Chapel High School where they had an automotive academy that could be taken as an elective.

“This automotive academy was a full shop that had lifts and every tool needed. They also had a dyno,” Montgomery said.

The class introduced him to trucks, and he has been hooked ever since. He was taught how to balance and change tires as well as the mechanical workings of engines. And every year, the automotive academy also hosted a car show that everyone in the community attends, and the class would have a different project car to be fixed up every year. But what got him into diesel trucks specifically instead of just automobiles in general was a close friend in the auto class.

“He had a third gen Dodge Cummins with LED halo rings, and he gave me the inspiration to build my own truck,” Montgomery recalled.

No-Brainer

When asked whether he preferred diesel or gas, the answer was an easy one. “It’s a no-brainer for me,” stated Montgomery. “Diesel engines in my opinion are so much better; they have what seems like unlimited torque, a cool unique noise, and an easy way to get high horsepower.”

Noble’s Build

When Montgomery got his Ford F250, it was bone stock with nothing but a leveling kit. At the time, he didn’t know too much about diesel trucks, so he wasn’t sure what to do with the build. This resulted in a lot of trial and error as he slowly became more knowledgeable and experienced. Naturally, his tastes and motivations changed, resulting in a lot of parts being changed on the truck with time.

“Over the last four to five years, I slowly changed my truck to what it is now. Since I’m obviously very young, I struggled to come up with the money to pay for everything and that’s why it took so long to get where I am now,” Montgomery added.

Truly His

But his tight budget is also what encouraged him to do everything himself. In order to afford the modifications to his truck, he sold every OEM part he took off the truck and developed a lot of side hustles for some extra funds. Everything from the lift kit to the headlights to the audio… a second set of hands has never worked on Montgomery’s F250! His truck has never entered a shop, and he has never paid a dime for someone else to do any maintenance or checkups on it. He taught himself everything. And he takes pride in that, truly thinking that it is his truck, and no one else’s.

“If I did not do everything myself then my truck would never be what it is today.”

And that begs the question: What is the truck today? Well, right now Mr. Noble is riding high with a PRO COMP 8-inch lift kit on Hostile demon H118 24×14 wheels with 38×15.5 Fury Country Hunter MT tires and 2-inch spacers. And the truck has been armored with a Fab Fours Vengeance Series front bumper and a Bodyguard A2 rear bumper. But he’s also installed some FOX shocks all around, Kaotic Concepts traction bars, R1 Concepts drilled and slotted rotors, a GEN-Y drop hitch, a 10-inch side exit exhaust tip, and a RK Sport fiberglass functional Ram air hood. And when it comes to lighting, Montgomery has a variation of LED and RGB rock lights, switchback mirror lights, MW Customs double row RGBW wheel lights, Rough Country dual 30-inch light bars in the grille, a black third brake light, and paint-matched headlights with two LED cubes per headlight and switchback LEDs with the headlights and lightbars being built himself while featuring a Morimoto Bixenon projector with HID bulbs instead of factory halogen reflector headlight.

Additionally, he has an F250 badge hitch receiver and stabilizer bars and miscellaneous parts in the two-tone grey color including a Roll N Lock retracting bedcover, a Platinum F250 grille with black Super Duty decals, custom-built paint-matched recon tail lights built by himself, paint matched mirrors, and a Recon Bullet antenna.

His Constant

“This build is very close to me,” said Montgomery. “To me this is more than a truck. This truck, in a lot of ways, is my therapy.”

When he’s frustrated or upset, he does research to find motivation, or he goes out for a drive and it cheers him up. Or sometimes he turns wrenches on the truck to fix something, and it allows him to think through and sort his thoughts in a lot of ways.

“This truck also gives me a way to express myself,” concluded the owner. “My number one goal with this truck is to be unique and different from the rest of the trucks all over while also being on a budget.”

Future Mods

As a full-time college student it is a struggle to get the money for future modifications, but that hasn’t stopped Montgomery before. He always has a full list of mods that he wants to do to the truck, and an end goal of where he wants the truck to eventually be. But some of the future modifications he has in mind include a stage 2 KC whistler turbo along with an intercooler piping kit, and a 10- to12-inch four-link with a cradle lift kit sitting on a new set of 40-inch tires and wheels. He’s also considering some AMP research steps and coilovers at some point down the road.