What NEW truck should I buy?

My next truck will be an F150 with a 4BT and a manual.

 

Ahhh dont you love the modern diesels. Not that I probably would of ever bought one butt these are the reasons I steer clear and get diesel power out of my head. You no longer get the empty MPG and all that e spend ive junk on them. If I get one it will be prior to all this junk on them.

 

I'm liking the 6.0L V8 gas in my 2500HD. Not the gas mileage, but the power. LOL Luckily I don't drive a lot so the MPG isn't as big of a deal. I also liked the 4.7L V8 in my last Tundra. And I liked the 5.7L V8 in the Tundra I had before that! With the power they get out of the gas engines these days it doesn't seem necessary to go diesel unless you do a lot of mileage and a lot of heavy duty towing. My brother tows two different trailers with pretty heavy loads for his business and he does it with a 2500HD with the 6.0L gas as well. He use to own a diesel, but the last time he traded he could not justify sticking with a diesel with the extra cost of the engine. And he is enjoying the lower gas prices.

 

Dipping tanks for red dyed diesel is just looking for tax cheats. Same as being audited. They do this at places mainly where lots of trucks come together that the drivers have access to dyed fuel.

 

Yea but y'all ran MagPull out of the state along with other firearm related business and themselves.

Can't own a 30round magazine there

 

One of my loggers does small things, yard wood lower line ROW acre tracts etc. He hauls with a brand new finally dodge and a goose neck trailer with a set of standards on it. The driver told me he met a revenue truck in the road in town. They pulled a u turn and pulled him over, another revenue truck pulled up and stayed until another COUNTY truck passed and the second agent took off after it!!! They were going to did the county truck??? Why? This was also the richest county in the area so the county has money.

 

So I never got the answer?? What truck should I buy, and who wants to buy an F-150 Supercrew Lariot ?

 

I would buy a tundra or chevy 1500.

Ford makes a good truck and hopefully they have some of their issues solved with motors and coils and plugs.

 

I just had a coil go last night.... started it up to warm up/run a bit and a coil went. I've replaced 3 or 4 of them in the last few years.... guess they are all aging....

 

i work on the 2000-2007 f series almost daily. yep coils go bad, yep plugs pull threads but that is rare, and the 2000-2005 motors are bullet proof. the 3 valve motors have some issues but in my experience they are caused by lack of maintenance. coils are $40 each or $225 a set, thread pulls on a plug and its a 20 minute fix with a $100 tool.

chevy has fewer problems but they are more expensive. 10 bolt rear axle is weak at best. sunshell in trans is weak at best. have seen quite a few exploded transfer cases, cams are soft in the 6.0L.

Everything i hear about the new crop of ford motors is good and that aluminum body is appealing for us here in the rust belt.

 

I heard the best 2v 5.4 is the 04 cause it has updated heads with more threads so it doesnt eject the plugs like the previous ones and still not the head of the 3v with all the breaking plugs.

I agree , coils are a pain but manageable n easy. And you should replace plugs early but even on the timeline ford gives they still can seize in the head. Why not use anti seize from the factory?

I have also hear about intake gaskets and timing chain problems to the tune of several grand!!!

Granted these are older used trucks...I just would want to be sure the engineers have this stuff solved. Were only going on 15 + years of these issues now!!!

 

My Screw is a 2002 with the 5.4l in it. What do you guys mean by "pull plugs"?? When I had 37k on it, I blew a plug out of the head while driving down the highway, had it towed to a Ford dealer and they replaced the entire head ($3,500 job!!). They told me that was the only way to fix it. A year later I blew another one out, and Ford again wanted to replace the head.... a friend of mine who has a small shop said "that's ridiculous, just put a helicoil (sp?) in, so I did for $150 or something. 6 months later I blew a third plug out, and he installed another helicoil. That was 60k ago, haven't had any other problems since except one by one the coils going as did yesterday.

Does mine have 2 or 3 valves? And what is the recommended timeline for it's plugs, I don't recall. I had the plugs and wires all changed about 2 years ago...

 

I think some of those were 75-100k miles on plugs. Personally I would not go 50k on them. But your motor is the 2v with the weak heads with few plug threads to grab. Its notorious for spitting plugs out. Your plugs are a different design than the 3v that started in 05 it has the 2 piece plugs that break off in the head when they get changed. Its the one you hear of dealers quoting $2000 for a set of plugs and labor.

By "pulling plugs" he means changing them. But the "thread pull" reference is what your talking about...the motor ejecting plugs, or stripping out upon removal.

Ejecting plus is NOT NORMAL and should never happen unless a plug was maybe left loose or something. Let alone three times on one motor in less than 100k miles.

To put it into perspective I have a 1990 ford ranger. It has 305,000 miles on the original 2.3L 4 cylinder. It has 8 spark plugs (each cylinder has an ex house and intake side plug. I have not rejected a plug to date ...haha!!! Sure its not a v8 but I have a v8 in my K10...again no ejected plugs in the 35 years that truck has been around.

 

Of course it's not normal, but on this truck apparently it is VERY normal unfortunately. Almost every mechanic that looks at my truck comments with a smirk to me "How many heli-coils do ya have in there"? I guess from the weak threads your referring too, but I am under the impression it does not just spit out the threads, or the plug and it's threads, it actually spits out the entire steel (or aluminum?) insert that is in the head which has the female plug threads in it. It's like a silver colored cylinder shaped tube that is pressed into the head where each plug goes. If I recall correctly, the first time this occurred to me Ford showed me the head (removed from the motor) and there was a giant hole where that plug normally went in, instead of threads. It just looked like a really bad design to me, but I'm not expert on it.

 

http://afs-fix.com/fix-a-thred/08.htm there is what to use for fixing the threads on the 2 valve heads. there are some rip off shops that advocate replacing the head for pulled plug threads and even some that tell you to replace the head when the manifold studs break in the head. we do 4-10 ford 4.6/5.4 exhaust manifolds a month and have yet to pull a head

yours is a 2 valve motor. should be 100k platinum tipped plugs. you have had more trouble with plugs than i saw working at a used car dealer in 6 yrs and another 5 yrs of specialty work on ford pickups for 2 car lots.

If you use quality oil of correct weight and change it often the problems with the 3 valves is minimal. The plug problem on the 3 valve engines is also blown way out of proportion along with the timing issues.

 

Oh Yea its normal for that engine. Yet they still continued to produce it for what 6 years before they redesigned the heads?? Then they produced the 3v for over 10 years with the known plug sticking breaking issue??

And almost 20 years with weak coils and bad sealing hoods that help contribute to shorting out plugs???

I have lost some faith in ford and their engineers at least in the short run.

 

Anyone wants info on the 97-2008 5.4 or 4.6 motors i have been into lots of them. in the last couple months we have rebuilt 2 3v motors and done timing chains on 2 or 3 more. last 3v motor we did chains/guides/oil pump/cam phasers on was in and out of the shop in 5 hrs with $800 in parts.

 

The timing issue..is that the chain issue I am talking about or the bad can phasers that always start ticking? Thats another issue.