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A diesel newbie, but not new to Turbo's

323 views 3 replies 4 participants last post by  EmilyJoness 
#1 ·
Dear the ORG,

My name is Lars and I build tiny turbo setups for tiny cars. I come from the land of miataturbo.net where I am an admin. I build turbo setups for Mazda Miata's as a side business to a regular white collar career. For years I have needed a tow vehicle to take my race car to and from the track. In the past I have had a 97 F-150 Triton, and a 96 E-350. Both were pretty crappy and I was never happy with either. What I have wanted for a long time was a 7.3L diesel E-350. I could never find one in my price range, or in decent condition, or within a reasonable distance from where I live. I have an event coming up at the beginning of April that I needed to tow my car to and supplies and such. With my recent tax return and some savings I decided I should get me another tow vehicle to use for a few years. I had mostly decided on a 1/2ton Suburban/Yukon/Escalade. After a good amount of searching I found one that I wanted to buy. Then a friend linked me to a few 99-03 manual F-350's in Knoxville. They were actually reasonably priced which was awesome. As looking locally trucks seemed to go for about 3-4x as much as a van, and sleeping in a truck at a race track is harder to do then a van, so I had not really planned on ever getting a truck.

I called the people and one of the guys sounded really good over the phone, could answer the questions I had, and seemed like a genuine dude. He talked about what he had done to the truck, problems with it, and other things. The truck is a 99 7.3L F-350 SD dully. It is a bit more then I really need, but will tow anything I put behind it so that is good. As long term I want to get an enclosed trailer that is 18'-28' long.

The truck has 346k miles, and overall runs pretty well. The 2 problems that I need to work on are that it has an oil leak, and supposedly needs new front ball joints. The previous owner had ordered the ball joints and they showed up while I was checking out the truck. So I just need to have a shop install them, then get alignment. I will work on figuring out where the oil leak is from.

Other base lining I want to do is an oil change, transmission fluid change, diff fluid change, and a fuel filter change. After that I am planning on doing the NAPA air filter mod, and picking up a CPS sensor to keep in my glove box.

Any other things that I should think about doing to get the truck ready to tow and last another 10+ years?


Also how many posts do I need to post pictures? I want to post up some of the truck, and it won't let me.
 
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#2 ·
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