1/2 Million mile club; new member

[AJB0009]

My cousin in South Florida. He purchased his F-250 HD brand new July of 1995.
7.3 P/S, manual trans, 2WD, X-cab. Paid $24k.
He had just started out on his own as an electrician (mainly does residential service/repair).
So, most of the truck's life has been pulling a trailer.
The motor itself has not been touched except for replacing two injectors.
He has replaced one flywheel and two clutches. One transmission (would not shift into O/D) and rebuilt the rear diff twice (teeth broken off the ring gear).
Has always used Shell Rotella T4 and Motorcraft filters. (I'm not sure of the OCI intervals).
Just rolled over 500,000 yesterday.

 

[fantastic]

My cousin in South Florida. He purchased his F-250 HD brand new July of 1995.
7.3 P/S, manual trans, 2WD, X-cab. Paid $24k.
He had just started out on his own as an electrician (mainly does residential service/repair).
So, most of the truck's life has been pulling a trailer.
The motor itself has not been touched except for replacing two injectors.
He has replaced one flywheel and two clutches. One transmission (would not shift into O/D) and rebuilt the rear diff twice (teeth broken off the ring gear).
Has always used Shell Rotella T4 and Motorcraft filters. (I'm not sure of the OCI intervals).
Just rolled over 500,000 yesterday.

I would be interesting to know the OCI's but probably every 3-5k or so I'd imagine. That's why these trucks stay overpriced for their mileage & age. All because of their known reliability. Also, your cousin lives in a temperate climate so it didn't rust out as do a lot of northern trucks. If we had no rust to deal with I'd imagine there would be many more vehicles just like this one. The 95' in my signature was the first diesel I've owned & It was a good tool. Most of these trucks used the 3.55 Ford rear axle so it wasn't their strongest offering with the 4:30. Ford did better when they went to the 99+ and started using 3:75. Great story & return on investment!

 

[wpod]

This is BITOG and unless premium synthetic oils and oils filters are used and changed every 3,000 miles and engine lasting past warranty is impossible !! [The 7.3 Powerstrokes are really good engines.]

 

[demarpaint]

That's an accomplishment, and done with inexpensive store bought oil and filters! It sounds to me like the driving conditions were far from perfect making it even more of an accomplishment.

 

[eljefino]

24k, huh, who has a time machine?

 

[Kira]

Super congrats on 'half a mill'.

I wonder if the manual transmission (herkie-jerkiness) played into either or both episodes of rear end damage.

What kind of gear oil should he have used? [that's a BITOG joke]

 

[AJB0009]

24k, huh, who has a time machine?

I know, right? What the heck is a new truck going to cost 28 years from now?

 

[fantastic]

Super congrats on 'half a mill'.

I wonder if the manual transmission (herkie-jerkiness) played into either or both episodes of rear end damage.

What kind of gear oil should he have used? [that's a BITOG joke]

on a serious note Ford did well in the gear oil selection on these Singe rear wheel axles. They specified 75-140 for thier 3:55's.

 

[bullwinkle]

We had an '03 7.3 PSD (guessing 4R100?) E-250 cargo van make it over 660K, AFAIK still ORIGINAL tranny & turbo, many miles spent hauling the equipment trailer with machines all over central, SW, northern OH & the MOUNTAINS of WV! Now we're lucky if we can get a Transit 250 over 130K without a transmission rebuild (or in rare cases, an engine)! They don't build them like that any more...

 

[skyactiv]

Does his old truck drip oil on customers driveways? Years ago, a guy with a F250 gave me an estimate for a new roof and his truck dripped oil on my driveway. I scratched him off the list.

 

[fantastic]

Does his old truck drip oil on customers driveways? Years ago, a guy with a F250 gave me an estimate for a new roof and his truck dripped oil on my driveway. I scratched him off the list.

500k says this guy had plenty of business though so can't be leaking extravagantly or left a 500k "trail" . How many high mileage vehicles don't leak though...

 

[AJB0009]

I would be interesting to know the OCI's but probably every 3-5k or so I'd imagine. That's why these trucks stay overpriced for their mileage & age. All because of their known reliability. Also, your cousin lives in a temperate climate so it didn't rust out as do a lot of northern trucks. If we had no rust to deal with I'd imagine there would be many more vehicles just like this one. The 95' in my signature was the first diesel I've owned & It was a good tool. Most of these trucks used the 3.55 Ford rear axle so it wasn't their strongest offering with the 4:30. Ford did better when they went to the 99+ and started using 3:75. Great story & return on investment!

I asked and got some clarification on the OCI:
"Well...this motor with that HPOP beats the oil up pretty bad. So early on 3-3.5k. Then later after 250k about 4-5K. Got lazy and cheap. 3.5 gallons per change, always with a filter. Now it uses a bit, turbo is always wet. Lol. Must have put over 500 gallons in that hole!"

 

[fantastic]

I asked and got some clarification on the OCI:
"Well...this motor with that HPOP beats the oil up pretty bad. So early on 3-3.5k. Then later after 250k about 4-5K. Got lazy and cheap. 3.5 gallons per change, always with a filter. Now it uses a bit, turbo is always wet. Lol. Must have put over 500 gallons in that hole!"

Thanks for the details. I have a few things to note here. The oil of old use to shear the oil more & modern oil addressed the shearing more so. 4-5k is far from "Lazy" on this engine. However, shorting it a quart is odd & 3.5 gallons is the incorrect amount of oil on these trucks. They were putting in 14 quarts when it should have been 15 quarts. Maybe that was intentional? Luckily, this has a large sump so 1 qt down on short oil drain intervals is not too much of an issue. A person would not want to try that on a 5 quart sump & run it 10k miles or bad things might happen. The turbo seals are something that is normally needing replaced post 200k & it will only get worse. If the turbo is original then they may want to opt for a rebuilt unit if they go into it for seals. Thanks for asking & posting back!!