New Truck! - Well, new to me anyway

Just picked up this sweet old pickup truck and got it on the road today. I figured I'd take it to the car wash and get some pics of it now because it's never going to be this clean again. Here's what it looks like in all its glory.

Now for the story on this truck. For a few years now, since we moved into our semi-rural place here in San Diego County, the need for a heavier 4x4 truck than my old F150 has been painfully apparent. Here's a pic of that beast when I picked it up back in 2012.

At the time I was living in the city, renting a small house near the beach, and the idea of a 4x4 or something heavier seemed ridiculous at the time. No trailers to pull, no off-roading to speak of, and no heavy loads anticipated. It was supposed to just be a fun road trip vehicle that could double as an occasional work truck. Well, when we bought our house that all changed. It became exclusively a work truck, and other than the bullet-proof 4.9L I6 and the ZF 5-speed transmission that I swapped in, it's grossly inadequate for the task.

For one thing, our back yard is a steep hillside, so traction in a truck with 2 wheel drive and a stick shift is a huge problem. I've gotten the thing stuck countless times, even in the dry, just trying to move things up and down the dirt driveway.

Next problem is the car axle under the rear end. The Ford 8.8-inch rear end is plenty strong to take the power and torque of pretty much any monster engine that Ford has thrown at it, including the 667 hp Trinity motor in the 2013+ GT500. The problem in a truck however is that it can't support very much weight. This is evident in the fact that over a decade later Ford upgraded the rear axle in the F150 with a heavier unit with 6-lugs, increasing both payload and towing ability. So basicially, hauling dirt, stone, concrete blocks and the like, along with towing trailers has maxed out the capacity of this F150 to the point that the axle would bend if I put any more weight on it.

Quickly growing sick of dealing with these issues a few years ago, I started looking for something to replace it. My original plan was to save all of the mechanical refurbishing work I'd done and swapping it into a same-generation F250 4x4. Problem being that I would still be underpowered with that setup. Not a complete deal breaker, but that's a lot of work for something that I won't be completely happy with.

After I nixed that idea, I decided I wanted a V10 in one of the newer Super Duty trucks. Gobs of torque, adequate power, and just as reliable as the I6 in the older trucks (and infinitely more so than the V8's of the earlier era). The only draw back I could see is gas mileage, but given the inefficiency of the old I6, I'm only sacrificing 1-2 mpg depending on how I drive it. I used to get between 12-14 mpg in the F150 and I've been getting 11-13 mpg so far in the F250 with the V10. That difference can be entirely accounted for in the gearing and automatic transmission in the F250. In fact, after seeing how it does, I'd wager the same ZF 5-Speed behind the V10 (it was an option in '99) would get better mileage than the I6. Since I was planning on switching to automatic regardless, to maximize legal towing capacity and allowing my wife to drive it in a pinch, I'm very happy with the change.

Now when I bought the F250, it was a non-running truck. It had a loud tick-tick-tick coming from the engine, the transmission had lost all forward gears (had reverse for some reason though) and one of the rear doors wouldn't open. Factoring in the cost of a new transmission and taking a gamble on the engine noise, I bought the truck on the cheap as a project. It turned out to be a great decision in retrospect.

First thing I tackled was the engine. Turns out that the early Ford Modular motors (4.6l, 5.4l V8's and 6.8l V10) had a problem with spark plugs blowing out of the head. This truck had a miss on cylinder number three, and when I pulled the plug out, a helicoil insert came out of the head with it. I cleaned it up, put a new spark plug into the insert and torqued it back into the head. When I started it back up, the ticking noise was gone and no more rough idle! Just about the cheapest engine repair I've ever done. Since it looked like the rest of the ignition system was original to the truck and had 180k miles on it, I threw in new plugs and coils.

Second was cosmetic repairs. I found a set of pristine bumpers on Craigslist from a guy who was putting on aftermarket heavy steel ones for that rugged off road look and to mount a winch. As you can see in the above pics, they still look like brand new. Apparently the guy he bought his truck from garage kept it since he bought it new in 2001. I also replaced the grill with an aftermarket one since the original was broken in a few places. I think even with some dents and scratches on the paint, this truck looks much newer than it is. It certainly doesn't look like an 18-year-old work truck.

The front bumper was still in good enough shape that I was able to sell it and recoup some of my cost on the pair I bought:

The rear was all mangled up. While I'm pro 2A, I don't really like to advertise it while I'm driving in California, so I was also glad to get rid of the gun stickers on the back. That "Coexist" sticker is hilarious:

Next thing I tackled was the transmission. It was quite the challenge due to the weight of the transfer case and transmission assemblies, but with some grunting and straining, a friend and I were able to wrestle it out from under there. Here's a pic of subdued 4R100 that came out:

When I got the new transmission I was really excited:

Then I saw this:

The torque converter was half hanging out of the transmission, in spite of the retainer bar holding it in place. This and the rough condition of the pallet indicated that it was treated very roughly in shipping. I decided to pull the converter out and look inside it and the transmission to make sure no damage was done to the front pump or converter. This is what I found however:

That dirt on the glove came off of the pump splines. If you zoom in all the way you can see how there are fine little metallic particles in the dark shmoo on that glove. But wait, there's more!

You can see down in that hole a bunch of even larger metallic particles. I emailed the seller when I saw this, along with the pictures seen here. Against my understanding of these things, he advised me that it should be fine. I'm not sure exactly how all of that junk got in there, but it wasn't looking good for the transmission builder at this point from my perspective. Not only was there metallic debris in the converter and pump, the cooler ports were open to the air during shipping.

Instead of just listening to his advice, I took a couple of evasive actions to hopefully remedy potential catastrophic failure of the transmission. There is a 2 year warranty on the remanufactured transmission, but I'm not real excited about the idea of climbing back under the truck and swapping the transmission again, and being without the use of my truck for several weeks in the process. First, I decided to install an external transmission filter on the cooler return line.

The idea behind these is that you can catch any debris in the transmission cooler and cooler lines in this before any of the oil returns to the transmission and ruins it. Since all of that stuff was new (I upgraded to a 2004+ 6.0L diesel transmission cooler), I wasn't worried about it for that, but any of that debris that might be hanging out in the transmission will be caught by this filter before it gets into the main filter. In a short time, I'm going to swap in this second filter to make sure the debris it catches after initial break-in doesn't clog it up and cause the transmission to overheat.

The other thing I did was get a pair of long needle nose pliers and some cotton swabs to collect as much of that metallic debris in the torque converter as I could. I went through all of the exposed surfaces meticulously to remove any signs of metal flake, being careful not to leave behind any cotton fibers that might also cause problems in the transmission's valve body.

In addition to the other problems I noted above, the exterior of the transmission, while it has that glossy black paint on it, looks like it was dug out of a swamp and painted without cleaning. I don't think I've ever seen an aluminum part with so much corrosion. Not only that, but all of the threaded holes on the exterior of the transmission case were filled with dirt, and had to be chased with threading taps. Suffice it to say, in spite of my success so far with this transmission, I will not be buying anything from this seller again.

Now that the transmission is in and I've put about 500 miles on it, it looks like all of my precautions have paid off. The transmission seems to be working quite well now, I don't have any signs of slipping or torque-converter whine (which would indicate damage to the impeller/propeller mechanism), and lockup seems normal as well.

While the transmission was out and I was waiting for the new one to arrive, I tackled the rear door problem. After pulling off the interior door panel and manually running the latch with a screwdriver to get the door to open, I determined that a stuck power locking actuator was preventing the door from unlocking even with the manual latch. This was a very cheap and easy fix, and when the new part came in I was able to replace it and put the door back together in less than half an hour.

The truck passed smog today and is now legally registered and on the road. Now it's time to sell the F150. I'll be sad to see that old beast go after all of the love I put into it, but it's time. Hopefully I get a good enough price to at least pay for the transmission in the truck that's replacing it. Thanks for reading and Steem on!

Photo credit: All photos were taken by me using various cell phone cameras.

#4x4