Greetings,


I am in the process of buying my first diesel powered truck. I am particular to FORD products.


What should I look for, aside from the usual things like leaking oil, and general powertrain condition?Edited by: Digital Oxygen

When I bought my truck it had pretty high miles and it hasn't given me any trouble. Maybe see if the truck has good service records that is a key to making these engines last. Good luck in your truck shopping they are great trucks!!


Justin

I just bought a 1994 F350 with the 7.3 turbo (not powerstroke) , I'm welcoming it to the family as my 6th ford vehicle http://www.dieselplace.com/forum/smileys/Hug.gif


It has 180k miles on it. I drove it 2500 miles so far and it seems good. The oil level is still the same as when I bought it. It has lots of power. Starts on the first crank every time (so far). Only sometimes 1 or 2 cylinders don't fire, I think it is a fuel problem, since it can come and go at any time. I'm planning on changing the fuel filter and running some injector cleaner, see what it does.


I know many other people who have taken this engine and the power stroke across the 200k mile marker without major incident.


I have some questions as well:


1. Does anyone know of a good book (other than the factory manual) for the mechanical 7.3 turbo?


2. How do I do a compression check on the motor? Are there adapters to connect a compression gauge into the glow plug hole?


3. How do I check/control the fuel distribution? With a gas engine you can ground the spark plugs on different cylinders and note the rpm change to see how much each cylinder contributres. Is there a similar trick on the diesel engine? I'm assuming the mechanical diesel doesn't have any idle control like the powerstroke.


4. This one has a garrett wastegated turbo, I thought ford used ATS, does that mean somebody replaced it or am I wrong?


Any help appreciated..


Bas.

http://www.dieselplace.com/forum/smileys/Cool.gifThe only question I can help you with is #4.


Ford uses the garrett turbo's but they did not put a wastegated turbo on the PSD until the 99 model year, so in my opinion someone must have at one point changed your turbo. http://www.dieselplace.com/forum/smileys/Confused.gif


Hope this helps,


Justin

There is a way to do that but it is a program run from a diagnostic machine. It will run the engin up to about 1500 RPM and kill each cylinder one at a time, it then of course returns any error codes along with hearing what it does