Son scored a great deal on a Ford F150

dbias

dbias

Joined
Dec 24, 2014
Messages
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Location
Huntington WV
My 24 year old son got back in town today, he is an OTR truck driver, for the holiday. A friend of his has a grandmother that was was wanting to sell an old truck and he knew my son was looking for an old beater so he told him about it. Turns out I think it’s far from a beater as it’s a 2002 F150 XLT single cab long bed 2 wheel drive with the 4.6 V8. It may be 22 years old but it only has 86k miles on it and NO rust. It has a few dents, dings and scratches but it runs like a top. Seeing how this thing has lived in a garage and has averaged around 4k miles a year I’m recommending Valvoline Restore and protect but not sure of the weight yet. The truck specs 0w-20 conventional oil so I’d say anything is better than that.
He went to look at it and said he was interested and got it for $4200.
It’s going to need tires due to age and we will be changing everything from fluid to hoses as everything looks factory.
 
None of the modular engines do well on 0W anything oil. As a minimum, a quality synthetic 5W-30 is best (or even a 10W-30 syn) and with regular oil changes, the Truck 4.6 will go an absolutely insane number of miles.

The truck version has full floating piston pins, higher quality pistons and a few other improvements for longevity. It is a even tougher engine than the very long lived Crown Vic variant.

In any case, the oil pump and tensioners leak enough to make 0W-20/30 oils marginal. And the timing chains live longest the closer you get to a true 30 viscosity oil, and keeping the oil clean.

They can sometimes smoke on startup, due to lack of valve guide seals. This is not an indication of wear.
 
Cujet said:
None of the modular engines do well on 0W anything oil. As a minimum, a quality synthetic 5W-30 is best (or even a 10W-30 syn) and with regular oil changes, the Truck 4.6 will go an absolutely insane number of miles.

The truck version has full floating piston pins, higher quality pistons and a few other improvements for longevity. It is a even tougher engine than the very long lived Crown Vic variant.

In any case, the oil pump and tensioners leak enough to make 0W-20/30 oils marginal. And the timing chains live longest the closer you get to a true 30 viscosity oil, and keeping the oil clean.

They can sometimes smoke on startup, due to lack of valve guide seals. This is not an indication of wear.
Click to expand...
I concur. I have an 01 4.6 and have run nothing but 5-30 high mileage which stopped all leaking from the front and rear seals. I have twice that mileage.
 
Cujet said:
None of the modular engines do well on 0W anything oil. As a minimum, a quality synthetic 5W-30 is best (or even a 10W-30 syn) and with regular oil changes, the Truck 4.6 will go an absolutely insane number of miles.

The truck version has full floating piston pins, higher quality pistons and a few other improvements for longevity. It is a even tougher engine than the very long lived Crown Vic variant.

In any case, the oil pump and tensioners leak enough to make 0W-20/30 oils marginal. And the timing chains live longest the closer you get to a true 30 viscosity oil, and keeping the oil clean.

They can sometimes smoke on startup, due to lack of valve guide seals. This is not an indication of wear.
Click to expand...
Good points. Yeah I’ve heard good things about the 4.6 but just never had one. The 2002 is one of the first years with the aluminum intake thus avoiding the cracked plastic intakes.
I figured a 5W-30 synthetic would be better than the 0W-20 conventional and I haven’t seen any proof of sludge but as gently as it appears to have been taken care of and the periods of setting I would think a gentle cleaning oil would be a good idea.
 
If it doesn't have a tach get one. You gotta spin those to move at all.

Our '03 had tensioner pieces all over the oil pan at 130k. Listen for chain rattle

I daily an '07 2V 4.6 with 240k and counting
 
After your maintenance and run/runs with Restore and Protect, 5W30 I'd switch over to ESP 5W30 and stick with it.
 
A dozen, or so, years ago, my pal was told of a 1997 F-150 XLT.
It was a 4WD/4.6l/auto (4R70W pretty sure. I did the pan drop at 56K), stick transfer case.
~50K and garaged for the preceding 2 years.
The expected cost of battery/brakes and a few other things was subtracted from a Kelley sourced starting price.
He paid $4,200, as I recall.

The small joke we have is that the replacement fuel tank, brake lines and exhaust manifolds should've been subtracted too.

Several sources said the 4.6 had COP ignition. His '97 has the pair of 4-plug coils, one on the forward surface of each valve cover.
He just bought a Nissan Xterra with which to replace it.
He is selling the '97 now. It has ~82K, bad AC and more rust than the Russian Navy. It does run quite well.
 
My experience with the modular engines is it is not the weight or composition of the oil that matters. What matters most with Ford modular engines to prevent timing chain related issues is frequency of the oil changes.

My two cents- do an oil change every 2500 miles on a Ford modular engine, and the timing chain related issues are greatly reduced. In my Ford modular engines, I do 2500 oil changes with 5w30 synthetic. My 5.4L3v went 195k miles in a F350, towing very heavy loads across the U.S., with no timing chain related issues. My speculation was that the 2500-mile oil changes was the difference maker in timing chain related issues that are so very common starting after 70l miles on the 3v modular engines.
 
Cujet said:
None of the modular engines do well on 0W anything oil. As a minimum, a quality synthetic 5W-30 is best (or even a 10W-30 syn) and with regular oil changes, the Truck 4.6 will go an absolutely insane number of miles.

The truck version has full floating piston pins, higher quality pistons and a few other improvements for longevity. It is a even tougher engine than the very long lived Crown Vic variant.

In any case, the oil pump and tensioners leak enough to make 0W-20/30 oils marginal. And the timing chains live longest the closer you get to a true 30 viscosity oil, and keeping the oil clean.

They can sometimes smoke on startup, due to lack of valve guide seals. This is not an indication of wear.
Click to expand...
The 2V guide issue is a guide quality issue, pertaining to the molds. While it might make somebody feel good running a "true 30" in it, I'm of the mind that this plays no role in how long they last. If you got a set from when the molds were fresh, they'll last pretty much forever, if you got a set from when the molds were well aged, they are going to fail, like my buddy's in his '03 F-150 at like 60,000 miles.

I ran 0W-30 and 0W-40 in ours most of its life and we sold it with over 200,000 miles on it and I saw it around for another 5+ years until the place the guy worked relocated. He had quite the commute, so I'm sure it had well over 300,000 miles on it at that point. Original guides and chains. My dad's is 24 years old, original guides and chains, 0W-30 in it most of its life (M1), >200,000 miles on it.
 
NormanBuntz said:
No way I'd run 0W oil in a 22 year old vehicle. Good luck to your son on a nice purchase.
Click to expand...
Why? I mean, you don't get winter, so I don't see a reason for that Winter grade in your climate, but a quality 0W-30 or 0W-40 may in fact have a heavier base oil blend than a cheaper blended 5W-30/10W-30. M1 0W-40 is my go-to for most vintage pushrod stuff, since it has higher levels of AW additives than the neutered API stuff.

I've currently got:
- HPL 0W-40 in my son's "new to him" 2002 Yamaha dirt bike, which stopped the smoking it was doing on the spec 10W-40
- M1 0W-40 in my other son's 1988 Suzuki 250 QuadSport

And, as I noted, my dad is running M1 0W-30 in his 24 year old Expedition, and has for the last almost 20 years.
 
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